Research

Research Team

The UNESCO Chair brings together a distinguished network of Global Research Leads and Policy Associates who advance its research, policy, and global engagement at the intersection of health, race, and human rights.

Research

Global Research and Policy Leads

Research Lead, Populism, Constitutionalism, and Global Health

Liora Lazarus

lazarus@allard.ubc.ca

Liora Lazarus is a Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, UBC, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford. Holding a BA (Cape Town), LLB Hons (London), and DPhil (Oxon), her expertise sits at the interface between security, the rule of law, and human rights. She joined Allard in 2020 after a twenty-year career at the University of Oxford, where she served as Head of Research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and Associate Professor in Law at St. Anne's College.

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Research Lead, Gender-Based Violence & Racialized Governance

Julie Ynes Ada Tchoukou

jadatcho@uottawa.ca

Julie Ynes Ada Tchoukou is an Assistant Professor in the Common Law Section at the University of Ottawa, where she previously served as the Allan Rock Visiting Professor (2023–2024) and as a Shirley Greenberg Fellow in Women and the Legal Profession (2021–2023). She teaches Property Law, Immigration and Refugee Law, and seminars on theory and practice. Her research focuses on gender-based violence, children's rights, and human rights in international and African legal frameworks, with attention to dismantling systemic barriers.

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Research Lead, Women's Health and International Human Rights

Charlotte Skeet

c.h.skeet@sussex.ac.uk

Dr. Charlotte Skeet is Emeritus Associate Professor in Law and Co-Director of the Sussex Centre for Human Rights Research at the School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex, with affiliations to the Sussex European Institute and the Centre for Gender Studies. Her research engages human rights, gender, and constitutional law, with a particular focus on women's health and access to justice across European jurisdictions. She leads the Chair's European research network and its work on women's health and international human rights.

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Research Lead, Geriatrics and Elder Health; African Policy Stakeholders Liaison

Obehi Akoria

obehi.akoria@uniben.edu

Professor Obehi Aituaje Akoria is a results-driven geriatrician, clinical pharmacologist, public health expert, and healthcare leader at the University of Benin and the University of Benin Teaching Hospital. She served as a Health Commissioner in Edo State, Nigeria (2021–2024), and is versatile across clinical practice, research, and teaching. Her work coordinates health and allied workforce capacity and advances geriatrics and elder health policy across African health systems, bridging frontline care, scholarship, and government policy reform.

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Research Lead, Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Digital Technologies

Jake Effoduh

effoduh@torontomu.ca

Jake Okechukwu Effoduh is an Assistant Professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University, and a Nigerian human rights lawyer whose research examines artificial intelligence, technology law, international human rights law, and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). He previously served as chief counsel of the Africa–Canada AI and Data Innovation Consortium, and his work interrogates how emerging digital technologies shape rights, identities, and governance, particularly across the Global South.

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Research Lead, Migrant Health Justice

Constance MacIntosh

Professor Constance MacIntosh is a Full Professor with the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. She served as Director for Dalhousie's Health Law Institute, and Acting Director for the MacEachern Institute for Public Policy and Governance, and on several national and regional advisory bodies. Her research uncovers how health inequities are generated through practices of legal exceptionalism, where precarity is a product of statutory exclusion or jurisdictional ambiguity. An award winning teacher, she has drawn particular attention to Indigenous and migrant health governance, especially in the context of ableism and stigma.

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Latin-American Policy Stakeholders Liaison

Tamara Gonsalves

info@tamaragonsalves.com

Tamara Amoroso Gonsalves is a Brazilian human rights expert with over twenty years of experience specialising in women's rights, gender justice, and policy advocacy across Latin America and the Caribbean. She holds a PhD in Law and Society from the University of Victoria and is the author of Direitos humanos das mulheres e a Comissão Interamericana de Direitos Humanos. Her work bridges scholarship and litigation strategy, engaging the Inter-American human rights system to advance gender equality and access to justice.

