who we are

We bring together experts and organizers who are striving for equality across disciplines. We pool the collective expertise, critical perspectives, creativity and extensive experience to protect and promote the rights of those structurally marginalized in our European societies.

Dr. Emilia Zenzile Roig

Founder and Executive Director

Emilia Roig holds a PhD in Political Science from the Humboldt University of Berlin and Sciences Po Lyon and obtained her Master of Public Policy from the Hertie School of Governance and her Master of Business Administration from Jean Moulin University in Lyon. Her doctoral dissertation analysed the processes of intersectional discrimination in the French and German labor markets for care and household services. Prior to founding the Center for Intersectional Justice, she was Project Director at the German Federation of Migrant Women’s Organisations (DaMigra). From 2011 to 2015, she taught Intersectionality Theory, Postcolonial Studies and Critical Race Theory at the Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin, and International and European Law at Jean Moulin University in Lyon. She is also faculty member in the Social Justice Study Abroad Program of DePaul University of Chicago since 2015. From 2007 to 2011, she worked extensively on Human Rights issues at Amnesty International in Germany, at the International Labour Organisation in Tanzania and Uganda, and at the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) in Cambodia.

er@intersectionaljustice.org

www.emiliaroig.com

Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw

Honorary President

Kimberlé Crenshaw, distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA and Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, is a leading authority on Civil Rights, Black Feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law. Crenshaw’s groundbreaking work has been foundational in two fields of study that have come to be known by terms that she coined – critical race theory and intersectionality. A specialist on race and gender equality, she has facilitated workshops for human rights activists in Brazil and India, and for constitutional court judges in South Africa. Her work on intersectionality has been globally recognized and was influential in the drafting of the equality clause in the South African Constitution. Crenshaw also authored the background paper on gender and racial discrimination for the United Nations’ World Conference on Racism (WCAR), served as rapporteur for the conference’s Expert Group on Gender and Race Discrimination, and coordinated non-governmental organisations’ efforts to ensure the inclusion of gender in the WCAR conference declaration. She is the co-founder and Executive Director of AAPF and the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School.

executive board

Rokhaya Diallo

Executive Board Member

Rokhaya Diallo is a French journalist, award-winning filmmaker, activist and author of numerous books. She is an advocate for racial, gender and religious equality and one of the leading voices for social justice in France. She is a BET-France host and has produced and directed documentaries, TV and radio programs. She is the winner of numerous awards and was recognized by Slate as 36th out of the 100 most influential French women in 2013, and appears among the 30 most influential black figures in Europe on Britain’s Powerful Media’s ranking in 2016.

Fatima Zibouh

Executive Board Member

Fatima Zibouh graduated from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) with a Master in Political Science and has an advanced Master in Human Rights from the Universite Catholique de Louvain (UCL) and Saint-Louis. Since March 2007, she has been a researcher for the Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies at University of Liege. Her current research interests lie in the political participation of ethnic minorities, the integration Policy and ethnocultural diversity in a post- migratory context. She is currently finishing her a PhD on Political and Sociological Sciences at Universite de Liege (ULg). The topic of her doctoral research is about “Art, Urban Culture and Ethnicity”. She has written several publications: « La participation politique des élus d’origine maghrébine. Elections régionales bruxelloises et stratégies électorales » (Academia- Bruylant, 2010) ; « The political representation of Muslims in Brussels » (Brussels Studies, 2011) ; « Muslim political participation in Belgium: an exceptional political representation in Europe” (Edinburgh University Press, 2013); « Mobilisation strategies of individual and institutional actors in Brussels’ artistic and cultural scenes » (Routledge, 2014) ; “Demain Bruxsels”, (Politique, 2019). She has also delivered lectures in several European countries and internationally. Among her awards, she was named ‘Woman of Honour’ by the University of Liège, by the Institute of Human and Social Sciences in 2010. She was invited in 2012 by the U.S. Department of State to participate in the International Visitor Leadership Programme. She was also awarded the Observatory of Cultural Policies Prize in 2014, and she also received the Diwan Award for Personality of the Year in 2014. In 2019, she co-founded W100, a community of diverse women from all corners of Brussels who wish to connect and amplify the voices and actions of women in the city.

advisory board

Anastasia Crickley

President of the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Anastasia Crickley is President of the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), Vice-President of the International Association for Community Development and Chairperson of Pavee Point National Traveller and Roma Centre Ireland. She was the first chairperson of the Fundamental Rights Agency and a member of the Advisory Committee for the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the protection of National Minorities and Personal Representative of the OSCE Chair-in-office on discrimination. She is co-founder of several organisations, including the European Network Against Racism, the Migrants Rights Centre Ireland and the Global Migration Policy Associates.

