Participant Biographies

Laura Agustín
Dr. Laura Agustín is an authority on undocumented migration, sex work, trafficking and feminist scrapping on these. Her book Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry shows how prostitution has been isolated as a feminist debate and how moral crusaders against sex trafficking use neocolonialist ideas of deviance and crime to repress migration, infantilise women and make themselves important, necessary figures. Agustín’s early academic articles described the glaring absence of migrants who sell sex from migration literature and the strange exclusion of sexual labour from concepts of the service sector. As a remedy to exclusions she proposed the cultural study of commercial sex. Her concept of the Rescue Industry turns the gaze towards middle-class presumptions of Knowing Best how everyone should live and work. As The Naked Anthropologist she has spoken widely, sometimes as the only voice questioning current migration and labour policy in a sea of moral panic.  A lifetime migrant, she blogs regularly at http://www.lauraagustin.com.

William H. Andriette
Andriette is a longtime gay journalist and for many years was an editor at the Boston-based magazine, The Guide. His writing has appeared in publications from Gay Commuity News to the Gay and Lesbian Review International to Playboy. Currently he works at Baltimore Outloud.

Rosemary Auchmuty
A pioneer of women's studies and feminist legal studies in higher education in Britain, Rosemary (an Australian by upbringing) was Associate Director of the AHRC Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality, a joint enterprise between the Universities of Westminster, Keele and Kent, for three years before joining Reading Law School in 2007. She is Director of Teaching and Learning in the Law School and a member of the national (UK) sub-panel for law in the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework; an executive member of the Society of Legal Scholars, a member of the Socio-Legal Studies Association and the Law and Society Association and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2012. Since 2000 she has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Defense, France, teaching Property Law. Prior to moving into law she wrote widely in the areas of women's history and children's literature, including three books - Australia's Daughters (Sydney: Methuen, 1978), A World of Girls: the Appeal of the Girls' School Story (London: The Women's Press, 1992), and World of Women: growing up in the girls' school story (London: The Women's Press,1999, 2nd ed. 2008). She co-edited the 2-volume Encyclopaedia of School Stories (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) and wrote several entries for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) and the Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature (2006). She has just completed a British Academy funded project on dissolution of civil partnerships. Her current research interests include property law, legal history, and gender and sexuality issues, particularly marriage and civil partnership, most recently the chapter on ‘Marriage and civil partnership: Law’s role, feminism’s response’, in Margaret Davies and Vanessa Munro eds. A Research Companion to  Feminist Legal Theory. Farnham: Ashgate 2013.  

Carla LaGata/Carsten Balzer
Balzer, who holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the Free University of Berlin, wrote hir Ph.D. thesis on gender-variant/trans communities in  Brazil, Germany and the United States. S_he has carried  out fieldwork in tanzania and the Brazilian Amazon  region, as well as in Rio de Janeiro, New York City and  Berlin; taught Cultural Anthropology and Latin American Studies at the Free University of Berlin; and has published a book and various chapters in anthologies and articles in peer-reviewed journals in the U.S., Brazil,  Germany, Spain and the UK. S_he is chairperson of the Scientific Advisory Board of the transgender network Berlin (tGnB), founding member of the online journal Liminalis – Journal for Sex/Gender Emancipation and Resistance,  Editorial Board member of the academic journal Transgender Studies Quarterly (TSQ), and member of the Advisory Committee of the Open Society Foundations’ LGBti rights initiative. S_he supported tGEu from its very beginnings in 2005 and served as a Transgender Europe (tGEu) Steering Committee member from 2008 to 2012. Currently, s_he is the lead researcher of tGEu’s Transrespect versus Transphobia research project, which s_he initiated in 2009, and resulted in the publication of the 2012 report Transrespect versus Transphobia WorldWide: a comparative review of the human-rights situation of Gender-variant/Trans people.

Nathan Berg
Dr. Berg is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Otago in New Zealand, after having taught for many years at the University of Texas, Dallas. He has published numerous articles and chapters in the field of behavioral economics, appearing in outlets such as Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Psychological Review, Social Choice and Welfare and Contemporary Economic Policy. Berg was a Fulbright Scholar in 2003 and Visiting Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute-Berlin in 2005. His research has been cited in Financial Times, Business Week, Canada's National Post, The Village Voice, The Gay and Lesbian Review, The Advocate and the Atlantic Monthly.Before becoming an economist, Dr. Berg toured internationally and recorded with jazz trumpeters Maynard Ferguson and Clark Terry, and performed with John Scofield, Alan Broadbent, Stephen Scott, Burnadette Peters, Larry Goldings, Bill Stewart, and Christy Moore.

Fred S. Berlin
Fred S. Berlin, M.D., Ph.D., has been educated at a variety of centers including McGill University in Canada and the Maudsley Institute in England.  He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an Attending Physician at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.  He is also the Founder of The Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic and the Director of the National Institute for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma.  That program has been designated by the United States Department of Justice as a national resource site. 

