Our Advisory Committee

Aarif is an international human rights law barrister at Garden Court North Chambers in the UK. He specialises in public, constitutional and administrative law as well as international criminal law. He originally qualified and practised as a solicitor with the ‘magic circle’ firm, Slaughter and May, where he specialised in public law. He has advised individuals, companies, public interest groups and states in public law and human rights cases, both for claimants and respondents, as well as advising widely on policy issues.

Aarif has a demonstrated history of working in courts, non-governmental organisations and international organisations. He has been an advocate, investigator and/or consultant on matters relating to international crimes, conflict resolution and transitional justice. He is currently on the roster of candidates, as an expert 2 available for instruction, for a number of United Nations bodies.

Anita is the Director of the Rosmini Centre in Wisbech (Fenland), which has been providing Information, Advice & Guidance to the community for the past 12 years in a number of different languages on issues including employment, accommodation and general advice including signposting to other service providers.

Before joining ARU, Chris Ivory was a Senior Lecturer at The University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Business School. He holds a PhD and MSc from PREST (Policy Research into Engineering Science and Technology), part of Manchester University.

Chris has also been a Research Associate in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies, Newcastle University and before that at CROMTEC, at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST).

Chris has written for journals including the British Journal of Management, Business History, Long Range Planning, Project Management Journal, Critical Perspectives on International Business, Construction Management and Economics, International Journal of Project Management, R&D Management, TASM, Ephemera, and Planning Theory.

He has also written on business school strategy through a series of commissioned Advanced Institute of Management (AIM) reports.

With academic degrees from Lithuania, Sweden and the UK, Egle Dagilyte joined ARU having finished a traineeship at the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) in Luxembourg.

Her expertise lies in the area of human rights and European Union law, especially the relationship between the EU and Member States, EU citizenship, free movement of persons and migration, including Brexit.

Egle has worked on externally funded projects in relation to EU Roma citizens' access to welfare benefits in the UK and on migrant workers in Fenland, East Anglia. She acted as a Country Expert on the European Commission's projects on human rights and investment citizenship and has consulted for nongovernmental organisations and several IT business start-ups.

Egle is a Fellow of the Centre of European Law at King's College London and a Senior Fellow of Advance HE. In 2015, she was named as one of the Top 50 UK Higher Education social media influencers by Jisc - the UK's expert body for digital technology and digital resources in higher education, further education and research.

Elina Konstantinidou received her PhD from Surrey University in 2014. Her thesis, supervised by Professor Indira Carr and Dr Renginee Pillay, looked at various ways of tackling corruption in the extractive industries sector, with particular emphasis on the effectiveness of voluntary initiatives.

Her main areas of research are in corporate, white-collar and economic crime, with special emphasis on bribery and corruption. Her research is of socio-legal nature and she is a member of the Socio-Legal Studies Association.

Elina is interested in examining the relationship between corruption and development, with particular emphasis on developing countries. This research also includes the effect that various anti-corruption measures have on business growth.

Throughout her teaching career, Elina has held various teaching posts, both full time and as a visiting lecturer, at Brunel University London, Roehampton University and City University.

Elina has special responsibility for CAJI events.

Helga Hejny graduated in law (Magister degree – 5 years) in 2008 from University of Bologna where she started to work as a research assistant on projects related to 4 Public International Law.

From 2009 to 2010 she worked as a legal practitioner in a law firm. In 2010 she obtained an LLM in American Law and International Legal Practice (Loyola Law School, Los Angeles) and in 2011 she concluded a second LLM in Legal Research (Middlesex University, London).

In 2012 Helga was part of a team who won a grant for researching on public international law on a project on Temporary Agency Work and in 2014 and 2015 she worked as a research assistant respectively at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and at Utrecht University.

In 2016 Helga completed a Doctorate in Philosophy (PhD) in European and comparative law with a focus on Age Discrimination in financial services.

As a researcher, she specialised also in the field of business and human rights (specifically on the ‘Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’). In 2019 she was a visiting researcher at Loyola Law School (Los Angeles, California) working on a project on Blockchain and age discrimination.

Helga has special responsibility for CAJI events.

Julian is the Partnership Development Manager at ARU. He works for the Research and Innovation Development Office, where he creates and manages partnerships between ARU and public, private and third sector organisations in the fields of Business and Law, including consultancy services, knowledge transfer, contract research and other collaborative projects.

Before joining ARU, Julian worked extensively in the third sector, working for the National Day Nurseries Association, YMCA Thames Gateway and Victim Support, in the field of business development. Since 2011, he has been a local government councillor on Ipswich Borough Council.

Nick Drydakis is the founding Director of the Centre for Pluralist Economics (CPE). He is spokesperson at the IZA World of Labor for a series of areas such as inequality, economic crisis and health. In addition, he is Cluster Lead of the Global Labor Organization.

Nick has developed and offered credit eligible courses on Growth, Development and Inequality which have been delivered to students from Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University and Yale University.

Nick has published in international journals such as: Labour Economics, Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Journal of Economics, Journal of Population Economics, Review of Economics of the Household, Social Science and Medicine, Journal of Vocational Behaviour, Human Relations, European Journal of Health Economics, and Economics Letters.

