CELL - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Founder
Atif Rizvi has worked for over two decades in strategic planning in tertiary education and institution building. He was educated at Harvard University and worked as a Senior Researcher in Education at the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). At HIID, he was also the Assistant Editor of The Forum, a joint Harvard-USAID publication dedicated to advancing basic education and literacy.
Atif was the Executive Director of the Global Matriculation Initiative (GMI) at the Worldpaper in Boston from 1996 - 1998. Following, he was a consultant for the UNESCO and World Bank Task Force on Higher Education and Society. Between 2002 - 2008, Atif was the Executive Secretary of the UNEP Sasakawa Endowment and the Prize for the Environment. He has also held positions at UNICEF, UNESCO, and the United Nations Secretariat in New York. Mr. Rizvi has worked on achievement assessment, educational access and equity, and basic education delivery in a number of conflict-affected areas.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director
- Founder
- Fellow at UNU - MERIT
Ayla Bonfiglio is a Doctoral Fellow at UNU-MERIT examining refugees in higher education. Over the course of her PhD, she has held Visiting/Associate Researcher positions at the International Migration Institute (IMI) at the University of Oxford, the African Centre for Migration and Society at Wits University, the African Migration and Development Policy Centre in Nairobi, and Makerere University.Formerly, Ayla was a Research Officer at IMI working on the Mobility in the African Great Lakes project and the Global Migration Futures project.
Ayla obtained her MA in Forced Migration in 2010 from the University of Oxford. Her dissertation, published by UNHCR, examined non-formal education programs for refugees. Ayla also holds a BA (Hons) in Political Science from Columbia University. Her dissertation, on refugee self-reliance, won the Charles A. Beard prize for the best paper in political science.
Ayla has worked and carried out research in Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Guatemala, and Rwanda. In 2009, she was a Google Policy Fellow in Washington, D.C.
Job Titles:
- Researcher in the Field of Science
Bram Rooijackers is a researcher in the field of Science and Technology Studies and Public Health Policy and teacher of qualitative research methodology. He is a graduate from Maastricht University, where he has done research on problems related to labor participation, chronic illness and risk management in healthcare. At CELL, he is chiefly responsible for directing the information architecture and the technological backend to facilitate operations.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Project Coordinator
- Researcher
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Founder and Former President, Results for Development Former Vice President, World Bank
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Fellow Emeritus
- Professor Emeritus
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Anchor / Correspondent, BBC
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Germany ), Executive Director, Eres Stiftung
Fons Coomans was born in The Hague (The Netherlands) in 1956.He studied political science, especially international relations and international law at the University of Amsterdam. In 1992 he obtained a PhD degree from Maastricht University. His PhD thesis was about the international protection of the right to education as a human right, and was supervised by Prof. van Boven and Prof. Flinterman.
He has been employed by Maastricht University since 1985. Currently he holds the UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Peace at the Department of International and European Law at Maastricht University. He teaches international human rights law, methods of human rights research and international development law at the School of Law.
He is the Director of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights, and Senior Researcher at the Netherlands School of Human Rights Research. His fields of research include the international protection of economic, social and cultural rights in a globalized society and the right to education, health and food in particular, as well as international monitoring mechanisms in the field of human rights. In addition, he has a special interest in the extraterritorial reach of human rights law. From 1997-2013 he acted as coordinator of the courses on economic, social and cultural rights of the European Master's Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation in Venice (Italy). From 2010-2012 he was involved in revising the curriculum of the Faculty of Law of Udayama University in Denpasar (Bali - Indonesia). He has also taught at the universities of Utrecht, Sarajevo, Pretoria, Lund, Galway, Denpasar, Cape Town, Fort Hare, Venda and Bandung. He has worked as a consultant for UNESCO, an adviser for FIAN (Food First Information and Action Network) and is currently an advisor to The Right to Education Project (www.right-to-education.org).
He is a member of the Netherlands Section of the International Commission of Jurists (NJCM). From 2007 to 2011 he was involved in a process of drafting guidelines for the extraterritorial obligations of states in the area of social, economic, and cultural rights which resulted in the adoption of the Maastricht Principles on the Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Sept. 2011). He was a co-founder of the Consortium on Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations (www.etoconsortium.org). In 2013 he was appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He has supervised and is currently supervising PhD-research projects on various dimensions of economic, social and cultural rights protection.
