2015 Oxford Conference
Rex Ahdar – New Zealand
Professor Faculty of Law, University of Otago

Rex Ahdar is Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand and Adjunct Professor, University of Notre Dame Australia, School of Law, Sydney. He is a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand. He lectures on Competition Law, Contract Law, Law and Sport, and Law and Religion. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley. He is author or editor of Competition Law and Policy in New Zealand (1991); [with John Stenhouse] God and Government: The New Zealand Experience (2000); Law and Religion (2000); Worlds Colliding: Conservative Christians and the Law (2001); [with Nicholas Aroney] Sharia in the West (2010); and [with Ian Leigh] Religious Freedom in the Liberal State (2nd ed, 2013). Published articles in journals such as Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Cambridge Law Journal, Modern Law Review, McGill Law Journal, Ratio Juris, Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, Journal of Church & State, Journal of Law & Religion, Religion & Human Rights, and Rutgers Journal of Law & Religion.

Andrea A. Ajibade – Nigeria
Lecturer and Doctoral Candidate, Department of Jurisprudence and International Law

Andrea Ajibade is a Member of the English Bar and was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple Inns of Court in 1992. She had an extensive practice at the English Bar before coming to Nigeria in 1996, where she is Lecturer in the Law Faculty at the University of Lagos. Her areas of specialization are International Environmental Law and Domestic & International Oil and Gas Law and she is a Life Member of the Nigerian Society for International Law. Obtained a Master's Degree in International Environmental Law from the University of London in 1996. Her interests include reading, aerobics, interior design, theatre and music.

Thiago Alves Pinto – United Kingdom
DPhil Candidate in Law, St Peter’s College, Oxford

Sophie T. Ambler – United Kingdom
Research Associate, The Magna Carta Project

Dr Sophie Ambler is Research Associate on the AHRC-funded Magna Carta Project. Her research interests include the place of bishops in the political community of medieval England, particularly their role in rebellion, revolution and the promotion of Magna Carta. She is also interested in the episcopates of Scotland, Spain and Portugal.

Renae Barker – Australia
Lecturer, University of Western Australia Law School

Dr. Renae Barker is Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Australia. Specialises in the study of Law and Religion with a particular focus on the development of the relationship between the State and religion in Australia. PhD from the University of Western Australia, completed in 2014, as well as a LLB (Hons) and BEcons from Murdoch University. Honorary Research fellow at the Centre for Muslim States and Societies and the Advocate for the Anglican Diocese of Bunbury.

Igor Judge, Baron Judge – United Kingdom
The Rt Hon Lord Judge of Draycote, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales 2008-2013

Iain T. Benson – South Africa
Faculty of Law, University of the Free State, South Africa

Professor Benson, JD, PhD, is called to Bars of BC and Ontario, Canada. He is currently Professor Extraordinary, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein; Visiting Professor (Comparative Constitutional Law) Faculty of Law, University of Western Ontario, South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Human Rights, Public and International Law; Senior Research Fellow, Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life, University of Alberta; Member of the Board and Executive Committee of the Global Centre for Pluralism, Ottawa, Canada. Retained by the Federal Government of Canada for Policy Research Initiative on "Religion and Public Policy" (Jan 2008); one of the drafters of the South African Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms (2010); Special Rapporteur on Law and Religion in Canada and South Africa to the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences, Vatican City (2012); many academic articles and book chapters; work cited by both the Supreme Court of Canada and the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Author, Living Together with Disagreement: Pluralism, the Secular and the Fair Treatment of Beliefs by Law. PhD Thesis, "Associational Framework for the Reconciliation of Competing Rights Claims Involving the Freedom of Religion" (2013).