Prof. Chandra Talpade Mohanty

Department Chair and Professor at Syracuse University

Professor Chandra Talpade Mohanty is a world renowned postcolonial and transnational feminist theorist whose work focuses on transnational feminist theory, anti-capitalist feminist praxis, anti-racist education, and the politics of knowledge. She is Distinguished Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Sociology, and the Cultural Foundation of Education and Dean’s Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University. Central to Mohanty’s transnational mission is the project of building a “non-colonizing feminist solidarity across the borders,” through an intersectional analysis of race, nation, colonialism, sexuality, class and gender.

Dr. Eddie Bruce-Jones

Legal Academic and Board member of the IRR

Dr. Eddie Bruce-Jones is Senior Lecturer and Assistant Dean (recruitment & retention) of Birkbeck School of Law, University of London. His work focuses on anti-discrimination law and theory, migration and asylum law, interdisciplinary research on colonialism, and legal policy analysis of policing-related deaths in Europe. He is the author of Race in the Shadow of Law: State Violence in Contemporary Europe (Routledge, 2016). Dr. Bruce-Jones serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) and the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group, as well as the Editorial Board of the Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law. He is also an Essays Editor at the literary magazine, The Offing.

Vincent Warren

Director of Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)

Vincent Warren is Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and one of the leading public interest litigators in the USA. He oversees CCR’s groundbreaking litigation and advocacy work, which includes using international and domestic law to hold corporations and government officials accountable for human rights abuses, including racial, gender and LGBT injustice. Prior to his tenure at CCR, he was a national senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, where he litigated civil rights cases, focusing on affirmative action, racial profiling, and criminal justice reform. He is a graduate of Haverford College and Rutgers School of Law.

William Bila

Board member of European Roma Rights Center and Open Society Foundation Roma Education Support Trust

William Bila is a leading advocate for Roma rights in Europe and internationally. He has served as the Vice President for the Roma Community Centre in Toronto and is serving on the boards of Roma Education Support Trust in the UK, Roma Education Fund in Switzerland, Slovakia and Romania, and as President of La Voix des Rroms in France. He is also president of the University of Chicago Alumni Association of France and an elected member of the board of the global University of Chicago LGBT alumni association. William Bila has over twenty years of strategic planning and project management experience coordinating with stakeholders in large multinational corporations, consulting firms, non-governmental and governmental organisations across Europe and North America.

Dr. Yasemin Shooman

Scientific Director of the DeZIM Institute

Dr. Yasemin Shooman is a leading expert on racism and Islamophobia in Germany and Head of the Academy Programs of the Jewish Museum Berlin, where she leads the program Migration and Diversity as well as the Jewish-Islamic Forum. She holds a PhD in history from the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technische Universität Berlin and is the author of numerous publications. Her research focuses on the intersections of culture, religion, ethnicity, race, gender and class in anti-Muslim racism and the relationship between antisemitism and racism. Central to Yasemin Shooman’s mission is to bridge the gap between the scientific and the public discourse by making academic research results available and accessible to a broad audience.

Prof. Nivedita Prasad

Professor of Gender-Specific Social Work

Nivedita Prasad studied Social Pedagogy at the Free University of Berlin and completed her PhD at the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg. She has worked on issues of intersectionality long before it was labelled as such as an academic and activist. She has been a Professor at the Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences since 2013, where she is very active in the field of Social Work with Refugees. She is also Director of the German Master’s program “Social Work as a Human Rights Profession”. In March 2012 she was awarded the “Anne Klein” Prize for her ongoing dedication to Migrant Women’s Human Rights.

Saraya Gomis

Education Policy Activist

Saraya Gomis is an education policy activist, and she advocates for anti-discrimination policy in schools. She serves as the Chair of the Each One Teach One e.V. Board and has worked on anti-discrimination work and anti-discrimination education for several years. Saraya formerly taught at the Ernst Reuter Oberschule in Berlin-Wedding and was the anti-discrimination officer for Berlin Schools. She has given many lectures, and regularly represents marginalised communities in policy forums

staff

Dr. Emilia Zenzile Roig

Founder & Executive Director

Emilia Roig (she/her) founded the Center for Intersectional Justice in 2017 and has been setting up and running the organisation since its inception. Besides developing the strategic and financial plans of the organisation, she developed the entire organisational structure and built the network of associated experts. She is a renowned expert in the fields of intersectionality, anti-discrimination, diversity, equity, inclusion and more broadly social justice in Europe. She has given numerous keynotes, talks and is regularly sitting on panels across Europe.