Frank Ubachs is a Senior Consultant on conflict and identity, currently involved in projects on prevention of youth extremism and on migration issues. He holds Master degrees in Eastern Christian Studies (Nijmegen University, UC de Louvain) and in Security Studies of the Middle East and Central Asia (University of St Andrews). Former Fellow at the Centre for Religion, Conflict and the Public Domain of Groningen University (Netherlands), he has served as Executive Director for The Hague Process on Refugees and Migration, and Policy Advisor in the Human Rights and Good Governance Department at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, concerned with intercultural dialogue and religion in international affairs. Frank is affiliated with the AE-Centre for Peacemediation, Dialogue and Peacebuilding in Northern Africa (Morges, Switzerland) and the Foundation for International Freedom of Religion and Belief (Utrecht, Netherlands).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Supervisory Board
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Teacher
- Principal, North America
James H. Williams is a Researcher and Teacher in the field of International Education and Development. A graduate of Harvard University, James holds the UNESCO Chair in International Education for Development at The George Washington University. He directs the PhD Program in Education at The George Washington University, and the cross-disciplinary research team on Education and Inequality: Access and Identity. Dr. Williams has extensive international experience in East and Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Author of more than 50 books and articles, he is editor of a three-volume series of books on education, national identity, and conflict published by Sense/Brill Publishers. Associate Editor of the Journal of Education in Emergencies, he is also a founding member of the Network to Integrate SDG Target 4.7 and SEL Skills into Educational Materials (NISSEM).
Jo Ritzen - Chairman, Founder
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Founder
- Professorial Fellow
- Professorial Fellow in the International Economics of Science
Jo Ritzen is a Professorial Fellow in the International Economics of Science, Technology and Higher Education at UNU-MERIT and the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance; and chair of "Empower European Universities." From 2003-2011 he was President of Maastricht University.
Jo was also the Minister of Education, Culture, and Science of The Netherlands, and the longest-serving Minister of Education in the EU. During his term, he enacted major reforms throughout the Dutch education system. He has held various posts at the World Bank, including Vice President of the Development Economics Department and of the Human Development Network, which advises on innovative approaches to improving education.
Jo has also made significant contributions to agencies such as UNESCO and OECD, especially in the field of education and social cohesion. He has held academic posts at Nijmegen University, Erasmus University, the University of California-Berkeley, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Marin Been is a cognitive neuroscientist and an academic adviser at Maastricht University, faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience. Trained as a psychologist with a Master's degree in both Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, she holds a PhD in Visual Neuroscience and wrote her dissertation on the neural correlates of learning induced plasticity in the visual cortex.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- United Kingdom ), President, EarthPrint
Job Titles:
- Member of the Supervisory Board
- the Netherlands ), Founder, Therapeuticum
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- USA ), Vice President, the Baum Foundation
Job Titles:
- Member of the Supervisory Board
- Consultant to the World Bank
- Principal, Research
- Research Fellow at UNU
- Research Fellow at UNU - MERIT
- the Netherlands ), Research Fellow, UNU - MERIT
Eleonora Nillesen is Research Fellow at UNU-MERIT. She holds a PhD in Development Economics from Wageningen University. Her research interests include the impact of conflict on socio-economic indicators and institutional change, with a focus on Sub-Sahara Africa. She is involved in research projects in Liberia, DR Congo, and Kyrgyzstan, assessing the effectiveness of development interventions through field experiments.
Eleonora has served as a consultant to the World Bank, UNDP and UNICEF on various occasions and is a member of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3IE) expert's roster. She is also affiliated with the Graduate School of Business and Economics at Maastricht University; the International Security and Development Center in Berlin; the Global Labor Organization and the Households in Conflict Network.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- USA ), Assistant Director for Rare Books, the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University
Dr. Noel F. McGinn (USA), Professor Emeritus of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and Fellow Emeritus of the Harvard Institute for International Development
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Ukraine ), Associate in International Arbitration Group, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Ireland ), Head of Europe and Central Asia, Article 19
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Head of Education, Council of Europe Bank
Peggy Maes has been working in primary education since 1997 with placements in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Poland. After her graduation, Peggy moved to Malawi to teach Dutch children at the Karonga Prevention Study (KPS), a Chilumba-based health project. She also helped to set up a local school. After two years in Malawi she moved to London to teach disadvantaged children for another two years.
Back in the Netherlands, she developed policy around extra care for children with special educational needs, organized team trainings, and participated in school development related to pedagogic and didactic issues. She also worked as a head teacher in several schools. At the moment, Peggy is working at the Synergieschool in Roermond, which is developing a model for progressive education in the Netherlands.
Peggy advises and works together will CELL on projects and outreach related to divisive stereotypes and discrimination in the classroom and divisive stereotypes and disability. Peggy also supports CELL in engaging teachers and learners.
Job Titles:
- Co - Director
- Member of the Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy
Sjaak Koenis is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, since 2002. He studied philosophy of science and political philosophy at the University of Groningen and works in Maastricht since 1994.