SPEAKERS
Celnisha L. Dangerfield
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Celnisha L. Dangerfield is an Assistant Professor of Writing, Rhetoric and Communication at Transylvania University. She amplifies historically marginalized voices in her research by prioritizing the intersection of race, place and gender. Dangerfield gives particular attention to the ways Black people find or create their own places of sanctuary. Her foray into law is inspired by Sojourner Truth’s ability to reframe her narrative and resist the limits of place through IP. A regular presenter at national and regional conferences, Dangerfield’s work is featured across several communication journals and edited volumes.
Amanda K. Gross
Amanda is an intersectional anti-racist organizer, weaver of people, ideas, and threads, and author of White Women, Get Ready: How Healing Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change. As an artist and trained yoga instructor, she integrates creative embodied practices throughout her anti-racist organizing. Amanda is certified at the 200 hour RYT level by YogaRoots On Location’s Anti-Racist Raja Yoga School. She has an MA in Conflict Transformation and a PhD in Expressive Arts where her research investigates how arts and culture can support white settlers in sustaining long-term anti-racist and decolonization efforts.
Kara W. Swanson
Kara W. Swanson, JD, PhD, is Professor of Law and Affiliate Professor of History at Northeastern University, Boston, MA. Her scholarship examines historical intersections among law, science, medicine, and technology, with particular attention to race and gender, and questions of property and intellectual property. Recent articles include ‘Centering Black Women: Passing and the Patent Archive,’ 25 STANFORD TECHNOLOGY LAW REVIEW 305 (2022) and ‘Inventing the Woman Voter: Suffrage, Ability, and Patents,’ 19 JOURNAL OF THE GILDED AGE AND PROGRESSIVE ERA 559 (2020). Her first book, Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk and Sperm in Modern America (2014), is a medicolegal history of property in the human body. Her book-in-progress is titled Inventing Citizens: A Surprising History of US Inventors, Patents, and Civil Rights.
Justin Koo
Justin is a Tenured Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of the West Indies, St Augustine. Prior to joining UWI, Justin was a Visiting Lecturer at King’s College London and a Teaching Fellow at University College London (UCL). Justin obtained his LLB from the University of Kent in 2011. He then completed his LLM in Intellectual Property Law at King’s College London in 2012. Following this, he completed his PhD at King’s College London in 2016. The thesis comprised the title: ‘The proper scope of the communication to the public right in EU copyright law’. Resulting from his thesis was the book ‘The Right of Communication to the Public in EU Copyright Law’ published by Hart Publishing in May 2019, which was subsequently cited by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Advocate General’s Opinion on Joined Cases C-682/18 and C-683/18 Frank Peterson v Google LLC and others and Elsevier Inc v Cyando AG. Justin’s primary research interest is focused on copyright law and he has published books and articles in the
Larisa Kingston Mann
Dr. Larisa Kingston Mann is an associate professor in the Department of Media Studies and Production at Temple University (PA, USA). Her work examines how marginalized communities use cultural practices to transcend, resist, and negotiate with colonial power. She is especially interested in the technological and legal affordances that allow these spaces to exist, and how people redraw those affordances in moments of creativity and communion. Author of Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright and the Reverberations of Colonial Power, she has also been an underground music DJ (DJ Ripley) for 25 years, playing in warehouses, squats, clubs, basements, festivals, rooftops, back rooms, front yards, ships, houseboats, pirate radio, legal radio and the internet. Her current research includes a project called “Deviant safety” exploring various definitions of safety among nightlife communities to contrast with the definitions of safety that inform the spread of surveillance technology in nightlife venues. Through organizing zine workshops with nightlife event organizers, the project will generate community-specific definitions of safety, and facilitate ways to assert community needs with policymakers, venues, and community members.
Alexander Hartley
Alex Hartley is a Ph.D. student in comparative literature at Harvard University. Alex’s research centres on copyright, the invention that turned literary forms into private property. His dissertation provides a comparative study of colonial copyright in the first half of the twentieth century, examining how writers in the British and French empires responded to the expanding legal frontier of copyright in shaping their self-presentation as authors. A second project, still in its fairly early stages, will consider the way in which literary cultures have narrated the apparently nonsensical, yet critically indispensable, idea of ‘aesthetic progress’. In addition to these research areas, Alex is interested in the relationship between the academic humanities and the wider world. This has manifested most recently in two book projects. The first is a coedited trade volume, After the Culture Wars: A Humanities Handbook for the Twenty-first Century (The MIT Press, est. 2026); the second is a scholarly edited volume on contemporary developments in Frankfurt School critical theory, called Using Theory in Times of Crisis (De Gruyter, est. 2026).
