Biographies Transitional Justice and Restorative Justice Working Group

Subindra Bogati (Nepal) is the Founder and Executive Director of the Nepal Peacebuilding Initiative (NPI), based in Lalitpur. He has been actively involved in peacebuilding since 2006 and in transitional justice since 2021. At NPI, he works closely with political leaders, parliamentarians, government bodies, the international community, civil society organisations, and conflict victims to facilitate inclusive dialogue on Nepal’s transitional justice process. Subindra specialises in combining top-down and bottom-up approaches to mediation. He currently leads a transitional justice project that bridges policymakers and victims, with a focus on advancing restorative justice within Nepal’s transitional justice framework. He has authored numerous articles on peacebuilding, social cohesion, and transitional justice, contributing to critical discourse in these fields. Subindra was awarded the FCO Chevening Fellowship in 2009 at the University of Birmingham, UK. He holds a master’s degree in International Relations from London Metropolitan University, UK, and is a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar

María Cielo Linares (Colombia) is a consultant for the OHCHR with a background in law and policy. She has worked in restorative and transitional justice for a decade, focusing on Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace, the 2016 Peace Agreement, reparation programs, land restitution, and the Truth Commission. Her expertise includes policy development, research on prevention, and empathetic, emotion-focused listening. She emphasises long-term impact, political communication, and comprehensive narratives for sustainable change in justice and reconciliation processes.

Kerry Clamp (UK) is an Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Nottingham, specialising in restorative justice and transitional justice. She has been researching restorative justice and transitional justice since 2007, focusing on their role in post-conflict settings such as the Czech Republic, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. Her monograph "Restorative Justice in Transition" (Routledge) and edited volume "Restorative Justice in Transitional Settings" explore restorative justice applications at different levels. She has published on restorative justice in youth justice reforms and co-authored a paper on restorative justice and transitional justice intersections. Recently, Kerry engaged with Colombia’s JEP, authoring a policy brief and securing funding to support Colombia’s transitional justice process. Her work extends to the Kurdish issue, Bangladesh massacres, and emerging collaborations in Turkey, Lebanon, and the Middle East.

Pierre Druart (Belgium/Germany) is a PhD candidate at KU Leuven, UCLouvain, and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. His research explores the intersection of restorative and transitional justice, focusing on post-genocide Rwanda and the role of the Catholic Church. He employs empirical fieldwork methods, including interviews and participant observation. His interests include memory in restorative justice and transitional justice and the intergenerational transmission of trauma. He is involved in developing a restorative justice certificate at UCLouvain/ULBruxelles and will join a prison-based restorative program in Belgium in 2026.

Beatriz Eugenia Mayans Hermida (The Netherland) is a researcher at the Centre for International Criminal Justice, Vrije University Amsterdam, and an EC Grant Visiting Professional at the International Criminal Court, The Hague. She has worked in transitional and restorative justice for six years, focusing on alternative sanctions for international crimes. Her PhD examined Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) and its restorative sanctioning regime. She has advised the JEP on victim harm characterization and co-organized conferences on transitional justice. Currently, she is developing justice indicators with Brandeis University and seeking funding for further research on restorative sanctions.

Noémi Lévy-Aksu (Turkey) Noémi Lévy-Aksu (Turkey) is the Director of the Memory and Peace Studies Program at Hafıza Merkezi (Truth Justice Memory Center) in Istanbul. She has worked in restorative and transitional justice for four years, focusing on research, fieldwork with victims' families, and community-based initiatives. At Hafıza Merkezi, her main focus is on dealing with the past and youth participation. She also contributes to a new project on conflict-related violations of children's rights in Turkey’s Kurdish region, documenting cases and supporting restorative justice projects. She co-authors a forthcoming report on justice demands related to these violations, questioning the relevance of restorative justice approaches to the context of the Kurdish conflict.

Jennifer Llewellyn (Canada) is a Professor of Law, Chair in Restorative Justice, and Director of the Restorative Research, Innovation, and Education Lab at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University (Canada). She has worked in restorative and transitional justice since 1996, focusing on truth and reconciliation processes, justice transformation, and policy development. She advised Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, designed the first restorative public inquiry, and consults on major justice commissions. She has worked with the UN, the Kroc Institute, and the Alliance of NGOs on Criminal Justice. Co-editor of Restorative Justice, Reconciliation and Peacebuilding (Oxford), she also leads projects on feminist relational theory and restorative communities. As Global Co-Editor of the International Encyclopaedia on Restorative Justice, she promotes RJ as a justice framework in transitions. She also leads a multi-year project on restorative communities.

