Information on the English speaking Lecturers

Abdullah Omar Yassen is Associate Professor of International Law (tenured) at Erbil Polytechnic University (Iraq, since 2016) and Adjunct Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kurdistan-Hewler (Erbil, Iraq). Prior to this, he was Lecturer in International Law at University Salahaddin-Erbil (Iraq, 2010-2016). Abdullah obtained his education in the United Kingdom, including an LLB (Honours, University of Derby, 2007), an LLM in Public International Law (University of Leicester, 2009, and a PhD in International Law (Newcastle University, 2015).

Iraq presents a compelling case study for examining human rights from a legal perspective due to its history of authoritarian rule, decades of conflict, the transition following the 2003 invasion, and ongoing struggles with governance, accountability, and the rule of law. This paper explores the legal framework, international commitments, challenges in implementation, and pathways toward the protection and promotion of human rights in Iraq.

Expert in Intercultural Leadership | PhD in Politics and International Relations (Jordan)

This session explores how intercultural leadership, rooted in human-centred values, can guide the responsible use of artificial intelligence while safeguarding human rights. With a particular focus on the Middle East — a region undergoing rapid digital transformation while navigating complex cultural and social dynamics — the discussion highlights how leaders in education, policy, and technology can ensure AI empowers rather than excludes.

Participants will reflect on lessons and practices that transcend borders, showing how intercultural leadership skills can foster inclusive learning environments, protect human dignity, and promote social justice both regionally and globally.

Dr. Lama Azrafil (1988, Lebanon) is a judge at the Lebanese State Council since 2014. She holds a Ph.D. in Administrative Law from the University of Montpellier (2015). She teaches Public Law at the Lebanese university.

Since 2007, she has served with the Lebanese Red Cross as an EMS team member. She is Head of the Investigation Committee and Legal & Policy Advisor for the National Society. In 2024, she joined the Electoral Committee of the IFRC.

Humanitarian action in Lebanon is evolving into a strategic pillar of national resilience. The Lebanese Red Cross, as an example, has become an essential auxiliary to the government, playing a central role in disaster response and humanitarian planning. This shift reflects growing trust in civil society actors amid institutional challenges. Political representation, however, remains fragmented and often disconnected from grassroots needs. A future-oriented approach must bridge humanitarian expertise with inclusive political dialogue.

This intervention explores the evolving role of humanitarian actors in Lebanon, with a focus on the Lebanese Red Cross as a key auxiliary to the government in disaster response and planning. It highlights the legal and institutional challenges of integrating humanitarian expertise into national frameworks. The contribution draws on my experience in public law, judicial service, and humanitarian governance. It aims to open dialogue on bridging humanitarian action with inclusive political representation.

Aimée Ghanem (1984, Lebanon) is a social worker, researcher, and PhD candidate in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She is the founder and executive director of SWorld Research Hub, a research platform dedicated to archiving and preserving the history of social work in Lebanon. Her academic and professional work centers on social work in times of crisis, with a particular focus on displacement, resilience, and policy transformation.

She has led and contributed to numerous regional studies on refugee protection, social policy, and psychosocial crisis response with organizations such as GIZ, UNICEF, USAID, and FAKT Consult. Her publications examine the role of social work in crisis and disaster contexts and its intersection with religion, migration, and humanitarian practice.

This presentation traces the evolution of social work practice in Lebanon across successive crises, from the civil war years (1975–1990) to the aftermath of the Beirut Port explosion in 2020. Drawing on archival materials, oral histories, and field interviews with Lebanese social workers, it highlights how practitioners have continually redefined their role amid destruction, displacement, and institutional collapse. The study reveals that social work in Lebanon emerged as both a humanitarian and civic act balancing emergency relief with long-term community resilience, professional ethics, and social justice.

How does social work persist amid war and destruction? This contribution traces Lebanon’s history of social work from the civil war (1975–1990) to the Beirut Port explosion in 2020. Based on oral histories and field research, it reveals how social workers responded to displacement, trauma, and institutional collapse through community-based initiatives. It highlights their ethical commitment, resilience, and role in rebuilding solidarity in a fragmented nation, showing social work as both humanitarian action and civic resistance.

Dr. Paiman Ahmad is an Assistant Professor at the University of Raparin, Rania-Kurdistan Region-Iraq. She has research interests in energy economics, sustainable development in developing economies, climate change, energy transition, SDGs, migration, and the public sector in the developing world. She holds a Ph.D. in public administration from the National University of Public Service-Budapest-Hungary-2018. Her research works have been published in reputable journals such as International Environmental Agreements, Politics, Law and Economics, Journal of Public Affairs, Sustainable Development Wiley, Journal of Cleaner Production, Gondwana Research, Renewable Energy, Environmental Science, and Pollution Research, Environmental Impact Assessment Review, Global Business Review, PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION, ECONOMIC RESEARCH-EKONOMSKA ISTRAŽIVANJA, and top-tier academic publishers: Elsevier, Palgrave Macmillan, Sage, Springer, Taylor& Francis, Routledge, and Wiley.