Janet Epp Buckingham – Canada
Associate Professor of Political Studies and History, Trinity Western University; Director, Laurentian Leadership Centre

Janet Epp Buckingham is an associate professor at Trinity Western University and the Director of the Ottawa-based Laurentian Leadership Centre. She previously served as director, law and public policy for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. In 1986 Dr. Buckingham received her LLB from Dalhousie University.  She clerked for Mr. Justice Barry Strayer of the Federal Court from 1986-1987.  She has been called to the bar and practiced law in Nova Scotia and Ontario. Dr. Buckingham completed her LLD at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa in 1998, with a dissertation comparing religious freedom in Canada and South Africa. Her book, Fighting Over God: a legal and political history of religious freedom in Canada, is forthcoming in Spring 2014.

Barry W. Bussey – Canada

Pieter Coertzen – South Africa
Faculty of Theology (Retired), Stellenbosch University

Retired professor of Theology at the University of Stellenbosch, Professor Coertzen still teaches a course in Comparative Canon Law at the KU Leuven every year. He is chairperson of the Unit for the Study of Law and Religion in the Beyers Naudé Centre for Public Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Stellenbosch and President of the African Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ACLARS). He holds seven degrees: BA, BA Hons, and MA in Philosophy (Pothefstroom University for Christian Higher Education); Bachelor of Theology, Licentiate in Theology, and Master of Theology in Ecclesiology, and doctorate degree in Theology (Ecclesiology) (University of Stellenbosch). For the Dutch Reformed Church he has served in many capacities, including Parish Minister, Actuarius, and Church Law Committees. He was Senior Lecturer in Ecclesiology, professor, and Dean of the Faculty of Theology (University of Stellenbosch). He has published 36 articles in NGTT (of which he has been editor for many years), has written 14 books and is co-author or editor of more than 30 other publications. Among many honors and activities: Chairman of the Huguenot Memorial Museum in Franschhoek. 

W. Cole Durham, Jr. – United States
Susa Young Gates University Professor of Law and Director, International Center for Law and Religion Studies, Brigham Young University

Cole Durham is Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies since the Center was officially organized on January 1, 2000. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was a Note Editor of the Harvard Law Review and Managing Editor of the Harvard International Law Journal. He has been heavily involved in comparative law scholarship, with a special emphasis on comparative constitutional law. He is President of the International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ICLARS), based in Milan, Italy, and a Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion. He served as the Secretary of the American Society of Comparative Law from 1989 to 1994. He is an Associate Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law in Paris—the premier academic organization at the global level in comparative law. He served as a General Rapporteur for the topic “Religion and the Secular State” at the 18th International Congress of Comparative Law held in July 2010. He served in earlier years as Chair both of the Comparative Law Section and the Law and Religion Section of the American Association of Law Schools.

Neil Foster – Australia
Professor, Newcastle Law School, Faculty of Business and Law

Neil Foster is Associate Professor of Law in Newcastle Law School at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. He teaches and researches in the areas of Torts, Workplace Health and Safety Law, and Property and in 2013 began teaching a new course in Law and Religion. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Torts Law Journal, and was a co-author of the 6th and 7th editions of the Luntz & Hambly Torts text, sole author of a 2014 Supplement to that book on "Defamation and Wrongful Interference with Goods", and responsible for a new chapter on "Breach of Statutory Duty" in the 10th edition of Fleming’s Law of Torts. Author of Workplace Health and Safety Law in Australia (2012), and an e-book published by Matthias Media, Pressure Points (2014) dealing with potential clashes between the Christian faith and recent laws. He has published a number of articles in the area of torts and WHS law, and is developing a research interest in Law & Religion. He is lead author of a chapter on "Principles of OHS Law" in an online database called the "OHS Body of Knowledge" put together by the Safety Institute of Australia in 2014. As well as undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in Law (BA/LLB UNSW, LLM from Newcastle), he is a graduate of Moore Theological College in Sydney (BTh ACT; DipATh Moore). 

