Who We Are

The Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy (PHRGE) is overseen by four faculty co-directors: Professors Dan Danielsen, Martha Davis, Lucy Williams and Margaret Woo, and an executive director, Gillian MacNaughton. Twenty one additional members of the Northeastern law school faculty are PHRGE affiliated faculty. PHRGE also hosts senior research fellows, Ford Foundation fellows, and student interns. Faculty, fellows, staff and students engage in a wide range of programs, projects and scholarship on human rights issues.

Faculty Co-Directors

• Professor Dan Danielsen
• Professor Martha F. Davis
• Professor Lucy A. Williams
• Professor Margaret Y.K. Woo

Staff

Gillian MacNaughton, Executive Director
Gillian MacNaughton works on international human rights law with a focus on economic and social rights, particularly the rights to health, education and decent work. She also works on human rights-based policymaking methodology, including indicators, budget analysis and impact assessment. Her current research is on the relationship between social rights and equality rights in the International Bill of Human Rights. Recent articles include “Decent Work for All: A Holistic Human Rights Approach,” 26 American University International Law Review 441 (2011) with Diane F. Frey, and “Healthcare Systems and Equality Rights,” 6 The Equal Rights Review 61 (2011).

Mariah McGill, Ford Foundation Fellow
Mariah McGill is the Ford Foundation fellow at the Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy at Northeastern University School of Law. She assists with PHRGE's domestically-focused programs. In particular, as Institute Coordinator, she played a key role in organizing the ESCR Institute, Beyond National Security: Immigrant Communities and Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which was held on October 14-16, 2010.  Mariah is also researching on the Vermont Workers’ Center “Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign,” which resulted in the 2010 legislation recognizing health care as a “public good” in Vermont and in the 2011 passage of legislation creating a framework for universal health care in Vermont. Mariah has authored multiple articles on this topic for a variety of publications including an article for Health and Human Rights: An International Journal entitled “Human Rights from the Grassroots Up: Vermont’s Campaign for Universal Health Care.”

Angela Duger, Ford Foundation Fellow
Angela Duger is the Ford Foundation Fellow at the Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy (PHRGE) at Northeastern University School of Law.  In this position, she assists with the program’s domestic and international human rights projects and programing by supporting faculty and staff through research and writing.  Angela also assisted in facilitating the 2011 PHRGE Institute “Framing Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for Advocacy and Mobilization:  Towards a Strategic Agenda in the United States” held on November 3-4, 2011.  Angela received her Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law in 2011 and is interested in human rights and its application to international development.

Nizhum Shaikh, Program Coordinator
Nizhum is a sophomore at Northeastern University from Bedford, MA. She is pursuing a B.S. in Criminal Justice with a minor in Law & Public Policy.  She is interested in international law and health law. Nizhum is completing her first co-op at PHRGE, where she is working as the Program Coordinator, and  compiling this year’s Annual Report.  

Alexandra Bonazoli, Research Associate
Alexandra Bonazoli is currently serving as a research associate at PHRGE.  She graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 2010 with a B.A. in Political Science and History and a Certificate in International Relations. At NUSL, Alexandra is interested in furthering her study of human rights law, at both domestic and international levels, as well as immigration law and conflict resolution. While working with PHRGE, Alexandra has researched on the right to decent work for a fact sheet and a poster presentation in conjunction with PHRGE’s October 2010 Institute on Immigrant Communities and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, she assisted organizers at the Institute, and she is conducting research on the non-discrimination policies and laws at the school, university, local, state, and national levels for an initiative to promote the inclusion of “gender identity” in non-discrimination clauses.

Rick Doyon, Faculty Secretary
Rick has worked at Northeastern University for 15 years. For the past four years, he has provided superb, dedicated support to a number of tenured, adjunct, and visiting faculty at the School of Law. Rick was a volunteer for the Buddy Program at AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts for nearly seven years, and he is committed to working for equal rights for the GLBT community.