Emilia Roig holds a PhD in Political Science from the Humboldt University of Berlin and Sciences Po Lyon and obtained her Master of Public Policy from the Hertie School of Governance and her Master of Business Administration from Jean Moulin University in Lyon. Her doctoral dissertation analysed the processes of intersectional discrimination in the French and German labor markets for care and household services. Prior to founding the Center for Intersectional Justice, she was Project Director at the German Federation of Migrant Women’s Organisations (DaMigra). From 2011 to 2015, she taught Intersectionality Theory, Postcolonial Studies and Critical Race Theory at the Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin, and International and European Law at Jean Moulin University in Lyon. She is also faculty member in the Social Justice Study Abroad Program of DePaul University of Chicago since 2015. From 2007 to 2011, she worked extensively on Human Rights issues at Amnesty International in Germany, at the International Labour Organisation in Tanzania and Uganda, and at the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) in Cambodia.

er@intersectionaljustice.org

www.emiliaroig.com

Wadzanai Motsi-Khatai

Program Manager

Wadzanai (she/her) is committed to building a more inclusive, mindful and socially just world and collaborating with communities to create new models for living and working together. Wadzanai joined CIJ in January 2020 and she holds a BA in International Relations from Grinnell College and a Master in Public Administration from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Wadzanai has over 6 years of experience working with government, international non-profit organizations, as well as community organizations. Her diverse professional experience includes working with the Government of Zimbabwe to develop national strategies for HIV testing, and treatment for children, working with young political activists in Tunisia, Egypt, Ghana, the Czech Republic and Cambodia, as well as building a community for a circular economy in Berlin, Germany. She is also a regular contributor to the African Policy Initiative in Germany, and initiator of the Sangano Black Business Hub; projects that work to connect African policy experts and entrepreneurs, in the German diaspora.

wmk@intersectionaljustice.org

Julia Gaiser

Social Media Manager

Julia (she/her) joined CIJ in March and is in charge of our Social Media channels. She holds a BA in North American Studies from the Freie Universität Berlin, which included a year abroad at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). There, she pursued her research focus on African-American History, particularly on the history of race and racism. Her BA thesis dealt with the ramifications of racial self-identification based on the case of Rachel Dolezal, under the lens of cultural appropriation, internalized racism, and critical whiteness. Prior to joining CIJ, Julia started working at the German News Agency dpa, where she performs research and translation work for their editorial department. Julia also manages a blog, on which she documents her personal confrontation with her own whiteness, and the socio-political meaning and privileges attached to it, as well as the ways in which internalized racism reproduces systemic inequalities for marginalized communities.

jg@intersectionaljustice.org

external contributors

Prof. Anna Katharina Mangold

Professor of Public Law

Anna Katharina Mangold has studied law in Freiburg, Berlin, Cambridge/UK and Frankfurt/Main. Her research areas are in EU law, public law, legal philosophy, legal gender studies and legal history. She is Schumpeter Fellow at Goethe-University Frankfurt where she is the principal investigator in a research project on the legitimacy of antidiscrimination law. Her second book develops a democratic legitimation of antidiscrimination and will be published in autumn 2017. Currently, she works as an interim professor at the Chair of Public Law and Gender Studies at Humboldt-University Berlin.

Canan Turan

Film Scholar & Filmmaker

Canan Turan holds a BA in Film Studies from Free University Berlin and an MA in Filmmaking from Goldsmiths College London. She directed the short film "Kıymet" (2012) and is the creative producer of the feature documentary "From Here" (2020). Canan worked for various international festivals and organisations as event manager, moderator and curator of film programs, panel discussions and other events. As a film scholar and expert with a postcolonial and intersectional focus, she gives workshops, key notes and seminars on diversity and representation in cinema, especially in the so-called Turkish-German Cinema, as well as on anti-oppressive standpoint and language. In 2021, she taught a class on bell hooks’ cultural criticism and intersectional film theory as a guest lecturer at the University of Gießen. Canan also authors educational materials on films, works in youth film education for Vision Kino and provides script consultancy for film productions. She lives and works as a freelancer in Berlin.