This lecturer addresses the concerns associated with human rights and effects of migration at the context of the Middle East.

A Dutch National, Dr. Lex Takkenberg is Senior Advisor on the Question of Palestine at

ARDD and free-lance lecturer at the University of Vienna. From 1989 until 2019, he worked in various field and headquarters positions with UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, most recently at its Amman headquarters as the agency’s first Chief Ethics Officer. He was previously UNRWA’s General Counsel, Director of Operations, and (Deputy) Field Director in Gaza and Syria. Before joining UNRWA, he was the Legal Officer of the Dutch Refugee Council, from 1983 until 1989. A law graduate from the University of Amsterdam, where he also worked as an Academic Assistant from 1987-1989, he obtained a Doctorate in International Law from the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in 1997 after having successfully defended his doctoral dissertation entitled The Status of Palestinian Refugees in International Law. Oxford University Press (OUP) published a commercial edition of the dissertation in 1998; an integral Arabic translation was published by the Institute for Palestine

Studies in 2003. A new version of the book – co-authored with Francesca Albanese – was published, also with OUP, in 2020.

The lecture will provide a brief overview of the origins and evolution of the Palestinian refugee question and its legal, political and humanitarian ramifications. It will include a discussion of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and the recent challenges it faces. It will conclude by looking at options for a resolution of the Palestinian refugee question.

Linking local knowledge with universal human rights through Participatory Action research: Experiences from International Social Work

This presentation explores how Participatory Action Research (PAR) can serve as a bridge between local knowledge systems and the universal framework of human rights within the field of international social work. Drawing on empirical case studies and their protagonists from Mozambique, the Greece–Turkey border region, and Germany, the presentation examines how participatory and context-sensitive methodologies such as PhotoVoice and Future Creating Workshops can both challenge and enrich dominant human rights discourses.

Through collaborative inquiry with communities facing social exclusion, displacement, and structural inequalities, the research highlights the ways in which local actors and those engaging with them reinterpret and operationalize human rights principles in diverse cultural and political contexts. The Mozambique case focuses on community-led initiatives for social protection of displaced people; the Greece–Turkey case involves social work students’ views and actions about the dangerous borderland; and the German example reflects on refugee's perceptions and experiences of their integration in a Bavarian urban setting.

The presentation argues that integrating PAR strategies into international social work practice fosters a more dialogical and decolonial understanding of human rights, one that values local epistemologies as sources of legitimate knowledge and transformative potential. Ultimately, it calls for a rethinking of social work’s global mission toward approaches that are co-created, reflexive, and grounded in the lived realities of the people most affected by social injustice.

Dr. Eric Kyere is an Associate Professor of Social Work and Adjunct Professor of Africana Studies at Indiana University. Eric is a transdisciplinary scholar and draws on social science and humanities to integrate historical data with social science research methods. He applies collective memory and historical and structural perspectives to explore how we collectively embody and enact unjust and harmful practices of our collective past to (re)produce hierarchy-based epistemic and affective structures that alter our shared humanity to sustain inequalities. His work also contributes to practices of epistemic and relational repair through reinterpretation of our histories toward collective efforts to engage in reparative future. That is a future where structures and practices of violence rooted in slavery and colonial capital imaginaries are addressed for the collective. Such collective rethink is critical to reconstruct futures that support healthy relations with the self, the collective, and the natural environment in ways that support our thriving together. Dr. Kyere’s transatlantic work and experiences have shown that when contextual distinctions are accounted for, the way slavery and colonialism, and other forms of past violence accumulate into our present and are projected into the future implicates all of us, beyond victims and perpetrator binaries, but in differentiated ways. Therefore, our collective understanding of the relations among slavery, colonialism and ongoing formation of whiteness relative to epistemology and our shared humanity is essential to collectively re-construct our futures in reparative fashion.

• This section will introduce historical and structural perspectives to the conceptualization of human rights and how it is sustained in today’s practice.

• Cultural mechanisms for establishing and perpetuating human differentiation and implications will be discussed.

• Presenters will also offer diverse perspectives on the dilemmas surrounding human rights discourse, emphasizing the need to critically examine the epistemic and affective resources for nurturing human possibilities for the collective and the planet.

Stephanie Lyons, Clinical Associate Professor and Director of Practicum Education leads Indiana University School of Social Work’s (IUSSW) implementation of practicum education curricula, ensuring integration between classroom and practice settings, and compliance with policies and CSWE standards. Stephanie is pursuing her PhD in Social Work with a research interest in organizational leadership. Prior to IUSSW, Stephanie held leadership positions in regional and national, youth and family serving organizations.

1. This section will introduce historical and structural perspectives to the conceptualization of human rights and how it is sustained in today’s practice.

2. Cultural mechanisms for establishing and perpetuating human differentiation and implications will be discussed.

3. Presenters will also offer diverse perspectives on the dilemmas surrounding human rights discourse, emphasizing the need to critically examine the epistemic and affective resources for nurturing human possibilities for the collective and the planet.