Jasmine Abdel-khalik
Jasmine Abdel-khalik is a Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, where her research and teaching interests include trademark, business torts, copyright, and contracts. Interested in how language within intellectual property interests affect broader social concerns, Professor Abdel-khalik’s research focuses on various aspects of trademark and copyright law. Most recently, she has been examining how intellectual property doctrine may re-entrench existing stereotypes and biases as well as the intersect of intellectual property laws and protection of speech. Her research was recognized by her colleagues twice with the Daniel E. Brenner Faculty Publishing Award.
Julia Choucair Vizoso
Julia Choucair Vizoso is an independent knowledge producer and co-founder of AbolishIP. She is also Adjunct Professor of International Relations at IE University in Madrid and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Arab Reform Initiative, where she works on environmental justice in the Middle East. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University and an M.A. in Arab Studies/B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.
Panagiotis Lampropoulos
I am a Research Assistant with CREATe at the University of Glasgow, and I am starting my PhD this September on the implications of moral rights, and particularly the right of integrity in the context of AI upscaling of films. My research interests primarily rest in copyright, especially critical theories and moral rights. I hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Law from the University of Bristol, and recently graduated with an LLM in Intellectual Property and the Digital Economy from the University of Glasgow.
Kshitij Kumar Singh
Dr. Kshitij Kumar Singh is an Associate Professor at Campus Law Centre, Faculty of Law, University of Delhi. He earned his LL.M. and PhD degrees from Banaras Hindu University and received Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship Asia-Pacific 2010. He is a Research Affiliate to Inter-CeBIL Programme at University of Copenhagen, Denmark and a collaborator to Genetic Discrimination Observatory (GDO), Centre of Genetics and Policy, McGill University, Canada. He has been a visiting scholar to University of Western Ontario, Canada and University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His primary area of interest is IP law and biotechnology law, particularly ethical, legal and policy issues relating to biomedical technology, sustainable innovation, AMR and precision medicine. He published extensively on biotechnology law and patent law with the main focus on human genetics and genomics.
Leo Yu
Leo Yu is the Associate Clinical Professor of Law at SMU Dedman School of Law and the incoming Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Massachusetts. Professor Yu’s primary research interests are Civil Rights, Critical Race Theory, and Law & Political Economy. His current projects focus on the dynamic between geopolitical tensions and the crisis of the American constitutional democracy. As a professor who received legal educations from both the United States and China, he has a particular interest in investigating the United States’ perception on the uprising of China and how this perception impacts its domestic racial hierarchy. His work has been published in leading academic journals and prominent media outlets, including the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Washington and Lee Law Review, Texas A&M Law Review, South China Morning Post, and Houston Chronicle. Professor Yu is a frequent speaker and moderator on civil rights, equality, and diversity issues. He is the creator of Plead the Fifth (Cir.) podcast, a platform for attorneys to discuss the Fifth Circuit’s jurisprudence on constitutional issues and criminal justice reform. Before joining the law academy, he was a civil rights litigator, specialized in complex constitutional issues in immigrants’ rights.
Julia Phuong Nguyen
Julia is a third-year student at UCLA School of Law, specializing in Critical Race Theory (CRT). In law school, Julia became curious about how legal institutions reinforce exclusionary ideas of knowledge production and ownership. When this topic was missing from their IP courses, they began doing their own research, which led them to the works written by the scholars attending Race + IP. Julia is currently exploring how concepts from fugitivity can serve as an alternative narrative to the racialized, liberal discourse on piracy. Julia is grateful for the opportunity to contribute to Race + IP and is honored share space with scholars who have shaped their perspective, both academically and personally.
Margaret Chon
Margaret Chon is faculty director of the Technology, Innovation Law, and Ethics (TILE) Program and the Donald & Lynda Horowitz Endowed Chair for the Pursuit of Justice at Seattle University School of Law. Author of numerous articles, book chapters and review essays on knowledge governance through intellectual property, she focuses mainly on the role of global intellectual property systems in promoting human flourishing and sustainable development. Her co-edited books include Improving Intellectual Property: A Global Project (with Susy Frankel, Graeme Dinwoodie, Barbara Lauriat, and Jens Schovsbo 2023) and the Cambridge Handbook of Public-Private Partnerships, Intellectual Property, and Sustainable Development (with Pedro Roffe and Ahmed Abdel-Latif, 2018).