Dr. Cengiz Barskanmaz

Postdoctoral Researcher at the department of Law and Anthropology

Cengiz Barskanmaz is a legal scholar dedicated to “law in action”, with a transnational and interdisciplinary approach to law. In his dissertation “Law and Racism: A Race Critical Analysis of Human Rights Protections” (forthcoming), he examined the level of protection in international and national non-discrimination law against various forms of racial discrimination and hate speech. As a founding member of Critical Race Theory Europe, he is at the forefront of developing Critical Race Theory network beyond the U.S. He hosted the first Symposium on Critical Race Theory Europe at the Humboldt University Berlin in 2012.

Prof. Hourya Bentouhami

Associate Professor

Hourya Bentouhami has published extensively on postcolonial perspectives in feminism and political theory (on identity, culture, recognition, memory of slavery, restorative justice). She authored “Le dépôt des armes. Non-violence et désobéissance civile”; and “Race, cultures, identités. Une approche féministe et postcoloniale”. She co-edited with Mathias Möschel, “Critical Race Theory. Une introduction aux textes fondateurs”. She held visiting positions at Columbia University, and was the co-coordinator of the Program on Memory of Slavery in the Americas (Toulouse). She contributes to public debates on veil, migrations, minorities and discriminations, racial visibility, gender, sexism and racism.

Dr. Nahed Samour

Postdoctoral Researcher

Nahed Samour is a postdoctoral researcher at the Eric Castrén Institute of International law and Human Rights, Helsinki University, Junior Faculty at the Harvard Law School, Institute for Global Law and Policy, and pursues her Habilitation at the Humboldt University, Faculty of Law, Berlin. She has studied law and Islamic studies at the universities of Bonn, Birzeit, London (SOAS), Berlin (HU), Harvard, and Damascus, and was doctoral fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt/Main. She clerked at the Court of Appeals in Berlin. Nahed Samour works at the intersection of religion, race and gender on Islamic law, constitutional law, administrative law, and international law.

Rym Khadhraoui

Researcher

Rym is a researcher for Amnesty International in the Europe Regional Office based in London. Her main areas of work are discrimination, police violence, counter-terrorism and migration. Rym is also a lawyer admitted to the New York bar. As a Fulbright scholar, she graduated from Duke Law School where she was also a Global Human Rights Scholar at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, writing comparative analysis on racism in France and the U.S. Prior to that, Rym worked for Oxfam’s North African Regional office in Tunis during the revolution in Tunisia. Her legal studies in France were focused on public international law and in Lebanon she studied political science in the Arab world.

Sara Mohammed

Researcher, Policy Advisor, Educator & Artist

Sara is a researcher, educator, artist & social innovator. She is co-founder of a consulting collective specializing in intersectional & trauma-informed policies, programs and trainings; founder of a health tech startup that developed intersectional AI to address health inequities; and senior advisor and consultant to governments and NGOs in Europe and Canada. Contributing to social change initiatives since 2008, Sara is passionate about developing anti-racist and anti-oppressive social innovation grantmaking strategies, policies, and programs to sustainably improve the outcomes of women, youth, 2SLGBTQ+ communities, and BIPOC communities. She is the lead researcher and co-author of CIJ’s “Factsheet: Intersectionality at a Glance in Europe”. Her other work includes “Weaving the Ancestors”, an awarded textile project exploring decolonization & resilience, and publications in “Women’s Health: Intersections of Policy, Research & Practice”, “Feminist Cyberspaces” and “Indigenous Policy Journal”.

Dr. Stefanie Boulila

Postdoctoral Researcher

Stefanie Boulila is a postdoctoral researcher in gender studies at the University of Goettingen (D). She wrote her AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Leeds (UK) in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries as well as in the School of Sociology and Social Policy. She has published in the field of intersectional gender studies, particularly on race in Europe, homophobia discourses as well as gender and the “refugee crisis”. In 2017, Stefanie was elected to the board of ATGENDER, the European Association for Gender Research, Education and Documentation. She is currently working on her first monograph entitled “Race in Post-racial Europe: An Intersectional Analysis”.

circle of friends

Aida Bekele

Researcher and Consultant

Aida Bekele has international and cross-sector experience as a practitioner supporting organisations that tackle social exclusion. Her work in civil society and philanthropy includes advising and funding groups focused on equity and education. At a global foundation, she designed and supported programs to improve access and opportunities for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. Aida’s current work and research relates to inequity and social change. Aida graduated with honors from Harvard University and Harvard Law School, and with distinction from the University of Cambridge.