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Research Lead, Global and Comparative Health Law

Uchechukwu Ngwaba

uche.ngwaba@torontomu.ca

Uchechukwu (Uche) Ngwaba is an Associate Professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Toronto Metropolitan University, where his work focuses on global health, health systems, and health governance frameworks. A scholar of public health and international human rights law, constitutional theory, and transitional justice, Uche previously taught at Macquarie, Western Sydney, and Deakin universities in Australia. He leads the Chair's program in global and comparative health law and its work bridging health systems and human rights.

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Research Lead, Anti-Racism, Health Equity, and Inclusive Service Systems

Shirley Chau

shirley.chau@ubc.ca

Dr. Shirley Chau is an Associate Professor at the School of Social Work, Faculty of Health and Social Development, at UBC Okanagan. Trained in a transdisciplinary approach to social problems, her research spans immigration and resettlement, health care access, homelessness, intimate partner violence, and the Chinese diaspora in Canada, united by a focus on equity and social justice in systems of care. Her current SSHRC-funded work examines anti-racism task forces in higher education, and she serves on the BC Provincial Anti-Racism Data Committee advising government on race-based data collection.

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Research Lead, Constitutional Law and Health Governance in Africa; African Policy Stakeholders Liaison

Edoba Omoregie

edoba.omoregie@uniben.edu

Professor Edoba Bright Omoregie, SAN, is the 11th Vice-Chancellor of the University of Benin and a Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law. Born in Benin City in 1969, he earned his LLB with honours from the University of Benin before attending the Nigerian Law School, and was conferred the prestigious rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria. His scholarship spans constitutional law, federalism, and health governance, with deep policy engagement across Nigeria and the African region on questions of rights, institutions, and reform.

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Research Lead, Children and Adolescent Health

Hadiza Okunrobo

Hadiza.Okunrobo@uniben.edu

Dr. Hadiza Omoyemhe Okunrobo is a Lecturer in the Department of Public Law at the University of Benin and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at North-West University in South Africa. She holds a Diploma in Social Work, LLB, LLM, MPhil, and LLD (2024), and her expertise covers children's rights, women's rights, and healthcare law. A passionate advocate and researcher, she leads the Chair's African research network and its work on child and adolescent health, human rights, and African legal systems.

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Network

Associates

Associate, International Human Rights Strategy and Clinical Programming

Omowamiwa Kolawole

omowamiwa.kolawole@utoronto.ca

Omowamiwa Kolawole is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, under the prestigious Public Health Black Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, where his research engages the decolonization of global health governance for more equitable outcomes in developing countries. Called to the Nigerian Bar, he holds an LLB from the University of Lagos and an LLM, PhD in Public Law, and MPH from the University of Cape Town. He is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of human rights law, public health, and global health governance.

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Associate, International Human Rights Strategy and Clinical Programming

Ijeamaka Anika

Ijeamaka.anika@ubc.ca

Ijeamaka Anika is a PhD Candidate at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, UBC, where she completed her LLM as a recipient of the Allard Scholar Graduate Fellowship and is a UBC Four Year Fellowship recipient. She holds an LLB (Hons) from Oxford Brookes University and an LLM in Public International Law from University College London, and previously held a teaching position at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. Her doctoral research examines the cross-fertilization of international criminal law jurisprudence on sexual and gender-based violence with domestic jurisprudence, drawing on public international law, feminist and post-colonial legal theories.

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Associate, Health & Human Rights in Developing Economies

Joyce Nnenna Eseni

joyceseny@gmail.com

Joyce Nnenna Eseni is Head of Legal Services at Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital in Abakaliki, Nigeria, where she contributes legal and policy expertise on health systems, hospital governance, and patient rights. Her published scholarship examines globalisation and human rights in developing economies and the enforcement of women's rights under Nigerian and international frameworks. She bridges day-to-day institutional legal practice with research on how human rights imperatives are realised within African public health infrastructures.

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