McGill law school appoints co-directors of human rights centre

McGill University’s Faculty of Law has appointed Nandini Ramanujam and Frédéric Mégret, law professors, as co-directors of its Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, where they will serve from Feb. 1, 2021 until June 30, 2024.

“Both colleagues have tremendous contributions to make to the CHRLP and I was delighted when they proposed co-directorship as a means of allowing us to benefit from their complementary talents,” Robert Leckey, McGill’s dean of law, said in the announcement.

Ramanujam, who was interim director of the Centre since last summer, joined the law school as associate professor (professional) in 2014 and was elevated to full professor (professional) last June. She has directed the law school’s International Human Rights Internship Program and Independent Human Rights Internships Program and has represented McGill for the Scholars at Risk Network.

Ramanujam has served as a member of the Steering Committee of the Scholars at Risk Network, Canada section; member and president of the board of the Canadian Human Rights Foundation (Equitas); and board member of Centraide of Greater Montreal. She has assisted with education-related reform in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and has helped develop strategic plans for human rights institutions.

Ramanujam researches and teaches in the subjects of law and development, institutions and governance, economic justice and food security and safety. Her other areas of interest include the role of civil society and media in advancing the rule of law and the links between theory-based and field-based human rights work.

Mégret started as an assistant professor at the law school in 2005, then became an associate professor in 2011 and a full professor in 2019. At McGill University he has been a William Dawson Scholar and a Boulton fellow, while at the Faculty of Law he has been associate dean of research and held a Canada research chair on the law of human rights and legal pluralism.

Mégret has served as assistant professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, research associate at the European University Institute in Florence, attaché and consultant at the International Organizations Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva and co-author of an in-progress book on diasporas and international law with Larissa van den Herik.

His topics of interest include international criminal justice, international human rights law, international humanitarian law, the law of international organizations, transitional justice, criminal law and general international law.