Payam Akhavan, LLB (Osgoode) LLM SJD (Harvard) OOnt FRSC, is the inaugural holder of the Massey Chair in Human Rights. Professor Akhavan is also Senior Fellow at Massey College, Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, Associate Member of the Institut de droit international, and Special Advisor on Genocide to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. He was previously Full Professor at McGill University Faculty of Law (2005-20), Distinguished Visitor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, with other appointments at Yale Law School, Leiden University, Oxford University, Université Paris Nanterre, and Sciences Po École de Droit.

He has published extensively on human rights and international criminal law in leading academic journals and is on the Editorial Review Board of Human Rights Quarterly. In 2017 he delivered the CBC Massey Lectures In Search of a Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey. The companion book became the top non-fiction bestseller in Canada and the subject of a CBC documentary film.

Professor Akhavan was the first Legal Advisor to the Prosecutor’s Office of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (1994-2000) at The Hague. He has also served with the UN investigating atrocities in conflict zones – including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, and Timor Leste – and defended genocide survivors throughout the world – including the Bahá’ís of Iran, the Yazidi of Iraq, and Myanmar’s Rohingya minority.

He has served as counsel and advocate in notable cases before the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Supreme Court of the United States. He also serves as Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Global Affairs of Canada and member of the Advisory Panel on the Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 Tragedy, Counsel to the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law, Honourary Canadian Co-Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, and Co-Founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre. He is recipient of the 2021 Human Rights Award of the Law Society of Ontario and his human rights work has been featured in the New York Times, BBC HARDtalk, CBC Ideas, Maclean’s, TV Ontario, and other media.

Y.Y. Brandon Chen is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, Common Law Section. He holds Doctor of Juridical Science, Master of Social Work, and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of Toronto. A licensed lawyer in Ontario, he specializes in health law, immigration and refugee law, and constitutional law. His current research leverages socio-legal and action research methodologies to identify and examine injustices that surface at the intersection of international migration and health. His published work has touched on such topics as migrants’ health and rights, social determinants of health, border control of infectious diseases, and medical tourism. He is currently the Vice Chair of the HIV Legal Network. He is also the co-counsel for the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues, the Canadian Health Coalition, the FCJ Refugee Centre, and the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre in their joint intervention in Toussaint v Canada (Attorney General), a court case concerning irregular migrants’ entitlement to health care in Canada.

Nhial Deng is an award-winning youth advocate, storyteller, and community activist with extensive professional experience in policy advocacy, communications, international development, external relations, youth leadership, and corporate social responsibility.

Growing up in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, Nhial became a youth leader and community activist at age 17, initiating impactful projects like the Refugee Youth Peace Ambassadors and SheLeads Kakuma. By the end of 2023, his community work in Kakuma had empowered over 20,000 young people through peacebuilding, education, sports, and entrepreneurship programs.

Now pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Global Studies and Communications at Huron University in Canada, Nhial leverages his powerful voice, personal story, and expertise to drive systemic change and inspire global action. His advocacy work focuses on refugee issues, education, aid localization, peace, gender equality, and climate justice.

In recognition of his community work and advocacy efforts, Nhial has received numerous accolades, including the World Vision Hero for Children: Courage Award 2023, Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Award, and, most recently, the prestigious Global Student Prize 2023.

Currently, he is working on the Kakuma Leadership and Innovation Centre, a community hub in the Kakuma refugee camp designed to help young people heal, connect, learn, and innovate solutions for a brighter and more hopeful future.

Dr. Rageshri Dhairyawan is a doctor, researcher and writer. She qualified in 2004 and is a Consultant in Sexual Health and HIV Medicine at Barts Health NHS Trust in London, UK. She is Deputy Director of the SHARE Collaborative for Health Equity, Queen Mary University of London. Her clinical work, research and advocacy focus on improving health equity, particularly at the intersections of gender and ethnicity. She has held numerous national charity and policy positions and regularly works with patient organisations. Rageshri was named as a ‘Woman Changing the World’ on International Women’s Day in 2019 by iNews, for her work advocating for the needs of racially minoritised women in sexual health. Currently, she chairs the British HIV Association's Equity, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Action Group, the steering group of 4M mentor Mothers CIC and is a medical board member of NAZ. Rageshri’s own experiences of being unheard as a patient and her work with minoritised communities, have inspired her to speak up about injustice in healthcare. She is an inaugural Wellcome Collection x Spread the Word awardee 2022 where she was supported to write her debut non-fiction book Unheard: The Medical Practice of Silencing, published by Trapeze in 2024. She writes regularly for medical journals including The Lancet and British Medical Journal.