Dr. Alexander Tischbirek

Research Fellow and Deputy Chairman

Alexander Tischbirek studied law at the Humboldt University of Berlin and at Columbia Law School in New York City. He passed his state examinations in law in Berlin and holds a PhD from Humboldt University. He currently serves as Deputy Chairman of the Büro zur Umsetzung von Gleichbehandlung, a Berlin-based NGO committed to strategic litigation in anti-discrimination law. Alexander Tischbirek is a research fellow at the Institute for Constitutional Law and Philosophy of Law at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Amandine Gay

Filmmaker

Amandine GAY is a filmmaker, afrofeminist activist, and scholar who divides her time between research and creation. According to her, reclaiming the narrative is an act of emancipation. Following Speak Up -her first feature-length documentary on European Black francophone women released in French, Belgian and Swiss theaters in 2017 and Canadian theaters in 2018, she is now preparing a second documentary, A Story of One’s Own. This second feature will be released in theaters in 2020. A Story of One’s Own is an archival film on transnational adoption from the perspective of 5 adult adoptees. Amandine Gay regularly appears as a speaker on Afrofeminism, intersectionality or adoption. In 2015, she authored the preface of the first French translation of bell hooks' seminal, Ain't I A Woman. She is also a writer in several collective works: Black Anthology: Adult Adoptees Claim Their Space; Éloge des mauvaises herbes: ce que nous devons à la ZAD or Décolonisons les Arts ! In 2018, she started « National Adoptee Awareness Month », a series of events centering adoptees’ voices and experiences, and happening every November between France, Switzerland and Quebec. In 2020, she signed with La Découverte editions, for the publication of her first book, an autobiographical essay on adoption. That same year, she’s awarded the Ted Little Prize, an annual award of $500 presented to a Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling community affiliate. The award acknowledges significant oral history-based research, activism, research-creation, arts-based storytelling, and/or creative, place-based work. You can follow her in French and English as @OrpheoNegra.

Dr. Angéla Kóczé

Assistant Professor

Angéla Kóczé is Visiting Assistant Professor at Wake Forest University, Winston Salem (NC). As of September 2016 she is also Assistant Professor at Central European University, Budapest. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender, ethnicity and class as well as the social and legal inequalities facing the Roma in various European countries. In 2013, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington D.C., honored Kóczé with the Ion Ratiu Democracy Award for her interdisciplinary research approach, which combines community engagement and policy making with in-depth participatory research on the situation of the Roma.

Clémence Zamora Cruz

LGBTQI* Rights Activist

When she was young, Clémence Zamora Cruz experienced violence and rejection because she was a trans child. She lived for several months on the streets when she was 15 years old. She then realized that her fight for her basic rights was a collective affair, and she became aware of discrimination against other minorities. Since her teens, she fights on the ground with an intersectional approach against discrimination based on racism, sexual orientation and gender identity. In France, she has held various positions in leading LGBT organisations. Currently she is the Inter-LGBT spokesperson and member of Steering Committee of Transgender Europe. She is a transfeminist activist and a teacher.

Elisa Rojas

Disability Rights Advocate

Elisa Rojas, Lawyer at the Bar Association of Paris, co-founded the Collectif Lutte et Handicaps pour l’Egalité et l’Emancipation (CLHEE), a collective promoting equality, emancipatory politics and an intersectional approach in the disability rights movement. She became well-known in 2004 with an open letter published in Le Monde where she challenged the media representations of disability and criticized the highly-broadcasted fundraising event Le Téléthon. In her blog “Aux Marches Du Palais”, she advocates for the better accessibility of public spaces for wheelchair users and calls attention to the ways in which the representations of disability by society and the media negatively impact on the policies and laws affecting them.

Prof. Encarnacion Gutierrez Rodriguez

Professor in General Sociology

Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez is Professor of General Sociology at JLU. She studied Sociology, Political Sciences and Romance Studies at the University of Frankfurt, the Université Lumière II (Lyon, France) and the University Central of Ecuador (Quito). For her PhD project, she received the prestigious Augsburg Research Prize for Intercultural Studies in 1999. Previous to her appointment in Giessen, she was Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester (UK) and Assistant Professor at the University of Hamburg. Further, she held Visiting Fellowships and Professorships at the University of Alberta (Canada), University of London (UK), the Five College Women’s Studies Research Centre (USA), the University of Albuquerque as well as UCSC (USA). Currently she is a Senior Fellow in Mecila (Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America. She is also an Adjunct Faculty Professor at the University of Alberta (Canada) and a Visiting Professor at Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth (South Africa). Between 2014-18 she was Chair of the Section of Women and Gender Studies in the German Sociology Association and is a member of the Council of Migration as well as member of the Academic Board of RN32 ‘Sociology of Migration’ in the European Sociology Association. She is also a member of the advisory board of Wagadu. A journal of transnational Women and Gender Studies.

