SPEAKERS

БАХМИН Вячеслав Иванович, родился в г.Калинин (ныне Тверь). Выпускник специализированной школы-интернат №18 физико-математического профиля при МГУ. С 1966 по 1969 гг. учился в Московском физико-техническом институте, в 1974 году заочно закончил Московский экономико-статистический институт. Участник правозащитного движения в СССР, один из учредителей общественной «Рабочей комиссии по расследованию использования психиатрии в политических целях», бывший политзаключенный. Работал программистом в различных организациях. В 1991-95 гг. возглавлял Департамент по международному гуманитарному и культурному сотрудничеству Министерства иностранных дел Российской Федерации. 

В 1995-2003 года был исполнительным директором созданного в России Института «Открытое общество» (Фонд Сороса). С 2004 по 2015 годы являлся консультантом Фонда Ч.С.Мотта, занимался оценкой и мониторингом поддержанных фондом проектов в России, С 2011 года возглавляет экспертный совет Фонда Политехнического музея, является Председателем Сахаровского центра, со-председателем Московской хельсинкской группы.

Linas Linkevičius has been Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania since December 2012. Before he was a member of the Seimas, the Lithuanian parliament, minister of National Defence from 1993 to 1996 and from 2000 to 2004. He was the Lithuanian Permanent Representative to NATO from 2005 until 2011. He was then appointed Ambassador to Belarus, but was soon back in Lithuania to serve as Foreign Minister.

Sarah B. Snyder is a historian of U.S. foreign relations who specializes in the history of the Cold War, human rights activism, and U.S. human rights policy. She is the author of From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy (Columbia University Press, 2018), which explains how transnational connections and 1960s-era social movements inspired Americans to advocate for a new approach to human rights.

The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations awarded it the 2019 Robert H. Ferrell Prize for distinguished scholarship in the history of American foreign relations. Her first book, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network, (Cambridge University Press), analyzes the development of a transnational network devoted to human rights advocacy and its contributions to the end of the Cold War.

The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations awarded it the 2012 Stuart Bernath Book Prize for best first book by an author and the 2012 Myrna F. Bernath Book Award for the best book written by a woman in the field in the previous two years. She is also the co-editor of The CSCE and the End of the Cold War: Diplomacy, Societies and Human Rights, 1972-1990 (with Nicolas Badalassi; Berghahn Books, 2018).   

In addition to authoring several chapters in edited collections, she has also published articles in Diplomatic History, Cold War History, Human Rights Quarterly, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, European Journal of Human Rights and Journal of American Studies. 

She previously served as a Lecturer at University College London, a Cassius Marcellus Clay Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at Yale University, the Pierre Keller Post -Doctoral Fellow in Transatlantic Relations at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies also at Yale, and as a professorial lecturer at Georgetown University. Snyder received her Ph.D. from Georgetown, a M.A. from University College London, and a B.A. with honors from Brown University.

Robert van Voren (1959) is Chief Executive of Human Rights in Mental Health - Federation Global Initiative on Psychiatry (FGIP) and a Sovietologist by education. He is Professor of Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania, and the Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia, and Executive Director of the Andrei Sakharov Research Center for Democratic Development in Lithuania.

Van Voren is board member of several organizations in the field of human rights and mental health. Van Voren has written extensively on Soviet issues, in particular issues related to mental health and human rights, and published more than a dozen of books. His most recent ones are On Dissidents and Madness(2009), Cold War in Psychiatry(2010) and Undigested Past – the Holocaust in Lithuania(2011).

Tatiana Yankelevich is an independent researcher affiliated with the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.
 
A retired educator in the field of post-World War II Soviet history and the Soviet human rights movement, she was born in Russia, and received her education in Moscow having graduated from Moscow University in 1975 with MA in Russian Literature. Ms. Yankelevich immigrated to the US in 1977 and became an US citizen in 1983. Her emigration was a result of a direct pressure brought to bear by the KGB on her stepfather Andrei Sakharov and on her immediate family, in an effort to stop their human rights work. This pressure included death threats to her husband and their son, one year old at the time.
 
During the 1970s and 1980s, Ms. Yankelevich campaigned extensively on behalf of Andrei Sakharov, and for his causes in the US and Europe; she helped maintain his archives, translated much of his correspondence, statements and other materials, and participated in editorial work for the publication in English and Russian of Andrei Sakharov’s writings, statements and essays, his Memoirs (1990), and the writings of her mother Elena Bonner, including Alone Together and Mothers and Daughters.

In the US she worked as an educator in the field of post-World War II Soviet history and the Soviet human rights movement. As an adjunct professor at Bentley College, Waltham, MA, she taught courses in Russian Literature and post-WW II Soviet History. As a visiting lecturer, in the 1980s-early 1990s, she delivered lectures and seminars on political situation and human rights in Russia at over 30 colleges and universities across the US.
 
From 1993 to 2004, she was assistant director of the Andrei Sakharov Archives at Brandeis University. From 2004 to 2009, she was Director of Sakharov Program on Human Rights at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, now the home of the Andrei Sakharov Archive. Since 2009, she maintains affiliation with the Davis Center as an independent researcher.

Robert van der Noordaa is a freelance Dutch investigative journalist and analyst specialising in Ukraine and Russia. He has been writing articles about technical subjects since 1997. He has been following events in Ukraine and Russia since 2004. He has conducted extensive work interviewing Russian dissidents and studying hybrid warfare and propaganda since 2014. He lived Ukraine and Russia for many years. The past three years he has worked on analyzing trolls and troll army's on Twitter and Facebook.

