Lemkin Institute

Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey is an Endowed Chair and Associate Professor in the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program at Keene State College, where she is building a new MA program in Genocide Prevention and Human Security. She has researched and published on atrocity prevention, gender, genocide, and colonialism throughout her career and has over ten years of experience in training military and government officials in genocide prevention. She received her BA from Columbia University and her MA and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied modern German and modern African history. She is the former director of the MA program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University, where she founded and directed the world’s first online credit-bearing Genocide Prevention Certificate Program. She is also the former First Vice President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS).

Irene Victoria Massimino is a human rights lawyer, international legal scholar, and professor, who served as Rapporteur of the Criminal Cassation Court of the Province of Buenos Aires, in Argentina. Irene works actively in the fields of internal and international conflicts, serious violations of human rights and international criminal law in relation to the experiences of Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Bangladesh and Iraq, focusing mainly on external intervention and the crime of genocide. She received her JD from the Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences of the National University of La Plata, in Argentina; her LLM from Robert H. McKinney School of Law at Indiana University, in the United States, and her MA in Human Rights from the School of Advanced Studies at University of London, in the United Kingdom. She is also the former Co-Secretary Treasurer of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS). Irene Massimino has vast experience working in the judiciary with cases regarding human rights violations, specifically related to institutional violence, police brutality, gender-based violence and sexual violence related crimes. Moreover, before and after working as a Rapporteur, she advised and worked on cases regarding human rights violations and international crimes.