Prof. Fatima El-Tayeb

Professor of Literature and Ethnic Studies

Fatima El-Tayeb is Professor of Literature and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her work deconstructs structural racism in “colorblind” Europe and centers strategies of resistance among racialized communities, especially those that politicize culture through an intersectional, queer practice. She is the author of three books and numerous articles on the interactions of race, gender, sexuality, and nation. Before moving to the US, she was active in black feminist, migrant, and queer of color organisations in Germany and the Netherlands. She is a board member of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association and was one of the co-founders of the Black European Studies Project.

Dr. Hannah Tzuberi

Research assistant at the Institute of Jewish Studies

Hannah Tzuberi studied Jewish Studies and Islamic Studies in Berlin. Her academic focus was primarily on rabbinic literature and her PhD was devoted to this area of study. Over the past years, she has increasingly felt the need to address subjects, that intersect with her field, but do not yet find much academic echo. She started a blog that deals with questions related to anti-Muslim racism, anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism. It focuses on the genealogy of different kinds of “figures” and discursive formations that currently structure much of the public debate on the way statehood citizenship and belonging are negotiated.

Prof. Iman Attia

Professor of Postcolonial and Migration Studies

Iman Attia has been researching and teaching Racism and Antisemitism since the 1990s, with a particular focus on the interdependency and interrelation of various forms of racism, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability and class, from a historical and interdisciplinary perspective. She is a leading figure in the introduction of anti-Muslim racism in the German academia, and the author of many publications on this topic. Her current work focuses on the interconnection between the various struggles of racialised groups and the handling of racism in education.

Isidora Randjelović

Project Manager

Isidora Randjelović leads the feminist archive RomaniPhen in Berlin. Her research interests, teaching, publications and activism focus on racism against Rom*nja and Sinte*zza, forms of romani feminism, movements for social justice, especially movements for residence rights and politics of memory. She is an active member of the IniRromnja, a network of Sinte and Romani women* in Germany, and board member of the newly founded RomaniPhen association and active in the Bundesromaverband (Federal Union of Roma).

Prof. Iyiola Solanke

Professor of EU Law and Social Justice at the

Iyiola Solanke is Professor in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, where she holds the Chair in EU Law and Social Justice. She is Visiting Professor at Wake Forest University Law School and was Visiting Professor at Science Po, Grenoble in France in early 2017. She has held fellowships at universities around the world in Australia, Canada, USA and the UK. She is also an Associate Academic Fellow of the Honourable Society of Inner Temple and founded the Temple North Women’s Forum. She researches and teaches on intersectionality, discrimination law, social movements, EU law and governance, and Alternative Dispute Resolution. Her recent book, Discrimination As Stigma: A Theory of Anti-Discrimination Law, was published by Hart in 2017.

Kübra Gümüsay

Journalist and Activist

Kübra Gümüsay is a journalist, public speaker and award winning activist. She has launched several campaigns against racism, sexism and extremism and writes for major German newspapers and magazines such as Die Zeit, Zeit Campus, Taz and many others. As a public speaker, she speaks about internet, politics, feminism, plurality, racism and Islam. Starting her column at Taz in 2010, she became the first hijabi columnist in Germany. In 2011 she was listed amongst the “Top 30 under 30” journalists by Medium Magazin. Her blog “Ein Fremdwörterbuch” was nominated for the Grimme Online Award in 2011. In 2012 she was portrayed as one of 50 personalities in the book “50 Jahre 50 Menschen” for the 50th anniversary of German-Turkish migration.

Dr. Lana Sirri

Assistant Professor

Lana Sirri is a Palestinian scholar-activist. She studied social science at Tel Aviv University and followed a career as Women’s Projects Coordinator in Yaffa. She then pursued her MA studies in Germany, and completed her PhD studies at the Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Since August 2016 she is Assistant Professor of Gender and Religion at the Centre for Gender and Diversity, Maastricht University. Her research lies at the intersection of religion and gender and critically explores Islamic feminist thought, and evaluates Muslim feminist discourses, focusing on the conceptualisation of Religion, Gender and Sexuality.

