BIHR Trustees

Our board of trustees is responsible for the strategic direction of BIHR and has ultimate legal responsibility for our activities. It meets quarterly and appointment of new trustees is by an open recruitment process.

Brief biographies of all our trustees are below.

Professor Francesca Klug (Chair)

Professor Francesca Klug is a Professorial Research Fellow at the LSE and Director of the Human Rights Futures Project at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights. Francesca was a Commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission from 2006-9. Her publications include Values for a Godless Age: the story of the UK Bill of Rights (Penguin, 2000), Common Sense: Reflections on the Human Rights Act, (Liberty, 2010) and ‘Solidity or Wind?’ What’s on the menu in the Bill of Rights debate? Francesca is a member of Political Quarterly’s editorial board and co-edited a Special Issue of the European Human Rights Law Review to mark the 10th anniversary of the Human Rights Act in 2010.

 

Jane Gordon (Vice Chair)

Jane Gordon BA (Oxon), LLM, is an independent human rights barrister. Between 2003-2008 Jane was Human Rights Advisor to the Northern Ireland Policing Board where she co-devised the first ever framework for monitoring the human rights compliance of the police. From 2009 – 2010, Ms Gordon was appointed Human Rights Advisor to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary during its national policing protest review. Jane regularly advises statutory and public agencies, including national policing bodies, police forces and national human rights institutions across the UK and Ireland. As Senior Lawyer at the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre, she brought cases to the European Court of Human Rights against Russia, Georgia and Ukraine in respect of serious human rights violations, including extrajudicial killing, disappearances, torture, sexual violence and failure to investigate. Between 2004 and 2009, Jane was Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at Kingston University where she co-devised and delivered an applied MA in Human Rights. Jane has been a Fellow at the London School of Economics since 2008 and teaches on the LLM course on the international human rights of women. She is a member of the UK Stabilisation Unit Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative expert roster and the UN / JRR sexual and gender based violence expert roster.

Rosalyn Parker (Treasurer)

Rosalyn Parker is Deputy Director of Finance & Resources at Forum for the Future where she provides advice to the SMT and the Trustees on strategic and operational financial management. She is responsible for all aspects of day-to-day financial management, systems and policies including budgeting, performance and forecast analysis, management accounts and producing the annual accounts. Rosalyn qualified as a chartered accountant with KPMG and holds an MA in Astrophysics with first class honours from Cambridge University.

Stephen Pittam

Stephen Pittam has recently retired as the Trust Secretary of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.  He joined the Trust in 1986 and was appointed its Secretary in 2001.  He was responsible for liaising with the cohort of human rights organisations the Trust supported. Stephen is a member of the Advisory Committee for the Centre for Applied Human Rights at York University.  He is a Trustee of the Global Greengrants Fund and a member of the International Working Group on Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace. Before joining JRCT Stephen spent 10 years in local government in London in roles involving liaison with the voluntary sector and support for community development.  Previous to this he worked in community development projects in Ireland, Jordan and in the UK.

 

Dr Jacqueline Morris

Dr Jackie Morris qualified as a doctor in 1971 and was appointed a Consultant Physician to St Mary's Hospital in 1979 specialising in Geriatric Medicine. She is an Honorary Consultant Physician at University College Hospital London having worked as a Consultant at The Royal Free Hospital NHS Trust Hampstead and St Mary's Hospital Paddington until 2006 developing comprehensive services for older people. She was Frohlich Visiting Professor to the University of California at Los Angeles in 1986. She was seconded to the Department of Health Policy Division as a Senior Medical Advisor on Older People between 1992-1994. She was Chair of Age Concern London between1994-1997 and President of the Royal Society Medicine Section of Geriatrics and Gerontology between 1996-1998. She is President of the Central London Branch of the Parkinson's disease Society.As Chair of the British Geriatrics Society's (BGS) Policy Committee, 2005-2007, she developed a successful multi-agency campaign on Dignity Behind Closed Doors which she still leads. She is also working with the National Council for Palliative Care on the care of older frail people with multiple co-morbidities. She collaborated with Age Concern on their Hungry to be Heard Campaign. She edited the BGS Policy Compendium between 2005-2007. She is working with the Institute of Actuaries on research into causes of mortality in old age.

Sonny Taank

Sonny is currently VP, HR Business Partner for Global Transaction Services at Citigroup and prior to that he was VP, Employee Relations. His previous posts include Head of Employee Relations at BT Openreach and Head of Private Sector at the Commission for Racial Equality as well as management posts in a variety of retail organisations. Sonny was also a Trustee of the young people’s charity, Catch 22.

 

Dorothy Thomas

Dorothy Q. Thomas is a 2008-2010 research associate at the Centre for International Relations and Diplomacy at the School for Oriental and African Studies. From September 2007-August 2008, she was a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics’ Centre for the Study of Human Rights. She is a 1998 Macarthur Fellow and a 1995 Bunting Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. In 1998 she received the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award from President Bill Clinton. Until January 2007, Thomas was senior program advisor to the U.S. Human Rights Fund, a collaborative grant making initiative that supports domestic human rights work in the United States. From 1990 – 1998, she served as the founding director of the Human Rights Watch Women’s Rights Division. She is a member of the Board of the British Institute for Human Rights and the Ms. Foundation for Women, and sits on the advisory boards of the ACLU Human Rights Project, the American Constitution Society’s Human Rights Working Group, and the Human Rights Watch U.S. Program. Thomas writes and speaks frequently on human rights, including most recently “Against American Supremacy: Rebuilding a Culture of Respect for Human Rights in the United States,” in Bringing Human Rights Home, Praeger, (2008), “Ain’t I American?: Women’s Rights, Human Rights and US Identity in the 21st Century,” The Helen Pond McIntyre Lecture, Barnard College, October 30, 2007, and “Are Americans Human?: An Ex-Pat’s Guide to Progressive Politics in the United States,” the Sackler Distinguished Lecture in Human Rights, the University of Connecticut, October 22, 2009. She lives in London with her husband and two children.

 

Alan Wardle

Alan Wardle is Head of Health Promotion at the Terrence Higgins Trust. He was previously at the LGA, heading up their public affairs work from 2007 - 10. Before that he was Director for Parliamentary and Public Affairs at Stonewall for four and a half years. While there he led Stonewall's lobbying and campaigning work, including on the Civil Partnership Act, and established their policy and research function. Before that Alan was in the civil service, doing various policy, finance and private office jobs in the Department for Work and Pensions. Alan studied law, including international and domestic human rights, at the universities of Glasgow and Cambridge.