Joanna Bourke Martignoni is a Senior Researcher at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and an Affiliate of the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute. Her research areas include the right to food, land commercialization, climate change, the right to education, and gender equality. She is a postdoctoral researcher and coordinator on the DEMETER (Droits et Egalité pour une Meilleure Economie de la Terre) multidisciplinary research for development project (2015–2021) 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, Dr Bourke Martignoni teaches courses on economic, social and cultural rights, international organisations, development, international humanitarian law, transitional justice and feminist theory at the University of Fribourg, the Geneva Academy and at the Australian National University.

She has also worked as a consultant to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. In addition, she has held positions 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).

Dr Bourke Martignoni 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.