Dr. Angela Melchiorre is the new E.MA Programme Director for the ac.year 2011/2012

The EIUC/E.MA Governing Bodies are happy to announce the appointment of Dr. Angela Melchiorre as the new E.MA Programme Director of the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation (E.MA) for the academic year 2011/2012. With 15 years of experience in academic, governmental and non-governmental human rights work, Dr. Melchiorre brings a wealth of knowledge, skills and enthusiasm to the Programme.

In her last assignment as Research Coordinator for the Right to Education Project within ActionAid International in London, she led strategic research on rights-based approaches to education, gender, development and extreme poverty. In this role she also enjoyed teaching the online course on the right to education offered by HREA. Before joining ActionAid, she worked as Lecturer in Human Rights on the MA in Understanding and Securing Human Rights at the University of London, developing in particular the practice-oriented component of the course.

Prior to that experience, she was Human Rights Advisor for the Italian Permanent Mission at the UN in Geneva and New York, chairing multilateral negotiations on the rights of the child and on Afghanistan. In her personal capacity, she also worked as a consultant for UNESCO-IBE, the first UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education Prof. Katarina Tomaševski, and UNICEF-Italy.

Dr. Melchiorre’s areas of expertise are the right to education, the UN human rights system, and children’s rights. She is the author of At what age... are school-children employed, married and taken to court?, a worldwide comparative analysis of minimum ages under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (third edition in print). As a spin-off from this work, she wrote her PhD thesis on child marriage and the CRC.

Dr. Angela Melchiorre’s history with the E.MA Programme speaks by itself of her commitment: she graduated from the course in 2000, worked as E.MA tutor in 2000/2001, was awarded the E.MA Internship in 2001, participated in the E.MA Fellowship in 2003, and acted as Geneva liaison officer for the E.MA Fellowship in 2004.