His articles were published by Volkskrant, Groene Amsterdammer and Stopfake/Integrity Initiative and Atlantic Council. For broadcaster Humanistische Omroep (abbr. HUMAN) he worked on an episode of tv-series Denktank (Eng. Thinktank) on Russian trolls and political influence using social media. For broadcaster VPRO he did research for a documentary on Russian influence in Sweden called "Schimmenspel - Poetins onzichtbare oorlog" (Shadowplay - Putin's invisible war).

Andrey Rikhter (Andrei Richter) is Senior Adviser at the OSCE Office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media. Richter holds university degrees in law, journalism and foreign languages, a doctorate in Russia and a professorship in media studies from Slovakia.

He has authored more than 200 publications on media law and policy in Russian, English, Albanian, Armenian, Azeri, Bosnian, Croat, German, French, Serbian, Slovak, Tajik, and Ukrainian, including the only standard media law textbook for journalism students in the Russian Federation (2002, 2009, 2016), a textbook on international standards of media regulation (2011), a textbook on online media law (2014), and a book on censorship and freedom of the media in post-Soviet countries, published by UNESCO (2007). 

Dr Richter sits on the editorial boards of a number of international journals on communications and the media.

Andrei Richter was a long-time professor at the School of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University, where he chaired a department in media law and history. He also served as a commissioner at the International Commission of Jurists and the Chair of the Law Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research.

He is also a Fellow, Center for Media, Data and Society, School of Public Policy, Central European University (Budapest)

Yevgeniya Chirikova is a Russian environmental activist, primarily known for opposing the building of a motorway through Khimki forest near Moscow. Also played a prominent role in the 2011–2012 Russian protests following disputed parliamentary elections in Russia. She is currently based in Estonia.
 
2014 - current time
Open Estonia Foundation, project co-ordinator, investigator, journalist.  Authors of articles in the Washington Post, La Tribune, de Volkskrant, Atlantic Council, Postimees, Activatica
Delivered lectures on Civil activism in Russia in Harvard, Stanford, Washington, Augsburg, Tartu universities.

2007 - 2014
Environmentalist, activist
Leader of the Movement to Defend Khimki Forest.  Due to the protest activity, the most of the forest near Moscow was spared from commercial development, though the toll motorway was still built through the forest. Together with Russian rock star Yuriy Shevchuk, organized a 5,000 - strong rally in Moscow to protect the forest. It turned to be the first event in the chain of mass protests in Moscow 2010 - 2012.

2013 - Winner of James Lawson Award as “an organizer or activist who demonstrates strategic insight and creativity in waging nonviolent struggle”,winner of Gront Internationellt pris (Sweden)
2012 - Winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize
2011  -  Got the Woman of Courage Award from US Vice President Joe Biden.
In November 2012, Foreign Policy named Yevgeniya Chirikova one of its 2012 Top 100 Global Thinkers.

1999 - 2007
Manager
EZOP group (Engineering, Consulting) 
 
Education
2004 - 05 Russian Academy of Economy and State Service - Master of Business Administration (MBA)
1992 - 1998 Moscow State Aeronautical University  - Master in Economy and Engineering

Maria (Masha) Vorontsova established IFAW’s office in the Russian Federation in 1994, then initiated a campaign which led to a ban on the winter den hunt of hibernating bears. She helped expand the Orphan Bear Cub Rehabilitation Center, which has rescued, rehabilitated and released more than 170 orphan bear cubs back to wild.
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Masha has also led campaigns resulting in the ban on the White Sea white coat harp seal hunt and the Sea of Okhotsk beluga hunt, as well as contributing to an increase in penalties for poaching of tigers and several other Red Book of Russia species.
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As part of IFAW’s efforts to save the critically endangered western gray whale, Masha’s team helped ensure that off shore oil and gas pipelines were constructed around, rather than through, crucial feeding grounds near Sakhalin Island. They continue to work to prevent the construction of a third oil platform.

Masha has acted as advisor to Russian MPs, working to promote animal welfare on a political level. In Moscow she helped establish an animal clinic and shelter in cooperation with the organization Tess and local authorities, which provides spay/neuter surgery and works to address the homeless dog and cat situation in the city.
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A recognized expert, Masha has been a member of the Russian Federation and IFAW delegations to international conferences including CITES, CMS and IWC. She is regularly interviewed by newspapers and magazines, and is filmed or consults on documentaries for major outlets such as Discovery and National Geographic.

Kate Wattersis co-founder and executive director of Crude Accountability, an environmental and human rights nonprofit organization working with natural resource impacted communities in the Caspian and Black Sea regions since 2003. Kate oversees the management and development of the organization to build sustainable and effective programs and campaigns. She works closely with activists in affected communities to develop strategies and campaigns to protect environmental and human rights on the local, national, and international levels. 

She has worked with human rights and environmental defenders in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Russia since the early 1990s, has lived in and traveled extensively throughout the region, and speaks fluent Russian. She is the author of numerous reports and articles on civil society in Central Asia and the Caspian region and has been interviewed for print media, radio, and television about environment, oil and gas, and human rights in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Russia.  Kate holds an MA in Russian Area Studies from Georgetown University and a BA in Russian literature from UMASS-Amherst.

Baia Pataraia is a human rights lawyer and civil activist. She holds LLM in International Human Rights Law from Central European University (2006) and Master’s degree in International Law from Tbilisi State University (2004). Since 2013 she chairs prominent women’s organization “Sapari”. In 2009-2013 she worked at Ministry of Justice of Georgia on various managerial positions. Since 2008 has been a visiting lecturer at various universities in Georgia.

Since 2011 as a national expert Baia Pataraia trains judges, prosecutors and lawyers on gender issues, domestic violence and anti-discrimination law in cooperation with international organizations and national training centers. In 2014 Baia Pataraia founded Georgian Women’s Movement, informal group consists up to 3000 women, who perform various advocacy activities and campaigns, including street demonstrations, performances and social campaigns on women’s rights.