Willajeanne McLean
Willajeanne F. McLean teaches courses in Trademarks, Comparative Intellectual property law, and Torts, among others, at the University of Connecticut Law School. She holds a BA in French literature and European history from Wellesley College and a BS in Microbiology from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She worked in a research lab at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute before earning her JD from Fordham Law School. Professor McLean also has an LLM in European Community law from the Free University of Brussels. Before entering the academy, she practiced at an intellectual property boutique firm, primarily in trademark law. She has taught internationally and was a Fulbright Fellow at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, where she taught Comparative EU and U.S. Intellectual Property Law, and lectured at the Intellectual Property Law Institute of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. She is a co-author of a casebook, Transnational Intellectual Property Law, now in its second edition.
Dalindyebo Shabalala
Dalindyebo Shabalala is a Professor of Law at the Suffolk University Law School. His primary teaching responsibilities are in Intellectual Property and Environmental Law as well Business Law and Contracts. Prof. Shabalala’s research focuses on the interaction of intellectual property law, especially patent law, with the rights of indigenous peoples and climate change law. He conducts research on the rights of indigenous peoples and traditional communities to their traditional knowledge and culture and the role of international intellectual property treaties in enabling or preventing the realization of those rights.
Aileen Editha
Aileen Editha (she/her) is a PhD Candidate and Robert Sutherland Fellow at the Faculty of Law, and Graduate Inclusivity Fellow at the School of Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs. Her doctoral thesis explores property rights over human biological and genetic materials but has written on other health law topics such as transplantation and blood banking. Born and raised in Indonesia, she completed her LLB (Hons) and MJur at Durham University, England. When she’s not working on her thesis, she’s probably embroidering, petting her dog, watching Bob’s Burgers, on a walk, or trying to do all four things at once.
Nicholas Towns
Nick Towns is a first-year law student at UC Irvine School of Law. A lifelong scientist and lifelong person of color, Nick is astutely aware of the intersection and interaction between those two identities. Originally set on pursuing law, Nick set his sights on medicine after a series of sports injuries, and studied biochemistry at UC San Diego. At UCSD, Nick worked in a biology laboratory, underwent lab methodology training, and was a member of the provost’s honors seminar. During that time, he was active in organizations like the Persian American Student Association and the Black Student Union, was a delegate to the Afrikan Black Coalition Conference, and lobbied for the repeal of CA Prop. 209 in Sacramento. On the heels of the pandemic, Nick sought out a master’s in chemistry at San Diego State University. At SDSU, Nick was compelled to study law after witnessing the struggles of his fellow scientists in navigating institutions with which they were not well-versed, reading on cases such as Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad, and involvement with his union. In his free time, Nick enjoys hiking, nature painting and photography, linguistics, and cooking.
Betsy Rosenblatt
Professor Betsy Rosenblatt is a Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, where she teaches intellectual property courses including Copyright Law and Trademark Law. She also volunteers as the Chair of the Legal Committee of the Organization for Transformative Works (www.transformativeworks.org). Professor Rosenblatt’s scholarship focuses on intellectual property theory and intersections between intellectual property law and social justice. She is a frequent speaker at scholarly conferences as well as more popular venues like San Diego Comic Con.
Matthew Cannon
My current work on the politics of U.S. patent policy unites the two strands of my professional career: an academic strand focused on law and social movements and nearly a decade of intellectual property litigation. As an undergraduate student and during my first stint in graduate school, my focus was an interdisciplinary study of law & social movements, including especially conservative movements. After completing my M.A. and J.D. at UC Berkeley, I got a practitioner’s understanding of the law by litigating complex commercial technology disputes involving a wide range of technical fields and procedural postures as plaintiff and defense counsel. I returned to UC Berkeley’s Jurisprudence & Social Policy program to complete my Ph.D. by conducting research on the extent to which social movement mobilization models can explain the recent emergence of an American inventor movement as a stakeholder in American patent policymaking. Currently a Ph.D. candidate, my degree is expected during the 2025-26 academic year.
Kali Murray
Kali Murray is a Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School. She has written extensively in patent, administrative law, property law. She is currently interested in intellectual property law as information, and its relationship to the construction of social identity in the law.
Joseph Coppola
Joseph Coppola is an interdisciplinary humanities scholar trained in English and Film Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His works appear in Screen (Oxford University Press), American Quarterly (Johns Hopkins University), and Film Quarterly (University of California Press).