Frederick M. Gedicks – United States
Guy Anderson Chair and Professor of Law, Brigham Young University, J. Reuben Clark Law School

Professor Gedicks is Guy Anderson Chair at the BYU Law School since 2005. He is widely published on law and religion, constitutional law, and constitutional interpretation, including two books,The Rhetoric of Church and State: A Critical Analysis of Religion Clause Jurisprudence (1995), and  Choosing the Dream: The Future of Religion in American Public Life (1991) (with Roger Hendrix). His current research is focused on legal issues and problems posed by federal and state religious accommodation statutes after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014). Recent publications in this area include "Is Hobby Lobby Worse for Religious Liberty Than Smith?", St. Thomas Journal of Law & Public Policy (forthcoming Fall 2015) (with Andrew Koppelman); "One Cheer for Hobby Lobby: Improbable Alternatives, Truly Strict Scrutiny, and Third-Party Employee Burdens," 38 Harvard Journal of Law & Gender 153 (2015); and "RFRA Exemptions from the Contraception Mandate: An Unconstitutional Accommodation of Religion," 49 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 343 (2014) (with Rebecca Van Tassell). He is principal author and counsel of record on a Supreme Court amicus brief filed for himself and twenty other church-state scholars in Hobby Lobby which argued that for-profit employer exemptions from the contraception mandate violate the Establishment Clause, and published a widely read op-ed in the Washington Post which made the same argument, "Paying for the Boss's Beliefs," January 20, 2014, at A15 col.3.

Bruce C. Hafen – Germany
Emeritus General Authority and Member of the First Quorum of Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Elder Bruce C. Hafen is an internationally recognized lawyer, scholar, and religious leader.  After graduating from Brigham Young University, he earned a juris doctorate from the University of Utah.  He practiced law in Salt Lake City, then became assistant to the president of Brigham Young University where he helped create the J. Reuben Clark Law School and became a member of that school's original faculty.  As a law professor, he attained international recognition in the fields of family law, educational law, and constitutional law, with particular interests in the legal rights and needs of children and the legal status of marriage. Elder Hafen also served as president of Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho from 1978 to 1985, and from 1985 to 1989 he became the dean of the BYU Law School which he had helped to found. From 1989 to 1996, he served as Provost of BYU before embarking on full-time church service. 

Elder Hafen became a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1996.  He has served in bishoprics, stake presidencies, and more recently as Area President of the Australia/New Zealand area. He also served in the Europe Central Area Presidency of the Church. As a young man he served a mission in West Germany. Elder Hafen was released from the First Quorum of the Seventy and designated an emeritus general authority in October 2010. He then served as president of the St. George Utah Temple from November 2010 to the end of 2013. 

Richard H. Helmholz – United States
Ruth Wyatt Rosenson Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School

Richard Helmholz is Ruth Wyatt Rosenson Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago.  A 1962 graduate of Princeton University, he also studied law at Harvard Law School (LL.B. 1965) and medieval history at the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. 1970). He began his teaching career at Washington University in St. Louis and moved to the University of Chicago’s Law School in 1981. There he teaches the law of real and personal property, together with related subjects. Most of his scholarship has related to the history of law, with a specialization in the study of Roman and canon law’s impact on the English law. He is the author of several books on the subject, including The Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction from 597 to the 1640s (Oxford History of the Laws of England, Vol. 1) (2004) and, most recently, Natural Law in Court: A History of Legal Theory in Practice (2015). His work as a legal historian has brought him several marks of professional recognition., includingAlexander von Humboldt Research Prize; British Academy, Corresponding Fellow; American Society of Legal History, President; American Law Institute, Member; Cambridge University, Goodhart Professor and Fellow; Trinity College, Dublin, LL.D. (hon.); and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow. He and his wife, Marilyn, live in Chicago’s Hyde Park, allowing him the daily pleasure of walking to work.

Roberta Herzberg – United States
Assistant Director, Individual Freedom and Free Markets, John Templeton Foundation

Roberta Herzberg is Assistant Director of Individual Freedom & Free Markets at the John Templeton Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation, she held a faculty position in political science at Utah State University (USU), where she specialized in public policy, public choice, and American politics. At USU, she also served as department head in political science, as administrative director of The Institute of Political Economy, overseeing the USU government internship program, and was a principal investigator on a number of academic and federal grants that examined health and education policy and public choice institutions. She was also active in the Utah policy process and served on several state policy committees and commissions including the Utah Health Policy Commission, Small Employer Health Benefits study group, Medical Education Council, and Health Advisory Council, where she was vice-chair. She was president of The Public Choice Society (2014-2016). Dr. Herberg received a Ph.D. in political economy from Washington University in St. Louis and a B.A. from Pomona College in Claremont, CA. She has published several monographs and articles on policy, individual incentives, and political institutions in American Politics, and been a frequent speaker on health policy and the problems of the uninsured.  

