The Bonavero Institute announces appointment of Dr Eliza Bechtold as Programmes Manager

The Bonavero Institute is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Eliza Bechtold as its Programmes Manager. 

Dr Bechtold is currently a Lecturer in Public Law at the University of Aberdeen, a post she has held since October 2021, where she is also the interim co-director of the Centre for Constitutional and Public International Law. In her doctoral research at the University of Durham, Dr Bechtold undertook a comparative examination of the regulation of extreme speech in the digital age. She also holds an LLM from the London School of Economics and Political Science (2015) and a JD from UC Law San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings) (2004). Dr Bechtold has more than a decade’s experience as a litigating practitioner in the United States, both in private law firms and as Legal Director of the New Mexico affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Professor Kate O’Regan, Director of the Bonavero Institute said;

“Dr Bechtold combines scholarly excellence in a field of special interest to the Bonavero Institute, freedom of expression, with considerable experience as a legal practitioner, including in the field of civil rights law. This combined experience provides an excellent foundation for her to lead programmes at the Bonavero Institute, which seek to draw practitioners and scholars in the broad field of human rights into conversation, and to enrich understanding of human rights amongst students in Oxford and further afield and also amongst the general public.  Key Bonavero programmes include the Bonavero Institute/George Washington University Summer School in International Human Rights Law, the global Monroe E Price Media Law Moot Court competition, legal aid clinics at HMP Huntercombe and women’s prisons run in collaboration with the Centre for Criminology and Turpin & Miller LLP, and the Bonavero student fellowship programme which places Oxford students as interns at leading human rights organisations in the UK and beyond. We very much look forward to welcoming Eliza to Oxford at the beginning of Hilary Term 2025.”

Dr Bechtold said;

“I am thrilled to be joining the Bonavero Institute and look forward to contributing to its important work in fostering collaboration between human rights practitioners and scholars from all over the world and providing students with opportunities to meaningfully engage with human rights law during their time at Oxford”.