Our People
The Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) has a dedicated staff as well as a diverse and dynamic membership, providing a home for leaders in the field of human rights law.
Leadership
Director and Professor of International Human Rights Law
Professor Nolan’s professional experience in human rights and constitutional law straddles the academic, legal, policy and practitioner fields. She is President of the Council of Europe's European Committee of Social Rights, Europe’s leading monitoring body on economic and social rights, which she joined in 2017.
She has published extensively in the areas of human rights and constitutional law, particularly in relation to children's rights and economic and social rights. Professor Nolan has acted as an expert advisor to a wide range of international and national organisations and bodies working on human rights issues, including numerous UN Special Procedures, UN treaty bodies, the Council of Europe, multiple NHRIs and NGOs.
She has held visiting positions at academic institutions in Europe, Africa, the US and Australia. She is an Academic Expert member at Doughty Street Chambers where she co-leads the Children’s Rights Group and is a member of the Doughty Streety International Steering Group.
Mando Rachovitsa
Deputy Director and Associate Professor of Human Rights
Mando’s research focuses on the intersection between human rights law and technology, including digital human rights, and human rights-centred design for cybersecurity and AI systems. Mando is also systematically writing on comparative human rights law bringing together the case law of the 3 regional courts of human rights regarding substantive and procedural issues. She publishes extensively in high-regarded journals, including International & Comparative Law Quarterly, Human Rights Law Review, Harvard Human Rights Journal, International Journal of Law & Information Technology.
Mando’s experience includes research and academic visits at the University of Rwanda (2022), Melbourne Law School, Institute for International Law and the Humanities (2019). She was also a Fellow at UC Berkeley – Centre for Technology, Society & Policy (2015-2016).
Mando’s research is policy-relevant. Since 2015, she is a participant in the research group of the Internet Engineering Task Force – the global standardisation body creating Internet standards– directly informing the work of the computer engineering community on the compatibility of the creation and implementation of Internet standards with human rights law. In the past, Mando has advised the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, and the Ministry of Interior of Qatar on cybersecurity and digital human rights issues.
Research and academic staff
Research and Projects Assistant
Zinat joined the Human Rights Law Centre as a Research and Projects Assistant in January 2022. She completed the BCL at the University of Oxford in 2021 and holds two bachelor's degrees, in Law and Psychology, from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Ghana, respectively.
Prior to joining the HRLC team, Zinat worked for Rights and Security International conducting human rights analysis of conditions in detention camps in Syria. She also worked at REDRESS where she contributed to projects on the prohibition of torture as a Fellow of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. She has broad interests in public international law, human rights and constitutional law.
zinat.jimada@nottingham.ac.uk
Tom Welch
Research and Projects Assistant
Tom joined the Human Rights Law Centre as a Research and Projects Assistant in March 2022. They hold an LLB in Law and Criminology from the University of Lincoln and an MA in Applied Human Rights from the University of York.
Prior to joining the HRLC team, Tom worked as Programme Coordinator at The Access Project and as a Teaching Associate at the University of Lincoln Law School, where they taught Public Law on the undergraduate degree programme. They maintain a broad interest in human rights law, international public law, and penological theory.
tom.welch@nottingham.ac.uk