Mark Hill QC – United Kingdom
Honorary Professor, Centre for Law and Religion, Cardiff University; Extraordinary Professor, University of Pretoria; Visiting Professor, Dickson Poon Law School, King's College, London

Barrister specialising in ecclesiastical law and religious liberty. He has represented clients in UK Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights. He is a recorder on the Midland Circuit (sitting in criminal, civil and family cases) and Deputy Judge of Upper Tribunal, Immigration and Asylum Chamber. He sits as judge in ecclesiastical courts of the Church of England and is Vsiting Professor at Cardiff University’s Centre for Law and Religion, at University of Pretoria, and at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College, London. Publications include Magna Carta, Religion and the Rule of Law, Religion and Law in the United Kingdom, Religion and Discrimination Law in the European Union, Ecclesiastical Law, Religious Liberty and Human Rights, and English Canon Law. He is a Consultant Editor of the Ecclesiastical Law Journal and a member of the Editorial Boards of the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion and the Revista General de Derecho Canónico y Derecho Eclesiástico del Estado. He is Ecumenical Fellow in Canon Law at the Venerable English College in Rome, and a former President of the European Consortium for Church and State Research. Accredited mediator, current co-chair, and a founder of BIMA, a charity which promotes faith-based mediation.

Akinola Ibidapo-Obe – Nigeria
Professor and Dean, University of Lagos

Akinola Ibidapo-Obe is Dean of the Faculty of Law and Director of the Centre for Human Rights, University of Lagos where he has been teaching in the Dept. of Public Law since 1989. Principal Partner in the law firm of Akin Ibidapo-Obe & Company, Legal Practitioners, Consultants & Arbitrators. Human Rights Activist, Founder and Executive Director of Masses League for Legal Aid and Human Rights (MALLAHR) established to provide legal aid to indigents. Successfully hosted (with support from BYU, ACLARS, and the Nigerian Bar Association) an international Conference on Law and Religion on the theme: "Towards Law and Religious Freedom in Africa" from 23-27 February 2015 at the University of Lagos. An important outcome was establishment of the Nigerian Association for Law and Religion Studies (to promote research and education on law and religion issues) and the West African Regional Centre for Law and Religion Studies located within the university with Lagos as a hub in the West African sub region for university-based research and education on law and religion.

Mark W. Janis – United Kingdom
William F. Starr Professor of Law, University of Connecticut; Visiting Fellow and former Reader in Law, University of OxfordThe Queen's College

Mark Janis is William F. Starr Professor of Law at the University of Connecticut and a Visiting Fellow & Formerly Reader in Law at the University of Oxford. He is a graduate of Princeton University (AB), the University of Oxford (BA, MA), and the Harvard Law School (JD). He served as a US naval officer and was an associate at the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell in New York & Paris. He has been a visiting professor at Cornell & UCLA in the USA, Paris I & Aix-en-Provence in France, Heidelberg & Muenster in Germany, Leiden & Tilburg in the Netherlands, Riga in Latvia, and the University of International Business and Economics Beijing in China. He has published more than sixty articles and twenty books, including a standard text book on International Law (6th ed 2012), a popular case book on International Law (5th ed 2014), one of the first case books on European Human Rights Law (3d ed 2008), and an intellectual history of the United States and the Law of Nations (2010). He lectures and writes on Public International Law, International Human Rights Law, and U.S. Constitutional Law.

