Visiting Fellow, Global Governance Centre
Huaying Bao has worked as an administrator in higher education for over 10 years and has abundant experience in public diplomacy in the academic field. She was a visiting fellow at George Washington University. Her research interests range from US-China relations, comparative education, immigration, to international organizations and global governance. Her recent project is on the cultivation of talents for international organizations. In GGC she will do research on the relationship of China and International Organizations, NGOs and international governance, etc.
Visiting Fellow, Global Governance Centre
Jenniina Kotajoki is a PhD researcher at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, specializing in the roles of international organizations in conflict-affected contexts, community engagement and armed groups. Her dissertation project investigates the interactions between non-state armed groups and the United Nations. Previously, Jenniina was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University and she has contributed to evidence-based policies and practices in the humanitarian and peacebuilding sectors by working with different non-governmental and international organisations. Her research has been published among others at International Studies Review and Third World Quarterly.
Visiting Fellow, Global Governance Centre
Tania Messell a Postdoctoral Researcher in the SNSF Sinergia project Governing Through Design (2020-2024). Over the next twelve months she will be furthering her investigations on design, humanitarian aid and resilience thinking as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Global Governance Centre. Her research interests cover global, international and transnational histories of design, the past and current role of innovation and design in humanitarian aid and international development, and the rise of infrastructures of resilience. Author of several peer-reviewed publications, she is also the co-editor of International Design Organisations: Histories, Legacies, Values published by Bloomsbury (2022).
Visiting Fellow, Global Governance Centre
Visiting Fellow, Global Governance Centre
Daniele Musmeci is currently holding the position of post-doctoral fellow in International and European Law at UNISANNIO (IT). He is in charge of the following research project: “UN sanctions and the European Union”. Prior to this, he worked with the UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) as Political Affairs Intern (2023). He received his Ph.D. in International Law from the Sapienza, University of Rome in 2022, defending a doctoral thesis centered on the interplay between UN-mandated sanctions and International Human Rights Law/International Humanitarian Law. In 2021, he acted as Visiting Researcher at Leiden Law School, Leiden University. He also worked with the Italian Inter-Ministerial Committee on Human Rights as junior consultant in 2021. Dr. Musmeci is also the recipient of the prestigious scholarship granted by the Curatorium of The Hague Academy of International Law and his articles are published in leading Italian journals, and recently, in foreign outlets (e.g. Journal of Conflict and Security Law, Chinese Journal of International Law). Lastly, he will be working as Visiting Fellow at the Geneva Graduate Institute under the supervision of Professor Biersteker (2024).
Visiting Fellow, Global Governance Centre
Melina Tretmans is a PhD researcher at the Chair of International Institutions and Peace Processes at Goethe University, Frankfurt. She holds a Master's degree in Conflict and Development from Ghent University. From 2022 until 2023, she was a research fellow at the Chair of Global Governance at Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen. Before coming to the Graduate Institute, she was a visiting fellow at the Université Internationale de Rabat. Within the DFG research group transMID (Transnational Mobility and Institutional Dynamics), Melina works as a researcher in the subproject International Organisations: Norm Setting and Norm Implementation for the Protection of Forced Migrants. In this project, she investigates gender and disability norms in IOM and UNHCR, as well as (gender) norm translation in the field of migration focusing on Moroccan non-state actors.
Visiting Fellow, Global Governance Centre
James White is a PhD candidate in Architecture at the University of Edinburgh, and Junior Visiting Fellow at IHEID. His PhD research focuses on the evolution and application of the UNESCO World Heritage system to historic urban sites at risk. His research interests include Global Climate Change mitigation and response, local and international governance, and the role of international organizations in promoting dynamic, best-practice environmental policies applicable to historic urban contexts, with a particular focus on the concept of "authenticity".
Research Associate, Global Governance Centre
Fanny Badache is a postdoctoral researcher in the project “A child of its time: The impact of world politics on UN peacebuilding” with the Graduate Institute's Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP). Between 2015 and 2020, she was a teaching assistant and PhD candidate in political science at the University of Lausanne. During the academic year 2018-2019, she was a visiting fellow at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies of the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation). Her research interests lie at the intersection between international relations and public administration. She specialized in the study of international bureaucracies. In her PhD dissertation, she studied the impact of staff diversity on the performance and perceived legitimacy of the UN Secretariat. She is also interested in methods to research international organizations and a strong advocate for cross-disciplinary dialogue.
