International Relations Faculty

Jill Adler, JD, is the director of the East-West Parliamentary Practice Project (EWPPP), an independent non-profit organization headquartered in Amsterdam. The EWPPP has developed and implemented capacity building programs for parliaments and civil society organizations in emerging democracies throughout eastern/southeastern Europe and Eurasia since its establishment in 1990.

Adler is an adjunct professor at Webster Leiden Campus, in the Department of International Relations, as well as Dutch universities, and served for many years on the board of the Netherlands-America Fullbright Center. Adler currently serves on the boards of several nonprofits, including the Albanian-American Development Foundation, (AADF), Kosovo Institute for Development Policy (INDEP) and the American University in Kosovo (A.U.K).

Adler is the recipient of the Albanian Medal of Appreciation from the President of Albania as well as the Hungarian Cross of Honor. Adler received her Doctor of Law (JD) from Georgetown University Law Center.

Maarten Biermans (1974) is responsible for the Sustainable Capital Market Solutions at Rabobank. With the issuance of Green Bonds and Sustainability linked loans, he helps with advancing sustainable finance across the globe.

Before joining the bank Rabobank as the head of ESG policy, Biermans worked as a strategy consultant specializing in Responsible Investing within the alternative asset classes.

Biermans has dual master's degrees in Economics and Philosophy from the University of Amsterdam, where he also obtained his PhD in Economics. While working on his dissertation, he was a visiting scholar at Stanford University.

Biermans is a member of the Excom of the Green Bond Principles and the UNEP FI Social Issues Advisory Board, and is a board member of the Netherlands Network of the UN Global Compact. He also contributes to the international think tanks on improving and advancing the link between sustainability and capital markets. He frequently teaches at various institutions of higher learning on topics such as international political economy, microeconomics and business ethics.

Until recently, Abraham “Bram” Boxhoorn was the director of the Netherlands Atlantic Association ("Atlantische Commissie"), a cross-political party organization in The Hague. He organized programs on transatlantic security issues, such as the role of NATO in the Euro-Atlantic area and NATO-EU and EU-US relations. From 1983-1996 he read European history and international relations at the University of Amsterdam. He received his PhD in History from the University of Amsterdam in 1992.

Boxhoorn is currently Adjunct Professor of International Relations and History at Webster University, Leiden Campus. His fields of specialization are the history of European international relations and transatlantic studies. His latest publication is a book he co-authored with Giles Scott-Smith, entitled “The Transatlantic Era (1989–2020) in Documents and Speeches” (Routledge, 2022).

Ernani Contipelli is a Professor at Webster University - Campus Leiden and Tashkent, the United International Business Schools (UIBS), and the Central American Institute of Public Administration. He holds two post-doctorate degrees in Comparative Politics and a PhD in Public Law. With extensive academic experience across various countries, he has published numerous works focusing on his research interests, which analyze sustainability and circularity by engaging business and social/political actors.

Recently, Contipelli published the book "Introduction to Circular Economy," which serves as a practical guide for understanding circular principles, challenges, and opportunities. This book blends theoretical concepts with real-world examples to assist in the transition from a linear to a circular economy. Currently, he is focused on researching the new EU regulations on sustainability and their impact on business, society, and the environment.

Iwona Guść earned her PhD in film history from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands). Between 2010 and 2014 she was appointed as a researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam and contributed to a project on antisemitism. She has held postdoctoral fellowships from the Göttingen Institute for Advanced Studies (Lichtenberg-Kolleg) and Imre Kertész Kolleg in Jena, and Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich.

Guść is connected to Webster’s International Relations program as a lecturer since 2018. She is also appointed as lecturer at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, within the department of History. Her research and teaching encompass topics on modern Eastern European history, Holocaust and antisemitism, human rights and migration.

Doreen Kiggundu-Modin, LLM, is a lawyer specializing in all areas of public international law, including international criminal law, international human rights law and humanitarian law. She also works as an adjunct lecturer in Law at Jönköping University, International Business School (JIBS) in Sweden, where she teaches commercial law and provides guest lectures in human rights and international law. She has worked for the prosecutor, the judges and the defense teams at the international criminal and hybrid courts in the Hague. She has collaborated with the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva on some capacity-building projects.

As a legal practitioner, Kiggundu-Modin started her career as a legal intern at the UNHCR and UNDP office in Kampala, Uganda in 1999 and in 2003, before briefly joining the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in The Hague, Netherlands. In 2005, she joined the International Criminal Court (ICC) and worked as a legal assistant in the Office of the Prosecutor on the first ICC trial in the case Prosecutor versus Thomas Lubanga and later on, worked for the defense team of Said Gadafi on the Admissibility Challenge issue before the ICC Appeals Chamber. She then served as a legal officer to Trial Chamber II judges of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) for six years. In that capacity, she assisted the judges in a wide range of tasks, including in the drafting of the trial and sentencing judgments in the case of the Prosecutor versus Brima etal (AFRC case) and worked on a high-profile case of Prosecutor versus Charles Ghankay Taylor (Taylor case), and also worked on enforcement of sentences, cooperation agreements and the completion strategy of the court.

