Staff Profiles

David Cohen - Director, Asian International Justice Initiative

Professor David Cohen is Professor of Rhetoric and Classics at UC Berkeley, and the former Professor of Law and Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He has monitored and reported extensively on the East Timor trials before the Special Panels for Serious Crimes in Dili and the Ad Hoc Human Rights Court in Jakarta. He currently directs a trial monitoring project at the special court for Sierra Leone and an international project on the WWII war crimes trials in Asia, the Pacific, and Europe. He is also writing books on a comparative study of international criminal hybrid tribunals in East Timor, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and Kosovo and on war crimes from WWII to today.

Michelle Staggs - Coordinator, Asian International Justice Initiative

Michelle Staggs is an Australian lawyer with a Masters in Public International Law/Human Rights from the London School of Economics and Political Science. As coordinator of the East-West Center's Asian International Justice Initiative, she is working closely with Professor Cohen to orchestrate the Summer Institute 2008, as well as establishing a regional trial monitoring program at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. From 2004 to 2006 she worked as a Trial Monitor, Senior Researcher, and Coordinator of the UC Berkeley War Crimes Studies Center's Trial Monitoring Program at the Special Courts for Sierra Leone. Her research interests include the legacy of internationalized tribunals.