Webinar Launch: Children’s Right To Identity, Selfhood & International Family Law
Ann Skelton (TBC)
UN CRC Committee Chairperson (2023-2025),
University of Pretoria and University of Leiden (moderator)
Ann Skelton is an international expert on children’s rights. She is a Law Professor at the University of Pretoria, where she holds the UNESCO Chair in Education Law, and is also appointed part time at the University of Leiden where she holds the Chair in Children’s Rights in a Sustainable World. She also teaches international children’s rights at the Universities of Oxford and Strathclyde. She has worked as a children’s rights lawyer in South Africa for 30 years where she played a leading role in child law reform. She pioneered strategic litigation on children’s rights from the Centre for Child Law (where she was Director from 2008 to 2018) and appeared as legal counsel arguing many landmark cases in the South African courts, including cases enforcing the right to education. Her global influence has been recognised through several awards, including the Honorary Worlds Children’s Prize and the Juvenile Justice Without Borders Award. She has chaired several international drafting bodies, including the Global Study on Children Deprived of their Liberty, and the expert committee that drafted the Abidjan Principles on state’s obligations regarding public education and the regulation of private of education.
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
This biography will be provided once available.
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.
