CIHR Visiting Scholars
Current Visiting Scholars
Jelena Pia-Comella
Ms. Pia-Comella is an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice; an adjunct assistant professor at Hofstra University, as well as a faculty member of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). She is also consulting with the Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes (GAAMAC). Starting her career in 1996 as a diplomat representing Andorra at the United Nations, Canada, and the United States, she was part of the team that created the foreign policy of her country. She served in different capacities for civil society organizations as well as an adviser on gender, peace, and security issues for the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. Ms. Pia-Comella is the President of the Board of Directors of SOS-Torture/Burundi and board member and treasurer of Global Justice Center.
Dr. Brian Dooley
Dr. Brian Dooley is Senior Advisor for US NGO Human Rights First and for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. His recent work includes research into the Northern Ireland conflict, and reporting on human rights issues from the war in Ukraine and protests in Hong Kong. He is the author of several books on US politics and civil rights.
Dr. Nerve V. Macaspac
Nerve V. Macaspac, PhD is a political geographer with a regional focus in Southeast Asia. His current interdisciplinary and ethnographic research focuses on the phenomenon of community-led peace zones, popularly known as demilitarized geographic areas, in armed conflicts. He uses the term “insurgent peace” to refer to the daily work of civilian communities in producing spaces for peace during active violence and war. Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Social Science Research Council (SSRC), International Peace Research Association (IPRA), and the American Association of Geographers (AAG), Dr. Macaspac’s research contributes to our understanding of the spatialities of peace beyond the dominant definition of peace as "absence of violence." Currently, he is a Co-Investigator of “Creating Safer Spaces: Strengthening Civilian Protection Amidst Violent Conflict,” a 4-year international and interdisciplinary research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). This research aims to strengthen the field of unarmed civilian protection (UCP) and community self-protection research to create safer space for more communities amid violent conflict. At CSI, Dr. Macaspac teaches Urban Geography, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Introduction to Geography. He also runs GeospatialCSI, a curricular initiative that aims to build a space and community among students to produce creative, collaborative, and public-facing Urban Geography-centered inquiry and research. He received his PhD in Geography at UCLA and a Masters in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley. Contact info: nerve.macaspac@csi.cuny.edu
Dr. Carsten Momsen
Carsten Momsen, PhD heads the Department of Comparative Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Law, White Collar/ Economic and Environmental Criminal Law at Freie Universität Berlin. He is an ongoing visiting scholar at the Center for International Human Rights at John Jay College and holds a position as scholar in residence at New York Law School. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Toronto in 2016 and 2019. Dr. Momsen is a Founding Member and PI of the Berlin based “Einstein Center Digital Future” and a permanent member of the Program Committee of the international conference series "SADFE - Systematic Approaches on Digital Forensic Engineering".
In addition to various compliance issues, his projects are focused on corporate responsibility for human rights violations. His research also includes data protection issues, digital evidence, digital forensics, and the discriminatory effects of predictive policing based on the use of 'Big Data' and 'AI' and the subsequent impact on human rights.
He is the Co-Founder and Director of the first nationwide German Wrongful-Conviction Project (https://www.wiederaufnahme.com/). Contact info: carsten.momsen@fu-berlin.de
Marizen Santos
Marizen Santos is a human rights advocate, with over 15 years of experience working on human rights advocacy in the Philippines, in South East Asia and internationally, and with focus on international human rights mechanisms and collaboration with civil society, governments, national human rights institutions and the UN system. Marizen currently is the Chief of the International Obligations Monitoring Division under the Policy Advisory Office of the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines, the independent national human rights institution in the Philippines.
Marizen has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology from the University of the Philippines, Diliman, an M.A. in Urban Affairs from Queens College, City University of New York and a Master’s degree in International Affairs from The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. In the summer of 2022, she finished her Advanced Certificate on Transnational Organized Crime Studies at John Jay College, CUNY.
Previous Visiting Scholars
Spring 2023/Fall 2023
Dr. Brian Dooley
Dr. Brian Dooley is Senior Advisor for US NGO Human Rights First and for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. His recent work includes research into the Northern Ireland conflict, and reporting on human rights issues from the war in Ukraine and protests in Hong Kong. He is the author of several books on US politics and civil rights.
is Senior Advisor for US NGO Human Rights First and for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. His recent work includes research into the Northern Ireland conflict, and reporting on human rights issues from the war in Ukraine and protests in Hong Kong. He is the author of several books on US politics and civil rights.
