Patrizia Patrizi

Patrizia Patrizi

Chair of the Board

Patrizia Patrizi (Sardinia, Italy) is member of the Board since June 2017 and since 2022 the Chair of the Board. She is in charge of the Working group on Restorative Cities and she was the co-organiser of our 11th international conference in Sassari.  She is psychologist and psychotherapist, full professor of Psychology and Law, and Restorative Justice Practices at the University of Sassari. She was an expert counsellor for the Italian juvenile justice system, and she is an expert trainer for professionals working in the Italian penitentiary system, social services, NGO. In 2014, together with her colleagues Gian Luigi Lepri, Ernesto Lodi, Maria Luisa Scarpa, she started the first research action programme on designing a local community intervention based on restorative justice practices in Nuchis-Tempio Pausania. She collaborates with a team of restorative justice  practitioners on a permanent basis in Italy, and they developed a model of restorative community named ‘Co.Re – community of restorative relationship’. In 2017 she established the Restorative Service of Psychological Counseling in the District of Tempio Pausania.
More info: www.psicoius.it / patrizi@uniss.it

Brunilda Pali by Rob Stevens

Brunilda Pali

Vice-Chair

Brunilda Pali (Albania/Belgium) has been a Board Member since 2017 and Secretary of the Board from 2017-2022. Since 2022, she is the Vice Chair of the Board. Brunilda is currently Senior Researcher at KU Leuven (Belgium), Adjunct Professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School (USA), Co-founder of the multidisciplinary collective The Voice of Nature Kinstitute led by environmental artist Maria Lucia Cruz Correia, and founding member of the Leuven Restorative City vzw.
She publishes extensively on restorative justice and has co-edited Critical Restorative Justice (Hart Publishing, 2017), Restoring Justice and Security in Intercultural Europe (Routledge, 2018), and The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Restorative Justice (Palgrave, 2022).
Brunilda has an interdisciplinary and intercultural background: she has studied Psychology at the University of Bosphorus in Istanbul (Turkey), Gender Studies at the Central European University in Budapest (Hungary), Cultural Studies at Bilgi University in Istanbul (Turkey), and Criminology at KU Leuven (Belgium).
Her areas of interest are gender, critical social theory, restorative, environmental and social justice, cultural and critical criminology, and arts.​ She has a blog dedicated to restorative justice Restorotopias and can be reached at brunilda.pali@kuleuven.be

Petra Masopust Šachová

Petra Masopust Šachová

Secretary

Petra (the Czech Republic) is a Board member since 2020 and the Secretary of the Board since 2022. She is a lawyer, academic and researcher who strives for the broad involvement of restorative justice in the Czech criminal law, both at the theoretical level and in practice. She co-funded and recently works as a chairperson of the Czech Institute for Restorative Justice and as a lecturer at the Department of Criminal Law of the Law Faculty of Palacký University in Olomouc, where she introduced the first restorative justice course for law students in the country. She also acts as a coordinator of the Czech Core Member team of Restorative Justice: Strategies for Change project and as a professional guarantor of the Building Bridges programme run by Prison Fellowship, Czech Republic. She is the author of the first Czech comprehensive book on RJ: Restorative approches when dealing with crime. Petra holds a master‘s degree from the Law Faculty, Charles University in Prague and Ph.D. from the Law Faculty, Masaryk University in Brno. Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/RestorativniJustice / petra.masopustsachova@restorativni-justice.cz

Antonio Buonatesta

Antonio Buonatesta

Treasurer

Antonio (Belgium) is a Board member and the Treasurer of the Board since 2022. He has a Master in Psychology at the University of Leuven /Louvain-la-Neuve. Since obtaining his degree nearly all his career has been carried out in the restorative justice field. In 1984 he was the founder of one of the first agencies in the French speaking Region of Belgium set up to promote restorative programmes for juvenile offenders (Centre GACEP, Charleroi). He ran this agency for twenty year. In 1998, on the ground of this experience and in the framework of a national project initiated earlier in Flanders, he was assigned by the Belgian ministry of Justice to lead the French speaking wing of this project, aimed at experiencing restorative justice in all types of crime in the adult criminal justice system. For this purpose, he set up the NGO ‘MEDIANTE’, an umbrella agency to operate and deliver restorative justice in each French speaking judicial district along with its Flemish counterpart, Moderator.
Between 2003 and 2005, he took part with his Flemish colleagues in the task group set up by the Justice department to define the basic principles providing the availability of mediation at any stage of the criminal procedure for any type of crime. Through this multi-sided professional path, he developed skills on the methodological level (restorative processes in serious crimes), on the policy level (consultation with judicial, political authorities) including the management of a regional NGO.
He is a founding member of the EFRJ, and currently a member of the of the Standards & Values Committee.