Prof. Maboula Soumahoro

Associate Pprofessor

Maboula Soumahoro is Associate Professor at the Université de Tours François-Rabelais (France). She has taught at the Paris Institute of Political Science and received her Ph.D. from the University of Tours. Her research focuses on U.S., African American, and Africana studies, and she has held teaching positions at Bard College (Bard Prison Initiative), Barnard College and Columbia University. Based in France, Maboula Soumahoro is president of the Black History Month association. From 2013-2016, she served as an appointed member of the National Committee for the History and Memory of Slavery. In 2016-2017, she is Visiting Faculty at Bennington College and Columbia University-Barnard College.

Dr. Mathias Möschel

Associate Professor

Mathias Möschel’s research, teaching and publications fall broadly in the field of comparative (constitutional) law, international human rights law and non-discrimination law, mainly from a critical race theory and gender perspective. Mathias Möschel is currently teaching at Central European University (Budapest, Hungary) and prior to that held research and teaching positions at University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Defense, New York University and at the Institut de Droit Comparé of University of Paris II (Pantheon-Assas).

Prof. Nikita Dhawan

Professor of Political Theory and Gender Studies

Nikita Dhawan is Professor of Political Science, Political Theory and Gender Studies and Director of the Research Platform Gender Studies: “Identities – Discourses – Transformations” at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Her publications include: Impossible Speech: On the Politics of Silence and Violence (2007); Decolonizing Enlightenment: Transnational Justice, Human Rights and Democracy in a Postcolonial World (2014); Global Justice and Desire: Queering Economy (2015); Negotiating Normativity: Postcolonial Appropriations, Contestations and Transformations (2016), Difference that makes no Difference: The Non-Performativity of Intersectionality and Diversity (2017).

Dr. Noa K. Ha

Research Group Director

Noa K. Ha has a doctoral degree in Architecture from Technical University Berlin and is currently Research Group Director at the Center for Integration Studies of the Technische Universität Dresden. Her research interrogates the production of urban space from a feminist, de-colonial, critical race theory perspective. She is currently conducting a study on postcolonial urbanism in Europe and the spatial production of Asian diasporas in European cities. Noa K. Ha is on the board of “Migrationsrat Berlin e.V.” and an active member of the Asian German network “Korientation e.V”.

Prof. Nora Markard

Professor of Public Law and Human Rights

Nora Markard is a Junior Professor for Constitutional Law, International Law and Global Constitutionalism at the University of Hamburg. She studied law and international relations in Berlin, Paris and London and was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Michigan and at Columbia Law School. Her PhD, on war refugees, was awarded the Humboldt Prize. Her areas of research are German constitutional and international law, refugee and migration law, and legal gender studies. She runs the Refugee Law Clinic Hamburg and co-founded a strategic litigation NGO (Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, GFF).

Prof. Philomena Essed

Professor of Critical Race, Gender, and Leadership Studies

Philomena Essed is Professor of Critical Race, Gender, and Leadership Studies, at Antioch University. She has been globally recognized for her introduction and elaboration of the notions of “everyday racism” and “gendered racism” in 1984 and 1991. Her work focuses on issues of race, gender, social justice, ethics and the elimination of all forms of discrimination. She has been called to testify at The European Parliament, the UN Economic and Social Council, and the Helsinki Commission, among others. She has published extensively in her field and holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam and Honorary Doctorates from the University of Pretoria, South Africa and Umeå University, Sweden.

Prof. Sumi Cho

Professor of Law

Sumi Cho teaches employment discrimination, education law, critical race theory and feminist jurisprudence at DePaul University. She holds a JD and a PhD in ethnic studies from the University of California at Berkeley and has served as a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan and University of Iowa law schools. Along with Kimberlé Crenshaw and Leslie McCall, she co-edited of a special 2013 issue of Signs journal on intersectionality. She directs a study abroad program in Berlin, Germany at Humboldt University, which includes a course on “Intersectionality & Human Rights.” Her community-based pedagogy in Berlin and Chicago was recognized with DePaul’s Excellence in Teaching award at the university’s 2017 convocation.

Vanessa Eileen Thompson

Research Associate

Vanessa Eileen Thompson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Social Sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. She is currently a fellow at the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research and teaching are concerned with black political and feminist theory, black social movements in the Black Atlantic, feminist decolonial/post-colonial theories, and critiques of securitization and abolition democracies. She has written articles on black social movements and racism in France, the relation between post-colonial power and recognition politics, and racial profiling and policing in Europe. Vanessa is a co-founding member of cop-watch ffm.