Nick’s research outcomes and policy implications have been utilised by the World Bank, the OECD, the ILO, the EC and European Governments to shape and inform future employment policies. He has worked on European Union and World Bank research programmes such as the Progress Program, the 5 European Territorial Cooperation Program, and the Knowledge Platform Program.

Rachel is a Solicitor-Advocate (Higher Courts Civil Proceedings) and is a Legal Director at Birketts LLP, working in Cambridge and London.

She qualified with a Magic Circle City firm where she advised multi-nationals on corporate tax. She then moved to Asia, living in Hong Kong and Tokyo. She worked for one of the big four accountancy firms, advising banks and global entities on cross-border structures. She later requalified as a family lawyer.

Rachel's background is particularly useful when advising on the financial implications of divorce and drawing up pre-nuptial agreements. She has a great deal of experience with complex child-related cases. This includes those involving allegations of domestic abuse, substance misuse, parental alienation and cases involving social services. She regularly advises members of the extended family, such as grandparents and step-parents.

Rachel was the Cambridge Law Society’s ‘Lawyer of the Year’ 2020.

Before joining ARU, Rohan Kariyawasam was Professor of Law and the Digital Economy at Middlesex University, professor of law at Cardiff University and the University of Essex, a member of the Essex Human Rights Centre and Director of their Program in Information Technology, Media and E-Commerce Law.

He has worked as a consultant for both the media and communications department at Clifford Chance, the media law department at Field Fisher Waterhouse, and as an external consultant to the UK's 6 Department for International Development (DFID), Cable & Wireless, and the UK's Office of Telecommunications (now OFCOM).

Rohan qualified as a solicitor with DentonWildeSapte but before this, he trained as an engineer and worked with Marconi on contracts for the Ministry of Defence.

As a student, Rohan attended Harvard Law School as a Berkman Centre Fellow, the University of Kent at Canterbury, the University of Geneva, Switzerland, the College of Law in London, and the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London – where he obtained his PhD in commercial and IP law. He is a past recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to Harvard.

Rohan's work involves the intersection of technology, IP, information law and the humanities. He has been both a Principal and Co-Investigator on a range of projects for the ESRC (project finance), AHRC (fair trade, special needs and disability rights), British Academy (market competition), and in commercial research in Europe and Asia for McGraw-Hill. Currently, he is developing research on the Open Society.

In 2011-13, the British Academy awarded Rohan a fellowship to research market competition, net neutrality and privacy on the internet.

Ryan Hill graduated from the University of Essex with a BA in Philosophy with Human Rights, an LLM in International Human Rights Law and a PhD in Law. He taught at the University of Essex, for the Open Societies Foundation in Istanbul and at the University of Bedfordshire before joining ARU in January 2015.

Ryan's teaching and research interests engage with international human rights law, theory and practice, legal philosophy and the interplay between law, politics and society.

Sally has specialised in family law and related areas throughout her career at the Bar. Having previously been a member of a specialist family set in London, Sally joined Fenners Chambers in 2014. She also has experience in the Court of Protection and of cases which fall under the Mental Health Acts.

Sally is known for her particular expertise in judicial review matters arising in relation to social services provision for adults and children. The second edition of her book, The Children Act 1989: Local Authority Support for Children and Families was published by Jordan Publishing (now LexisNexis) in 2015.

Sarah Calder joined ARU from a background of running a community law clinic in Essex and as LawWorks’ clinic development and support officer for the east of England. She is a qualified lawyer with additional experience in the publishing and charity sectors.

Sarah is passionate about pro bono legal work for the benefits that it can bring to both the local community and also to law students who can develop valuable practical legal skills which give depth to CVs whilst complementing and enhancing academic work.

Sarah is Director of the ARU Law Clinic

With a background in Engineering and Science, Ying Xie successfully applies the scientific tools to resolve business problems, including business decision making, supply chain management, optimisation, as well as achieving sustainability. Ying is keen on applied research, and has active engagement with businesses and industries.

Ying has worked closely with the UK National Health Service (NHS) and Essex County Council, to investigate reverse logistics in the pharmaceutical supply chain, aiming to design a green pharmaceutical supply chain that results in less pharmaceutical waste and meaningful savings for the NHS.

In 2011, Ying worked with the government of ZhouShan city, located on the south-eastern coast of China at the mouth of the Yangtze River, to provide consultancy services on how to set up a cereals logistics centre. From 2016 to present, Ying has worked closely with Felixstowe Port 8 (UK) to develop big data-driven optimisation tools to improve economic and environmental efficiency in the Seaport Rail Terminal.

Ying has developed a number of software packages in relation to decision support systems, forecasting tool, and simulation programs, which have been adopted by Cash’s Ltd. for customer order forecasting and supply chain management.

Ying has developed an advanced consultancy practice that assists SMEs to achieve sustainability, through which she generated £34,116 European Regional Development Fund for a Low Carbon KEEP project and £60,000 research income for a consultancy project with DingXun Ltd., China.

At present Ying is working with a few private sector companies and Essex County Council to develop a smart home care supply chain, which will act as a framework for the team to build a model that is complementary to formal heal and social care delivery, hence to support government’s healthy ageing agenda.