STARLIGHT: Unlocking the power of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights

Kersty McCourt is a human rights lawyer and advocate with over eighteen years’ experience leading human rights, justice reform and civil society programs. For the last 12 years she led advocacy programmes at Front Line Defenders, Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Justice Initiative and from 2017-2020 was the co-chair of the Human Rights and Democracy Network in Brussels. 

From 2005, Kersty was Head of Mission for the Danish Institute for Human Rights in Rwanda and subsequently developed access to justice programmes for DIHR across several countries. She qualified as a solicitor with Taylor Wessing Solicitors in London and is a member of the Law Society of England and Wales. 

She has a degree in Biological Sciences and a Master’s in Human Rights and Democratization. She has designed and taught master’s courses on human rights defenders at the Global Campus for Human Rights in Venice, Yerevan, and Beirut. 

Márta Pardavi is co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. A lawyer by training, she has recently been focusing on the threats to the rule of law and civil society space in Hungary and in the EU. She also co-leads the Recharging Advocacy for Rights in Europe (RARE) programme, which equips human rights defenders to build stronger organisations and alliances for joint action on civic space and rule of law in the EU.

Márta serves on the boards of PILnet, International Partnership for Human Rights and Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. She has been awarded the 2018 William D. Zabel Human Rights Award from Human Rights First, the Civil Rights Defenders of the Year 2019 award from Civil Rights Defender’s, and was chosen to be a member of POLITICO28 Class of 2019. In 2020/2021, she was a Policy Leader Fellow at the European University Institute’s School of Transnational Governance in Florence, Italy.

Mark Dawson is Professor of European Law and Governance at the Hertie School and the Co-Director of the Jacques Delors Centre. His research focuses on EU law and particularly on how EU law affects and is affected by European politics and policymaking. He recently co-wrote a textbook on this topic with Cambridge University Press (here) and has published work in journals in law and political science (such as the Modern Law Review, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the Common Market Law Review and the Journal of European Public Policy). His work has been cited by leading courts such as the European Court of Justice (here) and German Constitutional Court (here). Dawson was previously an Assistant Professor at Maastricht University and has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Wisconsin, the EUI, the University of Sydney and Harvard Kennedy School. He holds degrees from the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen as well as a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence from 2009. Dawson is currently the co-editor of the series Cambridge Studies in European Law and Policy (here) and a member of the Editorial Board of the European Law Review. From 2017-2022, he was the Principal Investigator of LEVIATHAN, an ERC project exploring the legal and political accountability structure of EU economic governance. 

John Morijn is Professor of Law and Politics in International Relations at the University of Groningen and the Chair of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency’s Scientific Committee. His areas of expertise are European human rights law and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, as well as international human rights law, and human rights protection in the Netherlands. John is also Henrik Enderlein Fellow at the Hertie School.

András Léderer joined the Hungarian Helsinki Committee in 2015 and is its senior advocacy officer. He earned a BSc in Terrorism, conflict, and security at Aberystwyth and an MSc in Violence, conflict, and development at SOAS in London. András is mostly involved in HHC’s advocacy works on international protection and the rule of law. In addition, he is also trainer and teaches a course that he co-developed on the Sociology of terrorism, for BA and MA students at ELTE, Hungary’s largest university. András is an Obama Foundation Leaders Europe fellow. 

László Detre graduated from Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Law (Budapest) in 2010. He holds an LLM in European Human Rights (Eötvös Loránd University, 2018). Between 2010 and 2020, he worked at the Constitutional Court of Hungary firstly as a law clerk then, as a legal advisor. In 2017, he was appointed as the liaison officer from the court to the Venice Commission. In 2020, he started to work as the academic advisor of the re:constitution programme at Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin). He joined the Hungarian Helsinki Committee in 2023 as a legal officer, working in the HHC's Rule of Law Programme. Photo by Joanna Scheffel.

Ingrid Bellander Todino is Head of the Fundamental Rights Policy unit of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers (DG JUST). Previously, she was member of the cabinet of Equality Commissioner Helena Dalli, and has held Deputy Head of Unit and team leader roles in the areas of gender equality, procedural criminal law and victims’ rights in DG JUST, as well as programme manager for the Daphne Programme on combatting violence against children, young people and women. Before joining the European Commission in 2004, Ingrid worked as legal counsel for the International Fund for Agricultural Development, a UN agency based in Rome, and has also practiced EU law in an international law firm in Brussels. She holds a law degree from Uppsala University in Sweden and a post-graduate Master’s degree in EU law from the Institute of European Studies at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium.

Kiran Chaudhuri was raised between India and Italy, and is a human rights lawyer enrolled in the Rome Bar Association. She graduated from Trento University, Italy, after carrying out a six-months dissertation research project at Tokyo Hitotsubashi University and the United Nations Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (UNAFEI). From 2017 to 2018 she worked for the Investigation Division of The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, The Netherlands, developing a strong knowledge of war crimes and crimes against humanity. As a trainee lawyer in Bologna, from 2018 to 2020, she specialized in criminal law and immigration law. After passing the bar exam, she served as a Legal Specialist for the Italian Red Cross, providing legal support in the context of the Mediterranean migration route. In May 2022 she joined the Dalex law firm in Rome, further handling criminal and immigration cases. She also worked on a pro-bono basis with the NGO Tempi Moderni in the protection of South Asian migrant workers victims of mafia-type labour exploitation, and with Gay Center Rome assisting LGBT+ migrants. She is an active member of Antigone, an Italian organization monitoring detention conditions and promoting rule of law. She is currently engaged as Chief Legal Officer with the European Legal Support Center (ELSC), assisting advocates for Palestinian rights. 

Zuzanna Nowicka is a legal professional based in Warsaw, Poland, working at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. As a member of the freedom of speech program, she participates in the in the preparation and execution of strategic litigation in said area, both before domestic court and the European Court of Human Rights. Concurrently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. at Jagiellonian University, focusing on constructing a theoretical model for effective strategic litigation within the realm of human rights. Academically she also deals with the subject of logic and legal theory, a subject she has taught at the University of Warsaw.