Tesh Dagne
Dr. Teshager Dagne joins the School of Public Policy and Administration as an Ontario Research Chair in Governing Artificial Intelligence and associate professor, with tenure, in the Professorial stream. He has previously taught at Thompson Rivers University Faculty of Law and the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University, where he earned his Doctoral degree and was a Schulich Research Fellow. He has extensively published in areas of knowledge governance in intellectual property law, emerging technologies regulation, and big data governance. His research explores legal, ethical, and regulatory considerations in the challenges and opportunities that the deployment of Artificial Intelligence and related technologies bring in different spheres of activities.
Lateef Mtima
Lateef Mtima is a Professor of Law at the Howard University School of Law, and the Founder and Director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice, an accredited NGO member of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which advocates for core principles of socially equitable access, inclusion, and empowerment in the development and implementation of the IP ecosystem.
Tomar Pierson-Brown
Tomar Pierson-Brown is an Assistant Professor of Law, and the Director of the Health Law Certificate Program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Pierson-Brown teaches civil procedure and education law. Her research applies elements of systems thinking and design approaches to address challenges in legal education and in health justice. Prior to serving as Assistant Professor, Pierson-Brown was an Associate Clinical Professor of Law and directed Pitt Law’s Health Law Clinic, a medical-legal partnership, for eight years. Pierson-Brown served as Pitt Law’s first Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusive Excellence. Pierson-Brown earned her JD from Case Western Reserve University School of Law and her LL.M from the University of the District of Columbia – David A. Clarke School of Law.
Sara Al Khashlok
Sara Al Khashlok, a researcher in Labour Exploitation and Human Rights, joined BIICL in 2024. She holds an MSc in International Migration and Public Policy from the London School of Economics (LSE) and an LLB from King’s College London. Her past research has focused on examining the efficacy of legal frameworks in protecting the rights of marginalized communities, particularly in conflict zones. Her master’s thesis explored the failure of Iraq’s anti-discrimination laws and policies under its 2005 Constitution to protect the rights of Black Iraqis. The research garnered significant acclaim for its exploration of the relationship between race and identity in the Middle East beyond Western-centric boundaries.
Iris Gomez
Iris Gomez is an aspiring litigator and 3L student at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Before law school, she earned an MBA and built a fundraising career in higher education. This past year, she competed in the Saul Lefkowitz Trademark Moot Court Competition, where her team was named national champions. Iris has also been involved at Loyola’s education law clinic (SUFEO), where she practices her litigation skills through working with clients on issues such as bullying, special education, suspensions, and expulsions. She was one of 27 students across the nation selected to participate in the Hispanic National Bar Association IPLI institute in Washington, D.C., and is one of two students at her law school to be selected as a Pupil in the Richard Linn American Inn of Court this year. Iris is currently a Judicial Extern in the Northern District of Illinois. Additionally, she serves as Chief Justice of her law school’s Moot Court program and supports the school’s IP blog, IP Bytes, as Managing Editor.
Michael Madison
Michael Madison is Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He is a Senior Scholar with the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security (Pitt Cyber). At Pitt Law, he is Faculty Director of the Future Law Project and a John E. Murray Faculty Scholar. He is a co-Principal Investigator of the Workshop on Governing Knowledge Commons global research collaborative and a series editor of the Cambridge University Press Studies in Governing Knowledge Commons series.
Caitlin Bruce
Caitlin Bruce is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh and co-founder and lead organizer of Hemispheric Conversations Urban Art Project. Dr. Bruce investigates and helps create public art in urban spaces in transnational contexts. She has written three books and several articles and is a former Fulbright/comexus and Gerda Henkel fellow. Her website is www.caitlinfrancesbruce.com.
Max Gonzales
Max Emiliano Gonzales, also known by their artist name “GEMS”, can be classified as an activist, art educator, muralist, graffiti writer, curator, and much more. Originally from the Southwest side of Chicago and raised in Latino communities, Max brings a unique perspective to Pittsburgh and their Garfield community. Max was brought to Pittsburgh in 2012 to attend Carnegie Mellon University’s Fine Art program on a full-ride Scholarship. By 2016 Max had graduated with honors, secured multiple positions with the University, and was arrested as Pittsburgh’s most wanted graffiti artist. Rather than let the notoriety of their graffiti identity dwindle, Max has gone on to develop a career from it as a practicing artist, muralist, curator, and art educator. Max has presented as a guest artist, lectured, and run workshops at locations including The University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Winchester Thurston High School, Pittsburgh CAPA, Propel Schools, The Carnegie Libraries, Youth Places, Assemble Pgh, and The Environmental Charter School. Max is also a member of Hemispheric Conversations Urban Art Project, the Uptown Arts Council, and the Maxo Vanka Educational Programming Committee. Lately, Max has become most well known for their spray paint Murals and community-driven Mural events. As a full-time muralist, Max wishes to use their identity and vast knowledge of the arts to serve the public and brighten the walls of any community they may be invited into.