Research Associate
Julia Bethwaite is a Doctoral Researcher in International Relations at the Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University. Her research interests cover the role of art in international relations and world politics, politics of biennials and art museums, practices of cultural diplomacy and international cultural relations, and transcalar elite networks. In her article-based doctoral dissertation, she analyses the power of art in international relations and world politics by examining artistic sites and the heteronomous power-mechanisms they constitute, which cross social fields and move across scales. By focusing on ‘Russian’ case-studies that are located beyond Russia’s territorial borders, her research shows how various forms of capital are being accumulated, converted and utilised by both state actors and non-state actors in and through the transnational field of art.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Erna Burai is Postdoctoral Researcher in the “To Save and to Defend: Global Normative Ambiguity and Regional Order” project, where she covers African regional and sub-regional organizations. A graduate of Central European University (CEU), Erna is an IR theorist with an expertise in norm research in the context of humanitarian interventions and the responsibility to protect. Before joining the Graduate Institute, she held visiting fellowships at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, the Montreal Centre for International Studies (CÉRIUM) and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) at the University College London. She was also part of the international research project Global Norm Evolution & the Responsibility to Protect, and led an International Relations program at a Hungarian higher education institution.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Sara (Meg) Davis is principal investigator of a multi-country participatory action research project on digital health and human rights, and special advisor on strategy and partnerships at the Global Health Centre. Seh has twenty years’ experience in global health and human rights as a scholar and practitioner. She earned her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, and held postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University and UCLA. She was China researcher at Human Rights Watch, and founding executive director of Asia Catalyst. At the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, Dr. Davis led early work to operationalise the Fund's commitments on human rights. She has held visiting fellowships at New York University, Columbia University, and Fordham University. She has taught at the Geneva Centre for Humanitarian Studies, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Temple University, Yale University, and University of Pennsylvania; and has consulted for UN agencies, Global Fund Board delegations, and civil society networks.
Senior Research Associate, Global Governance Centre.
Janelle Diller has served as legal counsel since 1998 for the International Labour Organization where she was appointed Deputy Legal Adviser in 2008. She has contributed to the development of international labour standards, soft law principles on business responsibility, and multi-stakeholder initiatives. She was closely involved in the Rana Plaza Arrangement to compensate several thousand worker victims of a factory collapse in Bangladesh. Her expertise includes international organizations, human and labour rights, international law, and governance related to transnational business. Her recent publications focus on human rights due diligence in migration governance and on the impact of multi-stakeholder governance in transnational regulatory contexts on labour law and worker rights. Her current work involves the interaction of multistakeholder initiatives for transnational governance and international organizational orders, and the fragmentation of international law-making in the governance of business and human and labour rights.
Research Associate, Global Governance Centre.
Thomas Gidney completed his PhD in International History at the Graduate Institute. His thesis examines how British colonies were admitted as member states to the League of Nations and the politics behind why only Britain decided to “represent” its colonies internationally. He is currently converting this thesis into a book. Thomas is currently working on a SNF project on the politics of juridical extraterritoriality during the 'Interwar' period, and Is also working with the universities of Oxford and Exeter on a project on the history of aid organisations and their legitimacy.
Research Associate, Global Governance Centre.
Damien Greder is a PhD candidate in the International Relations & Political Science department and a Doctoral Researcher for the Future of Humanitarian Design (HUD) at The Geneva School of Art and Design HEAD – Genève (HES-SO). His research interests lie at the intersection of environmental resilience, architecture, and co-design. He holds a Master of Science in Architecture from the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ).
Research Associate, Global Governance Centre
Miia Halme-Tuomisaari is Associate Professor in Human Rights Studies at Lund University. A legal anthropologist by her background, she has done ethnographic fieldwork at the UN Human Rights Committee and the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She has also conducted archival research on the International League for the Rights of Man in the 1940s. Her publications include Human Rights in Action: Learning Expert Knowledge (Brill 2010) and Revisiting the Origins of Human Rights (CUP 2015, co-ed with Pamela Slotte). She is currently writing a monograph on her work at the Human Rights Committee.
Post-doctoral researcher at the Center for International Studies (CERI)
Zuzana Hudáková is a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for International Studies (CERI) at SciencesPo, Paris and a research affiliate at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. Her research focuses on (1) the politics of contestation and everyday resistance in authoritarian regimes in a cross-regional perspective and (2) the use and effectiveness of United Nations sanctions.