RonNell Andersen Jones – United States
Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Research, BYU Law School

Professor RonNell Andersen Jones researches legal issues affecting the press and the intersection between media and the courts, with a particular focus on the U.S. Supreme Court. Her work on press issues has appeared in journals including Michigan Law Review, Harvard Law Review Forum, and UCLA Law Review. A regular speaker at media law and First Amendment conferences, she also served as the director of a widely cited nationwide study of the frequency and impact of subpoenas served upon newspapers and television newsrooms. She clerked for Judge William A. Fletcher of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the US Supreme Court and worked in the appellate division of the law firm of Jones Day, where her practice focused on constitutional cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. She taught media law to journalism students at The Ohio State University and Ohio Wesleyan University. 

David M. Kirkham – United States
Director, BYU London Centre, and Senior Fellow, International Center for Law and Religion Studies

A professor in the Brigham Young University Department of Political Science, David Kirkham is academic director of Brigham Young University Limited (London Centre). He was for eight years before that Senior Fellow for Comparative Law and International Policy and Regional Advisor for Europe, for the International Center for Law and Religion Studies. He came to the Center from the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, where he served as Associate Dean and Professor of International Politics and Democratic Studies. He was Associate Professor of History, Director of International History, and Director of International Plans and Programs at the US Air Force Academy. He onducted international negotiations and diplomatic activities for several years for the US Government and United Nations, including as Senior Humanitarian Affairs Officer at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Geneva (with duties primarily in Africa). He has officially represented the US and the UN in more than 40 nations on six continents. He holds BA and JD degrees from BYU and a PhD from George Washington University.

Merilin Kiviorg – Estonia
Senior Research Fellow, in Public International Law and Human Rights, University of Tartu Faculty of Law

Dr. Merilin Kiviorg (DPhil Oxford, mag iur Tartu) is a senior research fellow in public international law and human rights at the University of Tartu Faculty of Law and an author of many articles published on law and religion, and on European human rights law and practice regarding freedom of religion or belief.  She has taught international law, human rights and international relations at the University of Oxford, as well as serving as a Lecturer and Assistant Professor in International Law, Human Rights and EU Law at the University of Tartu in Estonia. She was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. She has also served as an expert advisor on freedom of religion or belief for non-governmental and governmental bodies (e.g the Estonian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Legal Chancellor and the Estonian President). She is currently teaching courses on Comparative Human Rights and on Religion and Human Rights. Her current research interests are human rights and religion in Europe with special focus on Eastern Europe and specifically Russia.

Tore Lindholm – Norway
Professor Emeritus/Faculty of Law, Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo

Tore Lindholm is Emeritus Professor (philosophy) at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo and board member of the Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief and of the Human Rights Committee of Church of Norway. His research interests focus on the grounds for embracing universal human rights, in particular the right to freedom of religion or non-religious basic conviction, and on the ongoing two-way traffic between human rights and religions/basic convictions, in particular with respect to Islam and Muslims. He co-edited the volume Facilitating Freedom of Religion or Belief (2004), now published in Indonesian and in Russian. H edited a book on An-Na’im’s Islamic reform thinking, Islamic Law Reform and Human Rights: Challenges and Rejoinders (1993) and recently finished a study of Muslim immigrants to Oslo, Religious Commitment and Social Integration: Are there significant links? (2012). Other writings include "The cross-cultural legitimacy of universal human rights: Plural justification across normative divides", in Francioni and Scheinin, eds.,  Cultural Human Rights (2008). Among his most recent  contributions is  "Magna Carta and Religious Freedom," in D. Magraw and A. Martinez  eds.,  Magna Carta and the Rule of Law (2015). 