Jack Lerner
Jack I. Lerner is Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the UCI Intellectual Property, Arts, & Technology Clinic at University of California, Irvine School of Law. He has written and spoken widely on copyright, freedom of expression, media law, and technology law. He is lead author of the Rap on Trial Legal Guide and the UCI Fair Use Jurisprudence Project and associated resources. Among other accomplishments, under Professor Lerner’s supervision his clinic students obtained exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act on behalf of a nationwide coalition of documentary filmmakers and authors that help them make fair use. Since 2008, Professor Lerner has been Executive Editor of the award-winning treatise Internet Law and Practice in California (CEB).
Felicia Savage Friedman
Felicia has been transforming lives for over 30 years through her trauma-informed practice and teaching of Raja Yoga as an embodied pathway to collective liberation. As a Black, queer, cisgender woman, Felicia nurtures healthy reciprocal relationships through unconditional love, authenticity, and accountability. As the Founder and CEO of YogaRoots on Location, Felicia has taught liberatory frameworks and modalities to thousands of students through AntiRacist Raja Yoga Teacher Trainings, Youth AntiRacist Raja Yoga Trainings, Continuing Education, and Professional Development programs. She is the Community Co-lead of The Pittsburgh Study (TPS) and was integral to the success of earning both the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award and the C. Peter Magrath Awards. Felicia, the first community member, has a faculty appointment at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and doesn’t have a PhD or an MD. Felicia is the director of the Antiracism and Health Equity Solutions course with second and first year medical students.
Daniel Oliveira
Daniel F. Oliveira is Brazilian and the father of Dandara, an 8-month-old happy girl. He is also a professor and researcher in the Intellectual Property Postgraduate Programme at the Academy of the National Institute of Industrial Property of Brazil (INPI). He has a doctorate in international relations from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RIO), a master’s degree in international relations from the Santiago Dantas Programme of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), the University of the State of São Paulo (Unesp) and the University of Campinas (Unicamp), and an undergraduate degree in international relations from PUC-SP. He is a member of the Support Network for Guardians of Biodiverse Knowledge (RAGU-CTA) and of the Democracy Observatory from the Federal University of the Triângulo Mineiro (UFTM). His research areas are: intellectual property, traditional knowledge, international political economy, international norms, anthropology and identity.
Kevin Greene
A U.S. Marine veteran, Kevin J. Greene is the John J. Schumacher Chair Professor at Southwestern Law School ,where he teaches Entertainment Law and Copyright Law. Greene’s scholarship spans two decades including the first works analyzing race+IP. He has represented iconic artists including Bobby Brown, Public Enemy, Spike Lee and George Clinton, and has produced television shows for Netflix and the BBC. Among other awards, he is a recipient of the Vanguard Award for Innovation in Intellectual Property, the California State Bar’s highest award.
Aditya Gupta
Aditya Gupta is a legal researcher specializing in intellectual property law, focusing on copyright and trademark policy. His work critically examines the role of intellectual property in shaping access to knowledge, market structures, and legal frameworks. He has conducted empirical research on trademark examination processes in India, analyzing decision-making patterns and regulatory inconsistencies. His work also explores the relevance of the four-factor fair use test in Indian copyright law, questioning its applicability in a jurisdiction that does not explicitly recognize it. Aditya works with Public.Resource.Org on projects that challenge restrictive copyright regimes and advocate for greater public access to legal and regulatory information. His broader research interests lie in the intersection of law, business strategy, and information policy, with a commitment to examining how intellectual property frameworks impact innovation and public knowledge systems.
Lokesh Vyas
Lokesh Vyas is a PhD student at SciencesPo, Paris working on the genealogy of the “Balance” discourse in international copyright law. His research interests include knowledge governance and information regulation, which he examines through a historical lens. He regularly contributes to two leading Indian IP blogs, SpicyIP and IPRMENTLAW.