Dr. Sultan Doughan

Researcher

Sultan Doughan is a socio-cultural anthropologist working on the questions of citizenship, religious difference and race in contemporary Germany. She locates her questions practically in the field of civic education, as this is a field governed and funded by the German state to combat “Islamic extremism.” Doughan’s intellectual home is the emerging field of anthropology of secularism that she combines with a phenomenological understanding of language and experience. Her approach to the study of secularism is informed and shaped by an intersectional lens that regards minority bodies as inscribed by various layers of state regulation, public discourse and social practices of civic personhood.

Dr. Zowie Davy

Senior Lecturer in LGBTQ Research

Zowie Davy’s work centers on medicolegal constructions of gender and sexuality. She is currently building a consortium of academic and stakeholder researchers to conduct work in the area of LGBTQI sex work migration and health issues. The overarching themes within Zowie’s work are in understanding the medicolegal impact on the lives of LGBTQI people. She has published widely on gender and sexuality issues. She is on the board of directors of International Association for the Study of Sexuality Culture and Society and is the Vice Chair of the European Sociological Association’s Sexuality Research Network. She is also an advisor for the European Professional Association for Transgender Health.

Dr. Zülfukar Çetin

Professor für Migration und Diversity

Zülfukar Çetin is is Professor of Migration and Diversity in the Social Work programme at the Evangelischen Hochschule Berlin. Between 2016 and 2019, he worked at the University of Basel in the Department of History on an international research project "Disentangling European HIV/AIDS Policies: Activism, Citizenship and Health (EUROPACH). In 2016 and 2017, he was also a visiting professor at the Alice Salomon Hochschule. His research interests include migration policy, anti-discrimination policy, (anti-Muslim) racism, (post-)colonialism, queer theory and politics, heteronormativity and homonationalism, intersectionality, public health, HIV/AIDS policies and movements in Turkey and Germany, research ethics, qualitative social research.

research fellows

Lynette Mayowa Osinubi

Alexander von Humboldt Fellow

Mayowa is a filmmaker and photographer who has worked with clients like Future, Gucci Mane, 21 Savage and many others. She directed and produced documentary film “Acting White” which was the official selection for Berlin Feminist Film Week. Currently based in Berlin Mayowa’s work has been published in Vogue, Saint Heron, Okay Africa, and many more. Her work can be found on her website.

Fallon Tiffany Cabral

Research Fellow

Fallon Tiffany Cabral, Dipl. Pol., is a Ph.D. candidate at Pädagogische Hochschule in Freiburg and Alice Salomon Hochschule in Berlin. She studied Political Science, Geography and Peace and Conflict Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg and Universidad de Granada. She has been teaching at universities and facilitates trainings in political education with a focus on empowerment, intersectionality and racism. Her Ph.D. project is located at the interface of racism and family* studies, and explores queer, postcolonial and phenomenological approaches and their influence on how race, racism and other intersectional power relations are negotiated in families* of Black and PoC in Germany. Her research is funded by the Hans Böckler Foundation.

Partners & Clients

We value collaboration, dialogue and synergies. Please contact us if you are interested in a cooperation with CIJ.

Ableton Loop

ACUD Macht Neu

Actiris Brussels Labor Office

African American Policy Forum

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

Ariadne Network

Berlinale

Bildungswerk Berlin der Heinrich Böll Stiftung

Center for Constitutional Rights

Center for Feminist Foreign Policy

Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies

Charte de la Diversité: Luxembourg

Charta der Vielfalt

DePaul University College of Law

DICE Conference & Festival

European Commission

European Network Against Racism | ENAR

European Parliament

Festival de Cannes

Friedrich Ebert Foundation

German-American Fulbright Commission

Gunda Werner Institute of the Heinrich Böll Foundation

Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film

Human Rights Watch

International Labour Organization

Jewish Museum Berlin

John F. Kennedy Institute at the Free University

!K7 Music

Lallab

Maxim Gorki Theater

Robert Bosch Stiftung

Tageszeitung

ThoughtWorks

xart splitta

The Ashoka Deutschland Fellowship

funders

We are grateful for the financial support of our funders, without which our work would not be possible.

Should you be interested in supporting CIJ through corporate sponsoring, please contact cij@intersectionaljustice.org