Katerina Soulou

Katerina Soulou

Editorial Committee

Katerina (Greece) is a Board member since 2018 and responsible for the work of the Editorial Committee  within the EFRJ.  She is a PhD candidate at Aix-Marseille University (France) working on restorative justice from a legal perspective (she presented her topic in the competition “Ma Thèse en 180 sec”). She has studied Law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and she holds a Master degree on Criminal Sciences from the Aix-Marseille University. She is a teaching assistant at the Law faculty of the Institute d’Études Francophones (Id’EF) in Athens, in partnership with the University Paris 13. Since 2019 she collaborates with the French Federation “Citoyen et Justice” as a trainer on restorative justice. During 2017-2018 she was a Board member of the French Association “Genepi” that works on prison issues and she was giving workshops on Theater in the Prison of Marseille. In 2018 she was awarded a scholarship for a study visit in LaSalle University (Canoas) from the French Ambassador in Brazil. aikaterinasoulou@gmail.com

Maia Chochua

Maia Chochua

Communication

Maia (Georgia) is a lawyer and a master of public administration, with over 20 years of experience in planning, coordinating and managing USA and EU-funded justice sector programs in Georgia and in the neighbouring countries. She is at the forefront of introducing and promoting restorative justice approaches in Georgia, and played a key role in tabling down and enforcement of the Juvenile Justice Code. Together with like-minded professionals, she pioneered multidisciplinary cooperation, carried out trainings for
practitioners and organised international conferences and study visits on restorative justice. She acted as an executive editor of the first handbook on restorative justice published in Georgia for university and professional teaching. At Present, she holds the position of Deputy Team Leader of the EU4Justice Project in Georgia, implemented by Austrian company Human Dynamics, aimed at providing a fair trial to all and promoting liberal criminal justice policies. She is a founder of a non-profit organisation “New Page”, supporting restorative justice programmes for children in Georgia.  maia.chochua@eu4justice.ge

Claudia Christen-Schneider

Claudia Christen-Schneider

Claudia (Switzerland) is a criminologist and a restorative justice practitioner. As founder and current president of the Swiss RJ Forum, she is actively involved in promoting, developing and implementing restorative justice in Switzerland. She has led several pilot projects in Swiss prisons and facilitates direct offender-victim dialogues. She is currently researching and writing a book on the intersection of restorative justice and trauma-informed practice, and the role of community in such processes. Claudia is part of the research group at the University of Portsmouth and is a member of the advisory board of Nomos Publishing's new publication series on issues of resocialisation, victim protection and restorative justice (Seehaus plus). She is a guest lecturer at the Bern University of Applied Sciences and is involved in designing and delivering training on restorative justice.
Claudia obtained her MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Portsmouth (UK) and studied Restorative Justice at SFU in Canada.
Within the EFRJ, Claudia is involved in the EFRJ Values and Standards Committee, the Editorial Committee and the PROTECT project, which aims to share best practices on restorative justice and promote victim protection.

Jorge Elías Ollero Perán

Jorge Elías Ollero Perán

Jorge (Spain) is the Director of the Penal Enforcement and Restorative Justice Service of the Government of Navarra. As manager of this Service, he is promoting the first Spanish Regional Law on restorative justice and restorative practices.
In the past, he has coordinated restorative justice projects inside prison and in civil society organisations, and has implemented European projects regarding prisons, drug policy and restorative justice.
He obtained his BA in Law in the University of Granada (Spain) and completed his education with an MA in Social and Political Thought at Sussex University (UK) and a Restorative Justice Expertise in the University of Seville (Spain).
As a researcher he has published numerous articles on the relation of restorative justice with abolitionism, ecology, alternatives to imprisonment and drug policy. Recently, he has published the book Penalismo mágico (Magical penalism) to challenge the belief that punishment will solve all our social and political problems. He is  Board member since 2022. 

Lucy Jaffé

Lucy Jaffé

Board member

Lucy Jaffé (United Kingdom) has made a significant contribution to building restorative justice policy and practice through her leadership of the UK non-governmental organisation, Why me? Transforming Lives through Restorative Justice. She brings strategic policy, promotional and business development skills to the EFRJ as well as leadership experience. Lucy is committed to widening access to restorative justice for everyone affected by crime and conflict in Europe. She believes that using a restorative lens across all areas of civic and private life offers hope in a world which often feels hostile and challenging. 

She co-chairs the EFRJ Working Group on Polarisation, Hate Crime and Violent Extremism and is committed to supporting the group to produce practical outputs, including guidance for members and policy recommendations. She is Chair of the External Policy Engagement working group supporting the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Restorative Justice. Lucy sits on the National Victim’s Commissioner Restorative Justice Advisory Group. 

Thanks to our former Board members!

  • Ivo Aertsen (KU Leuven Institute of Criminology, Belgium, Founder of the organisation, Chair of the Board) 
  • Bart Claes (Belgium, Treasurer, 2016-2022) 
  • Beata Czarnecka-Dzialuk (researcher, Poland, 2012-2016)
  • Bruno Caldeira (Associação de Mediadores de Conflitos, Portugal, 2012-2016)
  • Lars Otto Justad (Norway, 2016-2022) 
  • Siri Kemény (Norway) 
  • Niall Kearney (United Kingdom) 
  • Karolien Mariën (Advisor for European projects at the Research and Development service of KU Leuven, Belgium, 2014-2016)
  • Vicky De Souter (Federal Public Service Justice in Brussels, Belgium, 2012-2017)
  • Michael Kilchling (Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, Germany, 2006-2018)
  • Aarne Kinnunen (Finland, 2008 - 2020) 
  • Roberto Moreno (Basque Country, Spain, 2014 - 2020) 
  • Annemieke Wolthuis (The Netherlands, 2010-2022, Vice-Chair from 2016)

EFRJ Board Code of Conduct

2022