Research Associate
Yifan Jia is a Research Associate at the Global Governance Centre. She is a PhD candidate and visiting lecturer at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King's College London. She also teaches at the Department of Political Economy and the Department of War Studies, and researches at the Transnational Law Institute at King's. Yifan Jia's research project is a social-legal study on the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regimes, which combines doctrinal analysis with empirical methods to explore the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Magnitsky sanctions. She is a qualified lawyer in the People’s Republic of China and practised criminal law in Beijing before joining King's.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Noémie Laurens is a postdoctoral researcher at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She completed her PhD in political science at Université Laval. Previously, she obtained a joint Master’s degree in Management and business law from HEC Paris and Université Paris I, and a Master’s degree in environmental economics from Université de Bordeaux. Her mixed-method doctoral thesis deals with when, why, and how international environmental agreements evolve over time. Her research interests more broadly include environmental governance, trade-environment politics, institutional change, and institutional design.
Research Associate
Aurélien LLorca has served during ten years as an Expert for several United Nations Security Council Committees and as Coordinator of the Panel of Experts on the Central African Republic, appointed by the UN Secretary General. He is a PhD candidate in International Law at the University of Neuchâtel, and a lecturer in International Security at the Grenoble Law faculty and the International Relations Institute of Paris (ILERI). His research focuses on the evolution of working methods, procedures and decision processes of UN Security Council subsidiary organs. He holds two Masters in political science from Sciences Po Grenoble and Paris-East University and holds the rank of Captain in the French national Police.
Research Associate, Global Governance Centre
Svitlana Ovcharenko is Research Associate at the Global Governance Center since November 2022, following a fellowship in the International Relations and Political Science Department. She is the author of the concept of “another rationality” and her research uses a multidisciplinary methodology. She focuses on implementing general theoretical knowledge from the philosophy of culture, aesthetics, and ethics in political and governance practices.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Potsdam
Nina Reiners is Associate Professor for Human Rights and Social Sciences at the University of Oslo. Her current research projects focus on the role of private actors for the delivery of global justice, opportunities for advocacy in shrinking civic spaces, autocratic interests in international lawmaking, and the biographies of UN human rights experts. Nina earned her PhD in Political Science from the University of Potsdam and was a member of the interdisciplinary research group “International Rule of Law: Rise or Decline?” from 2016-2023. She first joined the Global Governance Centre in 2018 as visiting scholar and is affiliated as research associate since 2019. Her book Transnational Lawmaking Coalitions for Human Rights (CUP, 2022) was launched at the Graduate Institute and is the winner of the ACUNS Book Award.
Research Associate, Global Governance Centre
Emrys Schoemaker is pursuing research on digital transformation in global and humanitarian affairs. He will conduct research on digital transformation in global affairs in the context of the governance of digitalisation, focusing on the global implications of domestic frameworks such as the EU’s suite of digital regulations, and developing ‘model governance frameworks’ for digital public goods, specifically for digital identity systems. He will also research the digital transformation of humanitarian response, focusing on issues of digital interoperability in the context of digitalised systems, cash and digital identity.
Research Associate, Global Governance Centre.
Ueli Staeger is a Research and Teaching Fellow (Maître-Assistant) in International Relations and Security at the University of Geneva. In July 2021, he defended my PhD thesis in International Relations/Political Science at the Graduate Institute, summa cum laude. He researches the role of international organizations (IOs) in the provision of security, with a focus on the African Union. The focus of his dissertation lied in the mechanisms through which resource mobilization affects IO secretariats’ agency. Different case studies explore the diversification of African Union resource mobilization from member states and external partners in its regular budget, peace & security and infrastructure development at the AU Development Agency AUDA-NEPAD. Additional research interests include EU foreign policy in the post-Soviet space and Africa. Ueli’s work is published in the Journal of Common Market Studies, West European Politics and International Spectator. He has previously studied at SOAS, University of London, the College of Europe and University of Geneva.
Research Associate, Global Governance Centre.
Dr Cristina Teleki holds a PhD from the Faculty of Law of Bern University. In parallel with her doctoral studies, she has worked at the European Court of Human Rights and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Dr Teleki currently works on two topics: regulation of Big Tech and cause lawyering.
Research Associate, Global Governance Centre.
Ezgi Yildiz is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), and a research affiliate at the Global Governance Center of the Geneva Graduate Institute where she used to work for the Paths of International Law: Stability and Change in the International Legal Order (PATHS) project, funded by the European Research Council. Her research is interdisciplinary, at the intersection of International Relations and International Law. Her areas of specialization include global governance, international courts and organizations, human rights, and ocean governance.