Taking Stock of Trafficking: A Global Analysis of Anti-trafficking in Challenging Times

Biographies of Speakers

Balsamo, Antonio

Antonio Balsamo, an Italian Magistrate, has been serving as International Judge of the Specialist Chamber of the Constitutional Court of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague since 2017, as Legal Advisor of the Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations in Vienna since 2018, and as Professor of Criminal law at the Faculty of Law of the LUMSA in Palermo since 2016. Until 2018 he served as a Deputy Prosecutor General of the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation, and as the President of the Court of Assize of Caltanissetta, presiding over the new trials concerning the “Capaci Massacre” and the “via D’Amelio Massacre”, in which the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were killed.  Prior to this, Antonio Balsamo was Judge seconded to the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation and Judge of the Court of Palermo, where he dealt with several relevant criminal cases, including the “Giulio Andreotti trial”. He also served as Presiding Member of the Human Rights Review Panel of EULEX in Kosovo.

Ferrara, Calogero

Calogero Ferrara has been working as European Delegated Prosecutor at EPPO since 15 May 2021. He worked as Deputy Prosecutor at the Office of the Prosecutor in Palermo from 2000 to 2021 being a member of the Antimafia District Department, of the  Specialized Group for smuggling and trafficking of human beings, of the Special Department for terrorism, and of the Group for the judicial seizure and confiscation of criminal assets. During his service he get used in dealing with preliminary investigations and prosecutions on organized crime (i.e. "Mafia-cases"), smuggling and trafficking of human beings, terrorism, drug trafficking, financial and economic crimes and environmental criminality, also representing the State in the cases before Trial Chambers and Jurors' Courts. He did develop strong analytical and organizational skills in leading complex criminal investigations carried out by different Law Enforcement Agencies and in transnational crimes.

He also worked as Trial Attorney for two years (from 2007 to 2009) at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, United Nation organ based in The Hague where he performed mainly in the case Prosecutor v. Seselj, an ultranationalist political leader charged of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide and in the case Prosecutor v. Karadzic, the Serbian-Bosnian leader indicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. Moreover he has a long experience as speaker in training courses and seminars for judges, prosecutors, jurists and Law Enforcement officers in Italy and abroad, appointed by different National and International Institutions (Italian Superior Council for Magistrates, European Union, European Training Judicial Network, International Organization for Migrants, University of Coventry, University of Palermo, University of Cambridge, Palermo Bar Association, Eupol, OSCE, Eurojust, Chinese National School for Prosecutors, Council of Europe, European Commission, CEPOL, and others). Finally, he has been repeatedly appointed as legal expert in several projects concerning international cooperation and exchange of information between judicial authorities and Law Enforcement Agencies including his designation by US State Department for participating to the International Visitor Leadership Program on the topics “Combating trafficking in persons: a multiregional Project” held in numerous States from February to March 2018

Gatta, Gianluca

Gianluca Gatta, PhD, cultural anthropologist. In 2008 he took a PhD in “anthropological sciences and analysis of cultural changes” at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”, where his research, which was based on a fieldwork carried out in Lampedusa in 2005, focused on the treatment of migrant bodies on their arrival. Subsequently, he alternated teaching and researching at the Universities of Naples “L’Orientale”, Calabria and Naples “Federico II” and other public and private institutions, with engaging in the activities of the Archive of migrant memories association (AMM), of which he is co-founder. More recently (2018-2021) he worked as Project Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Intercultural Studies of Kobe University (Japan), where he taught Aspects of EU Culture and Society, Social Dynamics and Intercultural communication.

Currently, he is principal investigator (Archive of migrant memories research unit) for the Horizon 2020 project ITHACA. Interconnecting Histories and Archives for Migrant Agency: Entangled Narratives Across Europe and the Mediterranean Region (G.A. 101004539). His role in the project is to carry out fieldwork in Italy and Tunisia and coordinate the group of partners involved in the construction of databases on present migration narratives. His work focuses on migration, body, power; production of illegality, third places and sociability; memory, self-narration and migrant subjectivity. Among his publications are: “Migration, deportability, memory: the power of silences and self-narration”, in La Ricerca Folklorica, forthcoming; “‘Half devil and half child’: an ethnographic perspective on the treatment of migrants on their arrival in Lampedusa”, in L. Odasso and G. Proglio (a cura di), Border Lampedusa - Subjectivity, Visibility and Memory in Stories of Sea and Land, London: Palgrave, 2017; “Stranded traces: Migrants’ objects, self-narration and ideology in a failed museum project”, in Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, 7(2), 2016.

McAdam, Marika

McGeer, Caitlyn

Caitlyn McGeer’s doctoral research focuses on analyzing policing responses to the smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons. She is conducting fieldwork in the UK, Nigeria, and Vietnam. Caitlyn is completing her DPhil as a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Oxford. She is supervised by Professor Ian Loader. Beyond academia, Caitlyn's professional background centers on capacity building premised on securing welfare and rights protections. She is a strategic development and impact assessment specialist. Caitlyn has worked extensively on both local, national, and transnational-level projects, including ones in the UK, Canada, Guatemala, Ghana, and Ecuador. She has held senior management and front-line roles for a variety of non-governmental, governmental, and United Nations entities. Caitlyn currently leads on developing and implementing public sector monitoring and evaluation frameworks for a UK-based research company.