Dr. Shatha Elnakib, PhD, MPH has over a decade of experience working at the intersection of sexual and reproductive health and humanitarian assistance. As an Assistant Scientist in the International Health Department at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, she leads several mixed-methods research projects focused on generating evidence to improve the quality of sexual and reproductive health services and policies in humanitarian settings. Prior to starting her faculty appointment, Shatha worked for the Population Council, UNFPA, UNICEF and the World Health Organization. She holds an MPH in Epidemiology from Columbia University and a PhD in International Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Rachel Kronick is a researcher and child psychiatrist. She is co-director of Outpatient Child Psychiatry Services at the Jewish General Hospital and child consultant with the Cultural Consultation Service. She completed her residency training and masters in Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University. Her clinical and research Fellowship in child and youth psychiatry was based at the University of Toronto and focused on trauma, homelessness and refugeed families.

Her primary research is on the social determinants of mental health for refugee, asylum-seeking and precarious migrant children and families, with a specific focus on migration policies and practices in Canada. Since 2018, Dr Kronick has been awarded 19 grants as Principal Investigator, totalling more than 2.5 million dollars, including five Tri-Agency grants.

Her work has focused on the immigration detention of children and preventative community- and school-based ecosocial interventions for refugee claimant and newcomer families. Her current CIHR and SSHRC research-to-policy projects address the present public health crisis of mass arrivals of asylum seekers with the resultant need for temporary accommodation sites in Ontario and Québec and the stressful context this creates for children and families during the first months after arrival Canada. Her research uses qualitative and mixed-methods methodologies, including Critical Ethnography, Visual and Arts-Based Methodologies and Participatory Action Research.

MD, MSc., FRCPC., D.Sc (Hons) Addis Ababa University (AAU), Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto (UofT), and psychoanalyst. Staff psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto; at the Canadian Center for Victims of Torture for refugee mental health; and the clinic for indigenous mental health, with the Community Mental Health Program and Addictions Program; a Division of Weeneebayko Area Health Authority.

Dr. Barri Phatarfod graduated from Monash University, Victoria in 1988 and has been in general practice for 25 years. Dr Phatarfod takes an integrative approach to healthcare, and has studied Ayurveda in both the USA and India. She has worked within her own solo general practice in Bondi for many years. She is part of the Antenatal Shared Care program at the Royal Hospital for Women and also has a special interest in aged care.

Dr. Umashanie Reddy is the National Secretariat Director of the Refugee Resettlement Program. Umashanie works collaboratively with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the resettlement service providers nationally to support the resettlement and integration of government-assisted refugees.

Her experience spans over 2 countries and 3.5 decades working with equity seeking populations in diverse diasporas in multisectoral contexts in South Africa and Canada. In 2024 Umashanie obtained her doctorate in education from the University of Western Ontario. Her experience in health emanates from South Africa and includes her work on the enactment of the first HIV Aids library in Southern Africa at the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine and later in Canada as the Tom Baker cancer librarian at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre, University of Calgary.

From a personal perspective Umashanie is a stage IV cancer survivor of 34 years. She is the recipient of several awards for her service to humanity including, Immigrants of Distinctions, RBC Top 25 Canadian Immigrants, Graduate of the Last Decade, and the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal.

Gabriel Schirvar (pronouns: they/them) is a leading non-binary policy analyst, researcher, and educator focusing on international lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) and migrant rights, health, and well-being. Gabriel has designed and led in-person and online trainings for over 1,000 humanitarian professionals around the world on a wide range of anti-oppression issues impacting migrants. They are an LGBTIQ+ Focal Point for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), where they are also a lead contributor to the foundational training package, “Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Gender Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) and Migration,” co-authored with experts from IOM and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). To date, this training has been provided to over 1,500 people in more than 30 countries and remains one of only two trainings on LGBTIQ+ considerations in the humanitarian field. Gabriel has also served on the United Nations system-wide Task Team on LGBTIQ+ considerations and the UN-GLOBE board. They hold a master’s degree in Global Public Health from the George Washington University.

Dr. Spiegel, a Canadian physician and epidemiologist, is one of the few humanitarians in the world that both responds to and researches humanitarian emergencies and migration. He is the Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health and Distinguished Professor of the Practice in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Before Hopkins, Dr. Spiegel was Deputy Director of Program Management & Support and Chief of Public Health at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He previously worked as a Medical Epidemiologist in the International Emergency and Refugee Health Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and as a Medical Coordinator with Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde in refugee emergencies.

Dr. Spiegel has published over 230 publications on humanitarian health, migration and human rights. He is currently Chair of the CHH-Lancet Commission on Health Conflict and Forced Displacement, co-chair of Lancet Migration, and Co-Technical Director of EQUAL. Dr. Spiegel’s extensive experience in leading humanitarian responses in the United Nations and with non-governmental organizations combined with his academic work has made him a global leader in bridging operations and academia in humanitarian health