Committee

The OTJR Executive Committee for the year 2018/19

Ivo Gruev, Convenor

Ivo is a DPhil student and a Grand Union (ESRC) scholar at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. His research focuses on the rights-protecting function of judicial review in post-authoritarian societies. His project looks at how newly created constitutional courts protect human rights, focusing on individual access to constitutional adjudication in Bulgaria. Ivo holds a law degree from the Humboldt University of Berlin, as well as a Magister Juris, MSt and a Diploma in Legal Studies from Oxford with specialisations in international criminal law, comparative equality law, European Union law, public international law, legal sociology, and jurisprudence.
Ivo has clerked for the International Criminal Court and has worked for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in New York, as a legal consultant to the German Parliament and as a research assistant at the Humboldt University.

Sameer Rashid Bhat, Student Chairperson

Sameer is a 2018 Rhodes Scholar from Kashmir (India) reading for the Master of Public Policy (MPP) at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He graduated with a B.A. LL.B. (Hons.). from Gujarat National Law University (GNLU) India in 2018. His work experience ranges from internships with corporate law firms to research assistantships with government bodies in India. 
Hailing from Kashmir, the cause of human rights has been Sameer’s strongest force of motivation since childhood. At GNLU, Sameer was instrumental in founding the Centre for Law and Society, a community legal aid clinic and focal point for socio-legal research. He aspires to engage in advocacy, policy making and academics in human rights and constitutional law.

Katherine Shen, Administrative Manager

Katherine is a second year MPhil student in political theory. She's from Sydney, Australia but went to the University of Chicago for her undergraduate degree. Her research interest is in the area of international public law and global justice. She plans to write her MPhil thesis on normative justifications for inter-state coercion. 

Gayathree Devi K. T., External Relations Officer

Gayathree is a graduate student at the University of Oxford reading for Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) on the Ratanshaw Bomanji Zaiwalla Scholarship. She holds a law degree from Gujarat National Law University (GNLU), India. Her interest in transitional justice stems from her experience in international law through her participation in moots such as Jessup and research assistantships such as the one at the International Law Commission where she worked on jus cogens norms, immunity of State officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction and State succession.

Rebecca Bunyan, Web Manager

Rebecca is a second year law (Law with German Law) student at Jesus College, University of Oxford. Her curiosity about transitional justice stems from her visits to the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and subsequent writing on transitional justice during the International Baccalaureate. Beyond OTJR, Rebecca enjoys her role as a college and university level tennis captain.

Tsvetelina van Benthem, Chief Editor

Tsvetelina is an MPhil student at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. Her research, supervised by Prof. Dapo Akande, focusses on questions of State responsibility and individual criminal responsibility for the unpredictable actions of military AI applications. Her research is funded by the James Upcher Memorial Scholarship, of which she is the first holder. Prior to the MPhil, Tsvetelina obtained an MJur from the University of Oxford (2017) and an LLM from Sofia University (2016). Tsvetelina is a research affiliate at the Oxford Centre for Technology and Global Affairs.

Dr Annelen Micus, Editor 

Annelen is the Head of Programmes of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. Previously, Annelen worked for two years with a Colombian human rights organisation, the Lawyers’ Collective “José Alvear Restrepo” (CAJAR), as international advisor on transitional justice as well as business and human rights issues. Before going to Colombia, she was a Legal Advisor at the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), focusing on strategic litigation projects aiming for accountability for international crimes committed in Latin America by state and non-state actors.
Annelen studied law at the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg and the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires. In her doctoral thesis, published in 2015 by Brill, she analysed the importance of the Inter-American Human Rights System for transitional justice processes in Latin America, with a focus on Argentina, Chile and Peru.

Alexander Wentker, Editor 

Alexander is currently a research fellow in international law at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (MPIL) in Heidelberg. Before joining MPIL, Alexander clerked at the Supreme Court of Namibia and interned, inter alia, with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in New York. He completed the MJur at Oxford in 2017, following degrees in law at Humboldt-Universität and Paris II – Panthéon-Assas.

Chae Yun Bae, Editor 

Chae is currently reading for MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice with a focus in transitional justice and democratic state-building in East Asia. He obtained a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his undergraduate studies, he has researched possible policy implications for transitional justice in the Korean Peninsula based on empirical evidence drawn from transitional justice in Eastern Europe.

Jamie Shenk, Editor 

Jamie is a DPhil student in the Department of Sociology and a Clarendon Scholar at the University of Oxford. Her research explores how communities protest against large-scale mining projects in the context of Colombia’s armed conflict and transition to post-conflict, and she is supervised by Professor Leigh Payne.
Before beginning her doctoral studies, she worked as an intern in the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington D.C., where she monitored the Colombian Peace Process and U.S.-Latin American relations, and at Synergy Global Consulting, an Oxford-based firm specializing in social and human rights assessments for companies in the extractives sector. Jamie received her MSc in Latin American Studies from the University of Oxford and holds a BA in History (summa cum laude) from Princeton University.

Sneha Yanappa, Editor 

Sneha is a BCL student at the University of Oxford. She finished her undergraduate degree from Symbiosis Law School, Pune. She is a recipient of the Jesus Law Faculty Scholarship at the University of Oxford. She is also a JN Tata Scholar and K.C Mahindra Scholar. She was adjudged Runners-up in the National Rounds of Philip C Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, 2017 where she was also awarded Best Speaker. Her team was one among the four teams that represented India in the world rounds of the competition. She has also been an advisor to various journals including Indian Constitutional Law Review. Her interests include human rights law, refugee law and international law and armed conflict. 

Jessica Anania, Editor 

Jessica is completing a DPhil in Sociology at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Her research examines how transitional justice mechanisms have addressed wartime gender-based violence, and the subsequent implications for rates of post-conflict gender-based violence. Before Oxford, Jessica tutored in the University of Cape Town’s African Gender Institute and Film & Media department, as well as worked as a researcher and monitor in the South African Parliament.
In 2016, Jessica earned an MPhil in Conflict Resolution from Trinity College Dublin. While completing her master’s, she worked at the WAVE Trauma Center in Northern Ireland, researching and documenting narratives of Troubles-era murders. Jessica also earned undergraduate degrees (summa cum laude) in International Journalism, Political Science, and Psychology from the University of Missouri.

Armi Beatriz E. Bayot, General Member 

Armi is a DPhil in Law student (PRS) at the University of Oxford, where she is undertaking research on the legal status of intrastate peace agreements under international law. She worked as a lawyer at the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) of the Philippines, first serving as Division Chief of the Center for Crisis, Conflict, and Humanitarian Protection of the CHR, and later as the Deputy Coordinator of the National Task Force Against Extrajudicial Killings and as the founding Head of the CHR’s Analysis Unit.
Prior to her work at the CHR, she was an Associate Solicitor at the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) of the Republic of the Philippines. She was legal counsel to the government peace panel in talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) from 2010-2016 and was deeply involved in the drafting and negotiation of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB). She obtained a Master of Laws Degree in Transnational Law (with Distinction) from King’s College London in 2015 under a Chevening Scholarship from the Government of the United Kingdom, and she obtained a Juris Doctor Degree from the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Law in 2009.