Speakers

Marlies Hesselman

Marlies Hesselman is an Assistant Professor in International Law at the Department of Transboundary Legal Studies at the University of Groningen. Marlies has broad experience in research and teaching in the area of human rights and disasters. She was a co-founder of the new Yearbook on International Disaster Law, sponsored by the International Federation of the Red Cross and is regularly invited to speak and teach in courses on international disaster law. Marlies’ particular expertise centers on the protection of international and regional human rights in the ‘full disaster cycle’, i.e. from risk reduction to preparedness, response and recovery. At the Groningen Centre of Health Law, her work also concentrates on the intersections between human rights and climate change, always with a focus on vulnerable persons.

David Patterson

David Patterson LLM, MSc is a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Law at the University of Groningen. He has over 25 years' experience in global health, law and development with the UN system, intergovernmental organizations and NGOs including the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, the International Development Law Organization (IDLO), UNAIDS, UNDP, WHO, ILO, and the (former) International HIV/AIDS Alliance. He is a founding member of the Law and Public Health Section of the European Public Health Association. His current research interest is in climate change, public health and international human rights law.

Brigit Toebes

Brigit Toebes is Professor of Health Law in a Global Context at the Department of Transboundary Legal Studies at the University of Groningen; and Scientific Director of the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health of the University of Groningen. She is a legal scholar with more than twenty-five years of experience in the international standards protecting health, with a strong emphasis on the role of human rights in health promotion and prevention. Brigit is co-founder of the Groningen Centre for Health Law and co-chair of the Global Health Law Committee of the International Law Association. Key publications include Health and Human Rights (Intersentia, 2022, 2nd ed.), and Research Handbook on Global Health Law Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018). In 2022, Brigit was awarded the Legal Specialist Award by the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law.

Natalie Abrokwa

Natalie Abrokwa, LLM, carried out her PhD research on human rights and mental health in the Faculty of Law at the University of Groningen, which was published as The Right to Mental Health (Intersentia, 2023). She works at the Groningen Centre for Health Law at the University of Groningen, where she regularly teaches in various LLM and minor programmes, and she works with the Policy, Law and Human Rights Unit (PLR) of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Use of the World Health Organization. Natalie has lectured in summer schools across Europe and presented her research at various international conferences. Previously, Natalie worked as legal consultant and researcher at the Human Rights Advocacy Centre, a renowned human rights organisation in Accra, Ghana.

Meaghan Beyer

Meaghan Beyer is an Assistant Professor in International Law at the Department of Transboundary Legal Studies at the University of Groningen. Her primary research focus is the interaction of various fields of international law as they pertain to the protection of public health. She has worked at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the World Health Organization on issues ranging from non-communicable diseases and regulating the marketing of commercial milk formula to enforced or involuntary disappearances. Currently, Meaghan is the managing editorial assistant at the Journal of Global Health Law.

Audrey Fino

Audrey Fino LL.D., MSc, is Lecturer in International Law, and a PhD Candidate on freedom of expression in international criminal, humanitarian, and human rights law at the University of Groningen. She formerly worked as legal advisor to judges at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. She was also human rights officer at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and with REDRESS. Audrey is a member of the Asser Institute’s International Humanitarian and Criminal Law Platform, the American Bar Association’s Expert Advisory Group on International Criminal Law Standards for Practitioners, the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research, and a Founding Member of the Netherlands Universities’ Law Clinicians Network. She is published, and holds a number of professional certifications.