David Little – United States
Research Fellow, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, Georgetown University; Professor Emeritus, Harvard Divinity School

David Little is Retired Professor of the Practice in Religion, Ethnicity, and International Conflict at Harvard Divinity School, and was an Associate at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He is a Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & International Affairs at Georgetown University. He was Senior Scholar in Religion, Ethics and Human Rights at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. Before that, he taught at the University of Virginia and Yale Divinity School and was a member of the State Department Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad. He is co-author with Scott W. Hibbard of Islamic Activism and U.S. Foreign Policy, and also author of publications on Ukraine, Sri Lanka, and Tibet (with Hibbard) in the USIP series on religion, nationalism, and intolerance. In 2007 he published two edited volumes:  Peacemakers in Action: Profiles of Religion in Conflict Resolution, and Religion and Nationalism in Iraq: A Comparative Perspective with (Donald K. Swearer). He has authored a number of articles on religion and human rights, the history of rights and constitutionalism, and religion and peace. Cambridge University Press will soon publish a book of his writings, Essays on Religion and Human Rights: Ground To Stand On, and a book of responses to his work by colleagues and former students: Religion and Public Policy: Human Rights, Conflict, and Ethics, edited by Sumner Twiss, Marian Simion & Rodney Petersen.

Nicholas Miller – United States
Professor and Director, Andrews University

Nicholas Miller is Professor of Church History at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, where he also directs the International Religious Liberty Institute. He holds degrees in law (Columbia University), church history (University of Notre Dame), and theology (Pacific Union College), including a PhD in the history of religious freedom in America. He has appeared before the U.S. Supreme court in the church/state case of Mitchell v. Helms, written many federal appellate briefs on church/state matters, and authored numerous scholarly and professional articles on matters of the law and history of church/state matters, and written a book dealing with religious influences on the American Constitution entitled The Religious Roots of the First Amendment (OUP 2012).   

Richard J. Moon – Canada
Professor of Law, University of Windsor

Profession Moon law at the University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. His research focuses on freedom of expression and freedom of conscience and religion. His is author of The Constitutional Protection of Freedom of Expression (2000) and Freedom of Conscience and Religion (2014), editor of Law and Religious Pluralism in Canada (2008), co-editor of Religion and the Exercise of Public Authority (forthcoming) and contributing editor to Canadian Constitutional Law (3rd and 4th editions) (2006, 2010). He is currently completing work on a book entitled Putting Faith in Hate: When Religion is the Source or Subject of Hate Speech. His writing has been cited or quoted by the Supreme Court of Canada on numerous occasions. He has been the recipient of both the law school and university-wide teaching awards as well as the Mary Lou Dietz Award for contributions to the advancement of equity in the university and community. 

Menaal Munshey – United Kingdom
Candidate, MPhil in Criminological Research (Cambridge)

Faizan Mustafa – India
Vice-Chancellor, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad

Prof. (Dr) Faizan Mustafa is the Vice-Chancellor of NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. He was the founder Vice-Chancellor of National Law University, Orissa. He has also served as Dean, Faculty of Law, Aligarh Muslim University and Registrar of AMU. Prof. Mustafa is a gold medalist in LL.M. from Aligarh Muslim University. He completed his Ph.D. in Copyright Law. He also has a diploma in International and Comparative Human Rights from International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France. Dr. Mustafa has authored several books and has about hundred national and International papers to his credit. He has worked in unexplored areas such as 1) Religious Conversion Laws, 2) Strict Liability Law , and 3) Freedom of Information Law.

Peter Petkoff – United Kingdom
Director of Religion, Law and International Relations Programme, Regent's Park College, Oxford and Brunel Law School

Dr. Peter Petkoff has studied law and theology in Sofia, Leeds, Oxford and Rome. His research interests are in the area of law and religion, EC Law, Intellectual Property and Comparative and International Law. His academic appointments include working on research projects at Oxford University (European Company Law and Arms Exports), Exeter University (Comparative European Family Law) and Bristol University (Changing Nature of Religious Rights Under International Law), a visiting fellowship at the Stephan Kuttner Institute of Medieval Canon Law and the Leopold-Wenger-Institute for Legal History at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and teaching positions at Bristol, Oxford and Buckingham. He has taught EU Law, International law and Intellectual Property, Canon Law, and Islamic Law. Dr. Petkoff is an honorary fellow of the Centre for the Study of Law and Religion at the University of Bristol, a Fellow of the Centre for Christianity and Culture at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, a Secretary of the Oxford Society for Law and Religion and a convener of the Oxford Colloquium for Law and Religion, a board member of the academic think-tank "Focus on Freedom of Religion or Belief" which studies the dynamics of freedom of religion or belief discourse within the context of the international institutions. He is also a board member of the research network "Church, Law and Society of the Middle Ages" and a convener of Eastern Canon Law panels at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds. He is currently engaged in research projects which study the coexistence of civic and religious legal systems on national, regional and international level and the formation of Christian, Jewish and Islamic legal harmonisations in the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. He is the Managing Editor of the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion.