Kiggundu-Modin gained private practice experience when she worked as legal assistant at one of U.K.’s leading law firms, Temple Garden Chambers. Her work focused mainly on development of the legal framework in support of criminal justice systems and anti-corruption regime, gender mainstreaming in strategic processes, capacity assessment of justice systems in post-conflict countries, advocating for victims right to redress and enforcement of human rights.

In 1999, Kiggundu-Modin worked on refugee and human rights issues at an NGO Refugee Law Project in Kampala, Uganda where she assisted 32 refugees in integrating in society without government intervention, and collaborated with UNHCR on the status determination of asylum seekers. She is a consultant for the International Legal and Development Consultancy (ILDC) and specializes in the provision of technical assistance and policy advice on international law, human rights and development.

Kiggundu-Modin is a member of the Uganda Law Society (ULS), International Criminal Court Bar Association (ICCBA) and International Bar Association (IBA).

Piotr Perczynski, PhD, earned his graduate degrees in International Relations and Political Science from Warsaw University and was awarded scholarships at Oxford University, Leiden University and University of Amsterdam. He was a postdoctoral researcher on political theory at Leiden University (1998-2001) and senior lecturer at the European Institute of Public Administration (2006-2009). He has also served as a head of Political Cabinet of the Deputy Prime Minister, as a national coordinator for Performance Budget (statutory authority) and a Vice-Ambassador of Poland to the Netherlands (2012-2016). Currently, he is a lecturer on politics and international relations and is doing research on the work of Machiavelli and Castiglione.

Naya Pessoa, JD, has over a decade of extensive global experience in promoting human rights and justice. Currently serving as the co-founder of the International Center for Amazonian Indigenous Knowledge, Pessoa is focusing on indigenous rights for groups in the Amazon and diaspora groups in the Netherlands. Before this position, she specialized in alternative dispute resolution at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), the original international court of the Peace Palace.

While at the PCA, Pessoa worked on 100+ cases, focusing primarily in Latin America on legal issues, including human rights, environment, territorial boundaries, sovereignty and investment treaties. Pessoa’s first position in the Netherlands was advocating for fair trial processes as an International Criminal Process Clinic fellow at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Prior to that, during her law studies, she advocated for indigent clients as an Americorps Fellow working on the Immigration Rights Project (USA).

Pessoa earned her Juris Doctorate from New England Law Boston, and her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and Political Science (cum laude) from the University of Florida, and has participated in special course modules at the Universidad de Guanajuato (Mexico) and Leiden University (the Netherlands). She is currently teaching courses such as Race and Criminal Justice Systems in the Political Science Department.

Daniel Russell, LLM, has lectured at Webster Leiden Campus since 2006, in the department of International Relations. Courses taught include Public International Law, Negotiation, Diplomatic History, Comparative Politics, World Systems Since 1500, International Affairs, Politics in the Industrialized World and Conduct of Foreign Policy. Russell graduated from Holy Cross College, has law degrees from Leiden University and the University of Louvain, and did postgraduate work at New York University and the Hague Academy of International Law. He worked on several research projects for the Leiden law faculty, notably in the fields of energy, environmental law, and air and space law, and for the past twenty-five years has lectured at both the bachelor’s and master’s level at Webster Leiden Campus, Nyenrode and The Hague Universities. He has been a judge at the Telders Moot Court, International Court of Justice for the past twenty years and is a member of the Royal Dutch Society of International Law.

Tromp received her PhD from the University of Amsterdam. She has been teaching in the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam since 1992 and in the Department of International Relations at Webster Leiden Campus since 2018. From 2000 to 2012, Tromp worked as a researcher for the Leadership Research Team in the Office of Tribunal's Prosecutor at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and she was principle researcher on history and politics in the trial of Slobodan Milošević. She is co-founder and executive director of the Geoffrey Nice Foundation on Law, History, Politics, and Society in the Context of Mass Atrocities. Tromp's interdisciplinary research explores the interplay between law, justice, history, politics and society. She teaches on the following subjects: theories and history of human rights, humanitarianism in international relations, post-conflict societies, legal response to mass atrocities, and history and politics of post-communist Europe.

Tromp's recent publications include "Smrt u Hagu: nezavršeno suđenje Slobodanu Miloševiću" (Sarajevo: Sarajevo University Press, 2019); "In Search for Truth at Mass Atrocities Trials: Will Lawyers and Judges Have the Last Word?" (The International Journal for Comparative Law, March, 2018); "Montenegro and NATO membership: an achievement and a risk?" (Internationale Spectator, Clingendael, The Hague, May, 2017); "Profile: Montenegro's game-changing leader Milo Đukanović" (Internationale Spectator, Clingendael, The Hague, May, 2017); "International Criminal Tribunals and Cooperation with States: Serbia and the Provision of Evidence for the Slobodan Milošević Trial at the ICTY," co-authored with Geoffrey Nice, in Margaret de Guzman and Diane Amann (Eds.), Arcs of Global Justice: Essays in Honor of William A. Schabas (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017); "Criminal Trial as a Tool to Re-Write History" in Karčić, H. et al. (Eds.), Remembering Bosnian Genocide: Justice, Memory and Denial (Sarajevo: Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks, 2016); Prosecuting Slobodan Milošević: The Unfinished Trial (Routledge: London, 2016).