Webinar Launch: Children’s Right To Identity, Selfhood & International Family Law
Olga Khazova
CRC Committee member (2013-2021) and CHIP special advisor (moderator)
Prof. Olga Khazova, member of the UN CRC Committee (2013-2021), is currently affiliated with the Moscow School of Social & Economic Sciences. In 2018-2022, she also taught a course on International Family Law at the National Research University “Higher School of Economics” (Moscow). Until 2018, for more than 30 years, Olga had been working at the Institute of State & Law within Russian Academy of Sciences. She holds Ph.D. from that Institute and LL.M. from Cornell University Law School (USA). The main field of her expertise is connected with international family law and child law. Apart from teaching, Olga serves as a consultant on matters related to children’s rights and family law, including human reproduction issues. Olga is the author of Marriage and Divorce in Western Family Law, as well as of numerous scholarly articles published in Russia and abroad. She is a Vice-President of the International Society of Family Law (ISFL). In 2022, Olga was elected as a member of Academia Europaea (the Academy of Europe).
Marilyn Freeman
University of Westminster
Professor Marilyn Freeman B.A (Hons), LL.M, PhD, is Co-Director of the International Centre for Family Law, Policy and Practice (ICFLPP), Principal Research Fellow at The Westminster Law School, Chairperson of the International Association of Child Law Researchers (IACLaR), and Academic Door Tenant at 4PB, a leading set of specialist family law barristers’ chambers in London. She is acknowledged as a leading expert in international child abduction and international children’s law. Her research on the Long-Term Effects of International Child Abduction is a seminal work, widely cited and used. Her recent research (undertaken together with Professor Nicola Taylor, University of Otago, New Zealand) on domestic violence in the context of international child abduction cases, published in May 2024, has been similarly well received, and was circulated for the attention of all participants at the Forum on Domestic Violence held by The Hague Conference on Private International Law in Sandton, South Africa in June 2024. Her most recent work relates to identity and selfhood for children and young people in the field of international family law. The book on this subject, which she co-edited with Professor Nicola Taylor, will be published in May 2025: Children’s Right to Identity, Selfhood and International Family Law (Edward Elgar, 2025).
Nicola Taylor
University of Otago
Professor Nicola Taylor is the Professor of Child and Family Law and Director of the Children’s Issues Centre in the Faculty of Law at the University of Otago in New Zealand. She also holds the Alexander McMillan Leading Thinker Chair in Childhood Studies, is Secretary of the International Association of Child Law Researchers, and an Associate Fellow of the International Academy of Family Lawyers (IAFL). Nicola has been admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand and is a qualified mediator. She is a leading socio-legal researcher and has undertaken many studies with children, parents and professionals on family law and children’s rights issues including post-separation care arrangements, relocation, international child abduction, children’s views and participation, child-inclusive practice, family dispute resolution, children’s citizenship and nation-building, children’s identity issues in international family law contexts, relationship property division and succession law. Nicola’s research findings have been invaluable in informing legislative, legal policy and professional practice developments within New Zealand and internationally. She has recently co-edited two books with Marilyn Freeman, the Research Handbook on International Child Abduction: The 1980 Hague Convention (Edward Elgar, 2023) and Children’s Right to Identity, Selfhood and International Family Law (Edward Elgar, 2025).
Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan
Lived experience,
University of Nottingham
Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan is a professor of education specialising in professional learning, self-reflexive scholarship, and arts-based educational research. She is committed to advancing research paradigms that recognise contributions from the Global South and promote meaningful transnational collaboration. As an advocate for leveraging the arts in education, she emphasises their potential to support educational development and advance social justice.
Ursula Kilkelly
University College Cork
Professor Ursula Kilkelly is from the School of Law, University College Cork. Ursula’s research focuses on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, including in the areas of youth justice and detention, access to justice, and independent children’s rights institutions. She has conducted original research, published ten monographs and edited collections, and published nearly 80 articles in peer reviewed journals in a career that has spanned over 25 years.
John Tobin
University of Melbourne
Professor John Tobin holds the Francine V McNiff Chair in International Human Rights Law at Melbourne Law School where he is Director of the Human Rights Program. He has been undertaking research and teaching in the field of human rights with a focus on children’s rights for the past 25 years. He is also the author of the award winning The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Commentary (OUP 2019).
