Indri Saptraningrun is an experienced legal researcher, human rights advocate and PhD candidate at UNSW Law. Her thesis is entitled ‘From government to governance: the politics of Indonesia’s digital content policies post-2008.’ Indri is the former Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM), and a recipient of the prestigious Australian Awards Scholarship and the British Chevening Award.
Milda Istiqomah is a PhD candidate at UNSW Law. Her PhD thesis is ‘Factors contributing to terrorism sentencing decisions in Indonesia’. Milda is also a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Brawijaya University, Indonesia, teaching criminal law and criminology. She researches terrorism, deradicalisation programs and countering violent extremism, as well as sentencing patterns and trends in terrorism offences, with a specialisation in Indonesia.
Chhunvoleak is a PhD candidate at UNSW Law. Her thesis is titled ‘Case management and access to justice for commercial litigation in Cambodia’. Voleak has extensive experience in the Cambodian judicial system. From 2009 to 2014, she worked at the Kandal Provincial Court, before being promoted to the Appellate Court in 2014.
Lena Hanifah is undertaking her PhD at UNSW Law on ‘Islamic inheritance law in Indonesia: the experience of women'. She is an academic from Lambung Mangkurat University, Banjarmasin, Kalimantan, Indonesia. Lena is an expert in Islamic inheritance law, gender and family law, Islamic law and legal pluralism.
Natasha Yacoub is a PhD candidate at UNSW Law and affiliate of the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. Her thesis is titled: ‘Rethinking the history of refugee protection in Southeast Asia: law, policy and practice’. Ms Yacoub is presently on leave from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), where she has been posted since 2001 in conflict and non-conflict settings in Egypt, Sudan, Ireland, UN Headquarters New York, Myanmar, Australia and the Pacific Island states. Her research interests are regional refugee protection, refugee status determination, statelessness, protection of civilians and the protection of refugee women and girls.
Ashraful Azad is a PhD candidate at UNSW Law. His PhD focuses on the migration of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh to Malaysia and the response of states towards such migration. His research analyses the irregular migration of stateless people and connects the mobility between South Asia and Southeast Asia. Ashraful is an assistant professor in the Department of International Relations, University of Chittagong (currently on study leave). His main research interests are Rohingya refugees, irregular migration and labour migration in Bangladesh.
Katherine Chork is undertaking an Arts/Law degree at UNSW and works as a research assistant. Her legal studies include both commercial and public interest fields. In 2016, she contributed to a submission by the UNSW Law Society for the Senate inquiry into the conditions and treatment of asylum seekers and refugees at the regional processing centres in the Republic of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. She was also on the Faculty of Law Dean’s List in 2017, achieving first place in Law and Social Theory, for which she wrote a research essay applying Giorgio Agamben’s theory of the camp to Australia’s asylum seeker policy.
Natasha Naidu has a BA/LLB (Hons I) from UNSW and she is currently a research assistant at UNSW Law. Her research focuses on the rule of law in South and Southeast Asia. In 2017, Natasha worked as an intern on defence of an alleged Khmer Rouge genocidaire at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). She also has an interest in gender empowerment in South and Southeast Asia and assists Associate Professor Crouch on a project focusing on women’s empowerment and gender equality among the legal profession and the judiciary in Asia. Natasha will return to Cambodia to take up a legal consultancy working for Project Expedite Justice, an NGO litigating on behalf of victims of mass atrocities such as human trafficking.
Sai Myint Aung is a final year Juris Doctor (JD) student, a research assistant and a peer tutor at UNSW Law. He grew up in Taunggyi in eastern Myanmar. His research interests include law and development, law and society and comparative constitutional law.
Madelene Wonders is a Juris Doctor (JD) graduate from UNSW and has a Master of Human Rights and a Bachelor of Arts (Philosophy) from University of Sydney. She is a research assistant on Associate Professor Melissa Crouch’s ARC Discovery Project on Constitutional Change in Authoritarian Regimes. Other research interests include law and social theory, and human rights issues such as modern slavery and economic and social rights. Madelene is the 2019–20 Human Rights Fellow at Legal Aid NSW where she will work with the Legal Aid Human Rights Committee.