Matthew Richards – United States
Attorney, Kirton McConkie

Matt Richards is a member of the First Amendment & Religious Organizations and Litigation sections of the law firm Kirton McConkie. In addition to litigating cases, he provides general counsel services to clients, advising them on such diverse matters as regulatory compliance, electronic discovery and records management, historical preservation, and contract management. He has an extensive background in appeals and complex litigation in both federal and state courts. He has particular expertise in domestic and international religious liberty issues and has published articles and presented at international conferences on these topics. He has been recognized as one of Utah's Legal Elite for corporate law and a Mountain States Super Lawyer for business litigation.

Caroline K Roberts – United Kingdom
School of Law, University of Bristol

Caroline Roberts is a first year doctoral student in Law at the University of Bristol and a Magistrate. She holds a first class honours BA in Theology and an MA from the University of Oxford and has recently been awarded an LLM in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law with distinction. Her particular research interest is the Strasbourg interpretation of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. As an AHRC SWWDTP Researcher, she is a member of both the Centre for the Study of Law and Religion at Bristol and the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff University.

Neville Rochow SC – Australia
Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School, Sydney; University of Adelaide Law School Research Unit for Society, Law, and Religion

Neville Rochow holds adjunct professorships at the law schools of Notre Dame Australia and the University of Adelaide, where he teaches Jurisprudence, Remedies and Economics and Law. He practices from Howard Zelling Chambers, which grew from the chambers that he, with Steve Roder (now Supreme Court Registrar), founded in 1992. He appears at first instance and on appeal in a variety of areas of commercial law, specializing in trade practices and competition matters. He has had broad commercial litigation experience. He has most frequently appeared in the Federal Court of Australia (Adelaide Registry) and the Supreme Court of South Australia. He also appears in other registries of the Federal Court. Mr. Rochow has also appeared in the High Court of Australia, District Court of South Australia, South Australian Industrial Relations Court and other State and Territorial jurisdictions. He has appeared before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, the Australian Competition, and Consumer Commission, Australian Competition Tribunal and the Delegate for the Registrar of Trade Marks. The range of matters in which he has been and continues to be retained to advise and appear before superior courts include trade practices contraventions, interpretation of statues, construction of contractual terms, restraint of trade, failure to use trade marks bona fide, annual valuation of land, negligent misstatement and pure economic loss, caveats over real property titles, indefeasibility of real property title, shareholder disputes, international product liability, and sale of goods. 

Brett G. Scharffs – United States
Associate Dean for Faculty and Curriculum, Francis R. Kirkham Professor of Law; Associate Director, International Center for Law and Religion Studies, Brigham Young University Law School

Brett Scharffs is Francis R. Kirkham Professor of Law at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, associate dean for faculty and curriculum, and associate director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies. His teaching and scholarly interests include international and comparative law and religion. He is a graduate of Georgetown University, where he received a BSBA in international business and an MA in philosophy. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, earning a BPhil in philosophy. He received his JD from Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal. For the past eight years he has been a visiting professor at Central European University in Budapest, teaching comparative law and religion. For the past several years he has helped organize a certificate training program in religion and the rule of law at Peking University Law School’s Center for Administrative and Constitutional Law, and a similar program in Vietnam at the Vietnam National University’s University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. He has also taught and helped organize programs at several Indonesian universities on sharia and human rights, and has taught law and religion as a visiting professor at the University of Adelaide School of Law in Australia. Professor Scharffs has written more than 100 articles and book chapters and has made more than 300 scholarly presentations in 30 countries. His casebook, Law and Religion: National, International and Comparative Perspectives (coauthored with his BYU Law School colleague W. Cole Durham Jr.), has been translated into Chinese, Vietnamese, and Turkish, and is scheduled for a second English edition in 2016.

