Joanna Bourke Martignoni

Joanna Bourke Martignoni is a Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy.

Her research areas include the right to food, land commercialization, climate change, the right to education and gender equality. She is a member of the DEMETER (Droits et Egalité pour une Meilleure Economie de la Terre) multidisciplinary research for development project (2015–2020) that is examining land commercialization, gendered agrarian transformation and the right to food, with Cambodia and Ghana as case studies.

In addition to her research work, she teaches on the Geneva Academy training courses on economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR). Dr Martignoni also teaches a master’s level course in ESCR at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.

Prior to joining the Geneva Academy, she held positions as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Fribourg, and consultant to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. She also worked as a programme officer on women’s rights at the World Organisation Against Torture and as a legal adviser at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

She has degrees in South East Asian History, Political Science and Law from the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University, a Master’s in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and a PhD in law from the University of Fribourg. Her doctoral thesis examined the human right to education in the context of international development cooperation programmes with special reference to the role of the World Bank.