Sílvia Guimarães
Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Brasília, Brazil. She works in the fields of Indigenous ethnology, Indigenous health, and popular health. Her research focuses primarily on cosmology and shamanism; concepts of personhood, space, and time; gender; indigenism; Indigenous histories; and Indigenous and popular/traditional medical systems and health policies. She is also interested in interdisciplinary dialogues between Anthropology and Public Health. Her work involves fostering inter-epistemic dialogues, with an emphasis on epistemic pluralism, care practices, and insurgent methodologies.
Elena Baylis
Professor Elena Baylis is an expert in post-conflict and transitional justice. Her scholarship focuses on topics that concern the relationships among communities and between domestic and international law, such as protection and repatriation of cultural objects, reconciliation mechanisms, hybrid criminal courts, the roles of international criminal law professionals, and crimes against humanity within the United States. She served as an expert and primary drafter for the Dakar Guidelines on the Establishment of Hybrid Courts. She has conducted field research and worked on legal education/rule of law initiatives in several post-conflict states, including Kosovo, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her research has been commissioned by the International Center for Transitional Justice and the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Andrea Wallace
Andrea Wallace is an Associate Professor at the University of Exeter. She is Deputy Director of SCuLE and Co-Director of the GLAM-E Lab in partnership with the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at NYU Law School. Andrea has a PhD in Cultural Heritage Law from the University of Glasgow with the CREATe RCUK Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy in partnership with the National Library of Scotland. Andrea previously received an LLM in European Business Law from Radboud University in the Netherlands, a JD from DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is also a registered attorney with the Illinois State Bar in the United States.
Ashtin Berry
Ashtin Berry (she/her) is an activist, educator, sommelier, bartender, sociologist, and equity consultant. She is a Jack of All Trades, utilizing diverse skills—from hospitality to community organizing—to develop a comprehensive educational platform. Her work has been featured in various prestigious outlets, including Food & Wine, Bon Appetite, the Washington Post, and many more, as well as respected universities like NYU and UC Berkley. She has been honored as the 50 Best Bars Icon of the Year, along with many other prestigious industry awards. Berry leverages her extensive background as an equity consultant and hospitality professional to create tools that highlight and disrupt societal politics that contribute to harmful interpersonal rituals. She is currently working on her debut book and a long-term project to showcase hospitality culture as an essential aspect of public history.
Aman Gebru
Professor Gebru is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center. His research explores the intersections of intellectual property law, knowledge governance and cultural property. His recent projects theorize legal frameworks for communal authorship, cultural appropriation, and truthfulness in the trademark system. His work has been published or is forthcoming in leading legal journals, including the Arizona State Law Journal, University of Richmond Law Review, Denver Law Review, Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal, and North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology.
Before joining the University of Houston, Professor Gebru served as an Assistant Professor of Law at Duquesne University School of Law, a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, and a Global Post-Doctoral Fellow at New York University School of Law. His international teaching experience includes positions at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Canada and Haramaya University College of Law in Ethiopia.
sarah huny young
sarah huny young is an award-winning photographer and visual artist primarily documenting and exalting Black womanhood and queer communities through portraiture and video. Framing her subjects as muses, she often shoots on-location in personal, intimate spaces and in nature. Clients and features include The New York Times, NBC News, ESPN, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, and Pittsburgh City Paper.
Sileshi Hirko
Dr. Sileshi Bedasie Hirko is a former Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Advanced Scholar and a Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Ottawa. From within the broad domains of international economic and business laws, Dr. Sileshi’s major areas of research interests focus on legal fields concerned with intellectual property, regulation of competition, international trade, international business, digital technologies and sustainable human development. Encompassing diverse areas of intellectual property, family laws, digital technologies, higher education and sustainable human development, his scholarly works have featured in several reputable national and international journals.
Alveena Shah
Professor Alveena Shah’s research focuses on economic law, including colonial legacies in international market structures and international economic law. Her work explores financial markets and related legal regimes through lenses of critical race theory, third world approaches to international law, and feminist political economy. Before joining Tulane, Shah worked at Dechert LLP in their Global Finance practice. She earned her B.A. from Boston University and her J.D. from UCLA School of Law with concentrations in International and Comparative Law, Critical Race Studies, and Public Interest Law and Policy. She also served as the Editor-in-Chief of the UCLA Law Review.
Sami Ahmad
Sami Ahmad, MD/PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh, is presently investigating how metaphysical frameworks from the Islamic intellectual tradition can address key problems in modern medical education, bioethics, and the Philosophy of Science. Past research includes the joint origins of modern medicine and colonialism in Christian culture, a relationship traced up through the 21st century. His background spans cancer biology, Islamic Philosophy & Theology, as well as a degree in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology.