Acceptance of International Criminal Justice

Research fellows 2015

Dafina Buçaj holds a Masters degree in International Law (LL.M.) from the University of Cambridge. She has previously obtained a Law degree and a Bachelors Degree in Journalism from the University of Prishtina in Kosovo. She is currently working as an assistant lecturer for International Law at the Law Faculty of the University of Prishtina as well as a legal adviser at the Ministry of Justice in Kosovo. Since 2002, she has acted as the official coach of the University of Prishtina Vis Team. She has been involved with civil society, as a researcher and project manager (2010-2011) and as a legal counsellor (2011) at the Lawyers Association Norma. As one of her extracurricular activities she has represented the University of Prishtina in various international conferences and competitions.

Joseph Yav Katshung is a Congolese legal practitioner, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Lubumbashi in DRC and a consultant. He holds a Doctorate of Law, Masters in Law and LLB from the University of Lubumbashi in DRC, a Masters degree in Human Rights and Democratization in Africa (University of Pretoria, South Africa), a Diploma in Transitional Justice (ICTJ-IJR, Cape Town), an Advanced Certificate in International Law (PGGA / Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria), an Advanced Certificate in Peace-Building in war torn societies (ASPR, Austria), Certificates on Advanced and UN Basic Security in the Field – Staff Safety, Health, and Welfare.

Ana Ljubojevic is a Newfelpro postdoctoral fellow at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Zagreb, Croatia. She obtained her PhD in Political Systems and Institutional Change at the Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy. Her thesis examined the impact of war crime trials on historical narratives in Croatia and Serbia. She is currently conducting research on "International Criminal Tribunals as actors of domestic change" at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw, Poland and is conducting research as part of the "Framing the nation" project at the University of Rijeka, Croatia. 

Goeffrey Lugano is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick (United Kingdom) where he is conducting his research project entitled “The Politicization of International Criminal Intervention and the Impasse of Transitional Justice: A Comparative Study of Uganda and Kenya”. The study is based on the emerging criticism that the International Criminal Court (ICC) continuously faces in Africa, as well as the political impacts of its interventions in situations such as Uganda and Kenya. Lugano is interested to further assess the implications for peace processes in the region. Lugano holds an M.Sc. in Governance and Development from the Institute of Development Policy and Management (IOB), University of Antwerp, Belgium. He has furthermore been engaged in various research activities with non-governmental organizations in Kenya.

Benson Chinedu Olugbuo holds a Ph.D. in Public Law from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is a Solicitor and Advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria with more that fifteen years of post-call experience in international criminal justice. He was a Fox International Fellow and Visiting Assistant in Research at the Whitney and Betty MacMil-lan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University (2011-2012), and the Anglophone Africa Coordinator for the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (2004-2009). He has published widely on justice sector reform, international criminal justice and human rights in Africa. He is currently the Executive Director of CLEEN Foundation, Abuja- Nigeria.

Valentyna Polunina is a Doctoral Candidate at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context’, University of Heidelberg, Germany, where she is working on her Ph.D. project on Soviet war crimes trials policy in the Far East after World War II. She holds a Magister in International Relations from Kiev State University, Ukraine, and a Master in Peace and Conflict Studies from Marburg University, Germany, where she used to work as a student research assistant at the International Centre for the Research and Documentation of War Crimes Trials. She is the author of publications and articles.

Kimsan Soy holds a Master of Law with a special focus on public international law from the Transnational Law and Business University, South Korea, as well as a Master in Human Rights and Democratization from the University of Sydney, Australia. Kimsan Soy joined the Centre for the Study of Humanitarian Law in Phnom Penh as one of its researchers in August 2014. His major areas of research include human rights, with a particular focus on fair trial rights, judicial independence, as well as business and human rights. Alongside his research role, Kimsan Soy is a lecturer at the Royal University of Law and Economics in Cambodia where he teaches a course on Fair Trial Rights and Human Rights. Before joining the Center of Humanitarian Law, he also worked at the Asian International Justice Initiative as a trial observer for two years on Case 002/01 of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. 

Marina Žagar is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She holds a Master in Law from the University of Rijeka, Croatia, with a thesis on „The Establishment, Jurisdiction and Completion of the ICTY“. After her MA she worked as a pro-bono consultant on the Legal Tools Database Project of the International Criminal Court where her primary tasks were registering the cases of Croatian War Crime Courts. At the moment she is an exchange student at the Law Faculty of the  University of Augsburg, Germany. The focus of her PhD thesis is on the prosecution of mass atrocity crimes and the responsibility to protect. Since October 2015, she has been working in the Prosecution Division at the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC. She is a member of  the International Law Association (Slovene branch) and Croatian United Nations Association.