Emily Tavcar – United Kingdom
MSt in the Study of Religions Candidate, Blackfrairs, Oxford

Deborah Thebault – United Kingdom
(Université Paris Descartes) and DPhil Candidate in Law, Oxford

Keith Thompson – Australia
Associate Dean and Murdoch Adjunct Professor, School of Law, The University of Notre Dame Australia

Keith Thompson is Associate Dean at The University of Notre Dame Australia's Sydney Law School where he currently teaches Constitutional Law, Law and Religion, Civil Procedure, and Contemporary Legal Issues and supervises post-graduate dissertations. Previously he worked as a partner in a large commercial law firm and as International Legal Counsel for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Pacific and then on the African continent for 20 years. He has published in legal history, evidence law, anti-corruption law, vicarious liability in tort and insolvency law as well and he published the text, Religious Confession Privilege and the Common Law (Brill) in 2011. 

Renáta Uitz – Hungary
Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law, Central European University

Renáta Uitz is Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law,C hair of the Comparative Constitutional Law program, and co-director (with Károly Bárd) of the clinical specialization at Central European University Legal Studies. She obtained her Doctor iuris degree (summa cum laude) at Eotvos Lorant University, Faculty of Law, and received an LLM in Comparative Constitutional Law at CEU Legal Studies. She earned the S.J.D. (summa cum laude) in comparative constitutional law, also from CEU Legal Studies. Started teaching at CEU in 2001, and became chair of the Comparative Constitutional Law program in 2007. Her teaching covers subjects in comparative constitutional law in Europe and North America, transitional justice and human rights protection with special emphasis on the enforcement of constitutional rights and on issues of bodily privacy and sexuality. Theories and practices of good governance in and after democratic transition, and the role of courts in constructing the constitutional subject are at the center of her research interests. Constitutions, Courts and History (2004) was her first book, while her most recent is Freedom of Religion in European Constitutional and International Case Law (2007). In addition, she is the author of over 30 articles and book chapters, which have appeared mainly in English, Hungarian, and Russian. She regularly speaks at international conferences on comparative constitutional subjects.

Nicholas Vincent – United Kingdom
Professor, University of East Anglia, Fellow of the British Academy

Nicholas Vincent is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia and a Fellow of the British Academy. He arrived at East Anglia via Oxford, Cambridge, Paris and Canterbury. He teaches courses in medieval European History and the Crusades, and a 3rd year special subject on the Norman Conquest of England. He supervises graduate students in most subjects relating to English and European history 1000-1300AD. He has published a dozen books and some hundred academic articles on various aspects of English and European history in the 12th and 13th centuries, and he is currently finishing an edition of the charters of the Plantagenet kings and queens from Henry II to King John. Author of several books on Magna Carta, he leads the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council "Magna Carta Project". 

Augusto Cotta Zimmermann – Australia
Senior Lecturer, Murdoch University School of Law

Augusto Zimmerman is a member of the Law Reform Commission of Western Australian and former Associate Dean (Research) and Director of Postgraduate Studies at the School of Law at Murdoch University. He is Vice-President of the Australian Society of Legal Philosophy; President of the Western Australian Legal Theory Association; and Editor of the Western Australian Jurist. He has been awarded the 2012 Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research and two consecutive Murdoch School of Law Dean’s Research Awards. He has been included, together with only twelve other Australian academics and policy experts, in the prestigious "Policy Experts" – the Heritage Foundation’s directory for locating knowledgeable authorities and leading policy institutes actively involved in a broad range of public policy issues, both in the United States and worldwide. Twice nominated for the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, he has also received the Law Lecturer of the Year Award by Murdoch Student Law Society, in recognition for the outstanding level of teaching, ongoing service, and personal contribution provided to his students.