Due Diligence Project

Zarizana Abdul Aziz , Adjunct Faculty and Project Co-Director
Zarizana is co-director of the Due Diligence Project, a research/advocacy project aimed at studying State obligation to end violence against women, housed at Northeastern University School of Law.  Zarizana is a lawyer actively involved in numerous human rights and women’s rights activities. Her primary areas of interest and expertise are in law reform, particularly in relation to gender equality, violence against women, gender and Islam, family laws and adoption of international human rights standards into domestic laws. Zarizana is chair of Women Living Under Muslims Laws (WLUML), an international solidarity network which provides information, support and a collective space for women whose lives are shaped, conditioned or governed by laws and customs said to derive from Islam. 

Affiliated Scholars

Maria Green, Visiting Scholar
Maria Green works on the intersections between international human rights law and international development policy and practice.  Her writing and teaching have focused in particular on the development or interpretation of global standards around access to basic needs (food, water, health, housing education and work) and on the effective use of these standards by human rights and development practitioners.  With a background both in NGOs and academia, Maria has consulted on human rights and development or anti-poverty issues for UN agencies including the United Nations Development Programme and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, most recently on MDGs planning and the international Right to Development respectively. While at PHRGE she will be working on a project on liberal arts skills as part of grassroots human rights and development practice.

Kyle Courtney, Adjunct Faculty
Kyle K. Courtney is an attorney presently working at Harvard Law School as the Head of External Resource Sharing and Faculty Research. He currently maintains a dual appointment at Northeastern University: as an Affiliated Scholar for PHRGE at the School of Law, and teaching Cyberlaw: Privacy, Ethics, and Digital Rights for the interdisciplinary Information Assurance program at the College of Computer and Information Science.  For the past five years, Kyle has continued to design and teach seminars in international legal research methods for both PHRGE and the Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers' Network.  He holds a J.D. with distinction from Suffolk University School of Law, where he was accepted into the school's specialized Intellectual Property program. He  earned his MLS from Simmons College in Boston. He is a published author and writes a monthly column on research methods for Massachusetts Lawyer's Weekly. Kyle's book, International Human Rights: Research and Process, is forthcoming in 2011.

Human Rights and the Global Economy eJournal (SSRN) Editors

• Professor Rashmi Dyal-Chand
• Professor Hope Lewis
• Professor Wendy E. Parmet

The Social and Economic Rights Project (SERP)

• Professor Karl E. Klare
• Professor Lucy A. Williams

Boston Principles on ESCR and Noncitizens

• Professor Hope Lewis
• Professor Rachel Rosenbloom

Affiliated Faculty

• Professor Roger I. Abrams
• Professor Aziza Ahmed
• Professor Brook K. Baker 
• Professor Leo Beletsky 
• Associate Dean Luke Bierman
• Associate Dean Lee P. Breckenridge
• Professor Richard A. Daynard
• Professor Rashmi Dyal-Chand
• Professor Peter D. Enrich
• Professor Patricia Illingworth
• Professor Karl E. Klare
• Professor Lois Hilfiker Kanter
• Professor Sarah Hooke Lee
• Professor Hope Lewis
• Professor Kristin Madison
• Associate Academic Specialist Susan Maze-Rothstein
• Professor Michael Meltsner
• Professor Wendy Parmet
• Professor David Phillips
• Professor Sonia Rolland
• Professor Rachel Rosenbloom

PHRGE Partners

• American Civil Liberties Union Georgia
• Aspen Institute
• Center for Women's Global Leadership, Rutgers University
• The Economic and Social Rights Group, Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut
• Human Rights Institute, Columbia Law School
• Human Rights Law Network
• INTERIGHTS, The International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights
• International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life, Brandeis University
• International Network for Economic, Social & Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net)
• National Economic and Social Rights Initiative
• National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty
• Oxfam-America
• Physicians for Human Rights
• Social Rights Advocacy Centre
• Vermont Workers' Center