Louise Mallinder (Northern Ireland) is a Professor of Law and Deputy Director of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute of Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast. Since her doctoral studies, she has worked on transitional justice, focusing on amnesty laws. Her PhD thesis, later published as Amnesties, Human Rights and Political Transitions, explored how amnesties coexist with or are conditioned on participation in alternative justice mechanisms, including restorative justice. She has conducted fieldwork in South Africa and other transitional settings and manage a database analyzing 700 amnesties since 1945. She is currently writing on amnesties under international law and co-editing the Encyclopaedia on Law and Peace. Her recent projects focus on reconciliation, conditional amnesties, and alternative sanctions in Colombia and Northern Ireland.

Kieran McEvoy (Northern Ireland) is the Senator George J. Mitchell Chair of Peace, Security, and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast. He holds a PhD in Law and has over 30 years of experience in restorative and transitional justice. His research focuses on politically motivated violence, truth recovery, reparations, and armed groups addressing past harms. He has worked in over a dozen post-conflict societies and played a key role in early restorative justice dialogues with the IRA, leading to the creation of Community Restorative Justice Ireland (CRJI). He remains an active board member. Currently, he holds a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship on how armed groups address past harms and will be a Visiting Professor at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center in 2025.

Stephan Parmentier (Belgium) is a Professor of Sociology of Crime, Law, and Human Rights at KU Leuven, where he coordinates the Research Line on Human Rights and Transitional Justice at the Leuven Institute of Criminology. His restorative justice work dates back to the 1980s, when he studied alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in the US and Europe, later applying it to restorative justice in criminal justice. He began working on transitional justice in the mid-1990s, focusing on political transitions in Latin America’s Southern Cone and the post-Apartheid South African truth commission. His transitional justice research mostly covers truth commissions, victim reparations programmes, and memory work, while his restorative justice focus includes models, such as peace circles, and reconciliation initiatives. With an effort to capture transitional justice visions ‘from below’, he has primarily employed qualitative methods, occasionally using quantitative surveys, in a variety of regions. He is a founding general editor of the international book Series on Transitional Justice, and an advisory board member of The International Journal on Restorative Justice.

Carl Stauffer (USA) is a Senior Expert in Reconciliation at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington, DC. He has worked in restorative justice since 1991 and in transitional justice since 1995, focusing on restorative justice in criminal legal systems, DDR, ex-combatant reintegration, and community policing across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. His PhD explored narrative violence and indigenous transitional justice in Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone. He specialises in narrative applications, systems change, futures thinking, and trauma-informed recovery. His work includes Colombia’s JEP, South Africa’s transitional justice process, and restorative justice applications for army defectors. He is co-authoring a study on Sierra Leone’s Fambul Tok process and co-hosting a Futures Thinking Gathering in 2025 on scenario planning in war-to-peace transitions.

Camilo Umaña (Colombia) is a Visiting Professor at Brown University and a Carr Center Fellow at Harvard University. He has served as Colombia’s Deputy Minister of Justice of Criminal Law and Restorative Justice, as an expert investigator for the Colombian Truth Commission, and as an expert for the Colombian Ombudsman on restorative justice. He has worked internationally in justice-led initiatives across Latin-America. His PhD in Criminology and Sociology of Law focused on impunity and state criminality. His work explores innovative RJ practices, JEP sanctions in Colombia, and the limits of transitional justice in protracted conflicts.

Zoé Vautard (France/International) is a transitional justice expert with nine years of experience in human rights, conflict resolution, and policy development across Africa, Europe, and Asia. She has worked with NGOs and international organisations, focusing on community dialogues, mediation, and capacity-building based on UN human rights standards. She is particularly interested in the intersection of restorative and transitional justice, the right to truth and reparations, and victim-centered approaches. A participant in the 2023 Winter Academy of the European Forum for Restorative Justice, she continues to explore restorative justice and transitional justice linkages.

Estelle Zinsstag (UK) is a Lecturer in Criminology at Edinburgh Napier University and a researcher at the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. She currently holds a Personal Fellowship at the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2024-2025) and is an associate researcher at KU Leuven and the University of Oxford. She has worked on restorative justice and transitional justice for 20 years, focusing on gendered and sexual violence in both conflict and non-conflict settings. Her PhD (2008) examined punitive and restorative justice responses to sexual violence in armed conflicts. She co-edits The International Journal of Restorative Justice and co-chairs the European Society of Criminology Restorative Justice Working Group. Her research employs qualitative methods, including narrative and interviews. She has published extensively on restorative justice, transitional justice and sexual violence, advocating for a blended justice approach.