Fall 2019/Spring 2020
Dr. Marie-Michelle Strah, Adjunct Professor, International Crime and Justice Program, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York (CUNY)
Dr. Strah is a US Army veteran and holds a PhD from Cornell University as well as an MA and Advanced Certificate in Transnational Organized Crime from John Jay College. She has over 20 years’ experience in cybersecurity, cybercrime, digital transformation, data security, governance and compliance for public and private sector entities worldwide. After her military service, Dr. Strah held global leadership roles specializing in highly regulated industries with General Dynamics, Microsoft and NBCUniversal and has provided executive and cabinet level advisory services on cybersecurity and cybercrime prevention. She is a recognized expert in the field of disinformation and the terror-crime nexus. Her current research covers disinformation and financial fraud, cyber-enabled crimes, and the ethics of artificial intelligence in international crime and justice.In 2021, Dr. Strah won a Digital Innovation Faculty Award for novel coursework on Disinformation and Cybercrime, emphasizing the role of international human rights law in computational propaganda and political violence. In addition, she was named John Jay College's Online Faculty Fellow for 2021-2022 working with faculty across the college to drive innovative learning opportunities and accessibility for student retention, engagement and success. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @cyberslate. Contact info: mstrah@jjay.cuny.edu
Fall 2016/Spring 2017
Shawna Brandle
Shawna M. Brandle is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kingsborough Community College in the City University of New York. She holds a Ph.D. in international relations from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, an MA from Brooklyn College, and a BSFS from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Professor Brandle is the author of Television News Coverage of Human Rights in the US and UK: The Violations Will Not Be Televised (Routledge 2015) and is currently at work on a new project with Dr. Janet Reilly about news coverage of refugees in the US, UK, and Australia. Professor Brandle is also interested in educational technology and is active in the creation and promotion of open educational resources in higher education. Feel free to reach out to her on Twitter at @ProfBrandle.
Fall 2016
Teresa Rodriguez Montanes
Teresa Rodríguez Montañés is currently Full Professor of Criminal Law and Criminology at the Alcalá University Law School (Madrid, Spain) and former Legal Adviser at the Spanish Constitutional Court. She is an expert in Criminal Law and Human Rights. She is the author of four books and more than forty articles and papers. During her stay at the Center for International Human Rights, she will be researching on Human Trafficking, focusing on the accountability of business engaged in the trafficking for labor exploitation.
Spring 2015
Dorota Gierycz
Dr. Dorota Gierycz holds an MA in law (international public law) and a Ph.D. in political science (international relations) from Warsaw University, Poland. She further studied at the Academy on International Law (The Hague), and Georgetown and Columbia Universities in the USA. During her UN career (1981-2007), she worked at Headquarters both at Vienna and New York, in various fields ranging from gender equality, development, IDPs/refugees and human rights to peacekeeping, peace-making and conflict resolution. She was the first Head of the Gender Analysis Section, established after the 4th UN World Conference on Women (Beijing 1995) and in this capacity she pioneered the work on Women and Peace in the UN Secretariat, building basis for the future resolution 1325. Her other assignments included management, coordination of police reform and police-civilian work (as Acting Head of Civil Affairs, UNMIBH, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2001-2003); work on the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict as a political analyst, adviser and negotiator, also dealing with assistance to internally displaced persons (as Senior Political Adviser to the SRSG, UNOMIG, Sukhumi and Tbilisi, 2003-2004), and protection and promotion of human rights (as Director of the Human Rights and Protection Section, UNMIL, and Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Liberia, 2004-2007). She also gained extensive experience of interagency cooperation and work with UN country teams (including in Georgia, Liberia) and gender equality and mainstreaming. Parallel to her work at the United Nations, Dr. Gierycz continued her academic involvement, inter alia, as a convener of the European Peace University (Schlaining, Austria); lecturer at the University of Vienna, Columbia University (New York), Yale Law School and Watson Institute of International Affairs at Brown University (USA), and the University of Ghana. Since her departure from the UN in the autumn of 2007, she has been working as a senior research fellow at the European Inter-University Center for Human Rights and Democratization (EIUC, Venice) and Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI, Oslo) on the issues of Transitional Justice and Responsibility to Protect. She is currently associated with the Ludwig Boltzman Institute of Human Rights, University of Vienna, Webster University (Vienna) and European Peace University (EPU), Schlaining, Austria. Dr. Gierycz authored numerous publications on the responsibility to protect (R2P), United Nations and gender equality. She is also the author of the book The Mysteries of the Caucasus, which tells the stories of people in Abkhazia and Georgia proper. Her research at the John Jay College will focus on the Rule of Law in the context of UN peace-keeping which is recognized as the weakest point in the ongoing efforts towards post-conflict stability and peace-building.