Milivojevic, Sanja

Dr Sanja Milivojevic is a Research Fellow in Criminology at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia and Associate Director of Border Criminologies at Oxford University. Sanja holds LL.B and LL.M from Belgrade University’s Law School, Serbia, and a PhD from Monash University, Australia. Her research interests are borders and mobility, human trafficking, security technologies and surveillance, gender and victimisation, and international criminal justice and human rights. Sanja is a recipient of Australian and international research grants, and was NSW representative at the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology’s Committee of Management. She was a visiting scholar at Oxford University, University of Oslo, University of Belgrade and University of Zagreb, as well as a Public Interest Law Fellow at Columbia University’s Law School in New York. Sanja has published five books and over 50 journal articles and book chapters in English and Serbian. Her latest book Crime and Punishment in the Future Internet: Digital Frontier Technologies and Criminology in the 21st Century is published by Routledge (2021).

Musto, Jennifer

Jennifer Musto is an Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. Between 2017-2020, she was a member of the SEXHUM research team in the US, a project that examined the links between migration, sex work and trafficking. An interdisciplinary scholar, her research utilizes qualitative methods and a feminist approach informed by intersectional and social science theories to explore sex trafficking, sex work and carceral responses to violence, exploitation, and punishment in the United States. An animating question that shapes her research on these topics is how laws, technologies, and collaborative modes of governance are leveraged to respond and to what effect. Her book, Control and Protect: Collaboration, Carceral Protection, and Domestic Sex Trafficking in the United States (University of California Press, 2016) examines state, non-state, and technology responses to domestic sex trafficking situations in the US. She has lectured and published widely on these topics and her research has contributed to empirical research on the impact of anti-trafficking efforts, including the recently published article,  Anti-Trafficking in the Time of FOSTA/SESTA.

Oftadeh, Chervine

Mr. Chervine OFTADEH joined the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Nigeria in 2018. He coordinates UNODC programme against trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants in the country. Before joining UNODC, Mr. OFTADEH worked at the Embassy of France in Benin (2016-2018) and with several non-governmental organizations in Paris and The Hague on issues related to human rights, the rule of law and international justice. He holds a Masters’ Degree in Law from Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris)

Omaiboje, Morenike

Currently Board member and Director of Programs, Women’s Consortium of Nigeria (WOCON), a non-government, non-for-profit, non-partisan and non-religious organization committed to the enforcement of women and children’s rights and the attainment of equality development and peace. A Gender Advocate, Human Resources expert and International Speaker, Morenike manages the day-to-day operations of WOCON, leading efforts to forge partnerships with local NGOs and international partners for the attainment of equal status of women in all aspects of social, economic and political development within the communities and the nation at large especially in the anti-trafficking space. 

In managing programs in Nigeria, Morenike leverages her years of experience to ensure the objectives of large donor-sponsored projects involving grassroots outreach, behavioural change, community mobilization, awareness creation, advocacy and capacity building are successfully delivered.  WOCON has primarily focused on issues of gender-based violence particularly Human Trafficking, promoting good governance and ensuring more women's political participation. WOCON has taken its awareness campaigns to the endemic States where trafficked victims within and cross borders are sourced, transited and/or received.

Pattanaik, Bandana

Bandana Pattanaik is currently the International Coordinator of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW). GAATW is a  feminist alliance that focuses on migration, labour and human trafficking from a human rights and gender-responsive perspective. Her work with the International Secretariat of GAATW. Since 1999, Bandana’s work with the International Secretariat of GAATW has included leading its Research, Training and Publication Programme and working with GAATW's many partners, especially the small, self-organised groups of sex workers, domestic workers, garment sector workers, women farmers, home-based workers and survivors of human trafficking.

Sadoh, Lugard Ibhafidon 

Segrave, Marie

Marie Segrave is an Associate Professor of Criminology at Monash University, Australia. Her work focuses on human trafficking and slavery-like practices, irregular & temporary migrant labour exploitation, and the intersections of temporary migration and family violence. Marie’s work interrogates the interconnections between migration, labour and border regulation, exploitation and abuse, aiming to raise awareness about these complex intersections, and to help create more effective policies that have better outcomes for individuals and for society in general. She leads the Trafficking and Slavery Research Group (TSRG), a partnership with Monash University Business School, and works with the The Border Crossing Observatory. Both sit within the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre, where Marie is a Deputy Director. Marie is also a researcher with the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre. Marie has worked with state governments, policing agencies and international organisations such as the International Labour Organization and UN Women.

Tan, Siru

Dr Siru Tan is a research officer and lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. Her research is interdisciplinary and focuses on gendered labour, migration, regulation, human security, exploitation and criminalisation. Most recently, she has published on counter-trafficking responses in Southeast Asia, looking specifically at the impacts and effectiveness of legal and protection mechanisms. Siru’s current research is focused on the experiences of security and safe work in the everyday home-workplace for female migrant domestic workers.