As a consequence of his work with sexual disorders, he has been invited to address a White House Conference on Childhood Sexual Abuse; the Juvenile Justice Subcommittee of the United States Senate; various seminars sponsored by the United States Department of Justice; a Special Invited Conference sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences; a number of educational seminars conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Colleges of Judges in several states.  He has also served as an invited member of the Cardinals’ Commission for the Protection of Children in Boston, Massachusetts, and as a consultant to the European Parliament.  He has written numerous professional publications, and he has performed peer reviews for a number of professional journals including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Psychiatry.  He has been the recipient of a contract from the National Institute of Mental Health to prepare an annotated bibliography on sex offender etiology and treatment, and of a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation to study the activity of brain neurotransmitters during sexual arousal.  He was also a member of the subcommittee on the paraphilias (the sexual deviation disorders) for the 3rd revision of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Noel Busch-Armendariz
Dr. Busch-Armendariz has more than 20 years of experience working to end interpersonal violence. She is a professor at the School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin and the associate dean of research and director of the Center for Social Work Research. Noël teaches graduate courses in domestic violence, research, and social policy and an undergraduate course on modern slavery. Noël is the founder and principal investigator of the UT Austin Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (IDVSA), a collaboration of the School of Social Work, the School of Nursing, the School of Law, and the Bureau for Business Research with more than 150 affiliated community organizations. Since joining UT Dr. Busch-Armendariz has directed research for the National Institute of Justice, the Office for Victims of Crime, the Office on Violence Against Women, Office of the Attorney General of Texas, the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, totalling more than $5.1 million dollars in external funding. Her areas of specialization are interpersonal violence, refugees, asylees, and victims of human trafficking, and international social work. She is regularly called as an expert witness criminal, civil, and immigration cases and directs a national training on the topic. She is well published and has been recognized by her colleagues and students with many awards. Noël is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer and a Licensed Social Worker. She is happily married to Larry Armendariz and takes the utmost joy in being Daniel’s mother. She is a survivor of sexual assault.

Matthew L. Ferrara
Matthew L. Ferrara, Ph.D. - Dr. Ferrara obtained his doctorate in clinical psychology in 1982. He began his career in forensic psychology in 1985 when he served as the Chief Psychologist for the Texas Youth Commission and later he served as the Chief Psychologist for the Texas Department of Corrections. Since entering private practice around 1991, Dr. Ferrara has worked exclusively with clients who are involved in the court system. He has provided testimony before the legislature for the State of Texas. He has also testified as an expert witness in over 200 court cases. He is responsible for implementing every major sex offender treatment program in the State of Texas and other sex offender treatment programs outside the state of Texas. Dr. Ferrara routinely provides training seminars for mental health professionals, judges, and attorneys.

Phyllis Randolph Frye
Phyllis Randolph Frye is an Associate Judge for the City of Houston Municipal Courts. Frye is the first transgender judge in Texas, appointed in 2010 by Houston mayor Annise Parker. Her appointment was publicly opposed by the Houston Area Pastoral Council and other local pastors, but Mayor Parker expressed admiration for Frye, citing the new judge's long experience as a trial attorney. The Houston City Council unanimously approved of her appointment Born as Phillip Frye, she is an Eagle Scout and was a member of the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps. Frye graduated from Texas A&M University. While at Texas A&M, Frye was a member of the University's Corps of Cadets, belonged to the Texas A&M Singing Cadets and got married.

Alisdair A. Gillespie
Alisdair A. Gillespie is Professor of Criminal Law and Justice and Deputy Head of the School of Law in Lancaster, United Kingdom. Professor Gillespie initially trained for the Bar (being called by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple) before returning to academia. He studied for a research degree at the University of Durham and has taught at the universities of Durham, Teesside, Gothenburg (Sweden), Leicester De Montfort and now Lancaster. He specialises in the area of child sexual exploitation, particularly where it is facilitated by Information and Communication Technologies. He has published over fifty articles and five books in this article,including ‘Child Pornography: Law and Policy’ (Routledge, 2011). His work has been cited by the courts in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia and has featured in policy documents across the world. Professor Gillespie was a member of the Home Secretary’s Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet which was responsible for the drafting of many parts of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and the amendment of other statutes. He works closely with law enforcement and the Crown Prosecution Service of England & Wales where he conducts training and advises them on policy issues. In 2012/13 he was asked to act as the academic advisor to the Sentencing Council when they were preparing the latest sentencing guidelines on sexual offences which are issued to all judges in England & Wales. Professor Gillespie has advised the EU, Council of Europe, UN and G8 on issues relating to child pornography and has advised judges, prosecutors and law enforcement in many countries including Algeria, Belarus, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Thailand and the USA. He is an Associate Member (‘Friend’) of the International Association of Prosecutors and a member of the advisory board of INHOPE, the International Association of Hotlines. He is chair of the Marie Collins Foundation, which works with victims of online child sexual exploitation, and is a trustee of ECPAT UK and Stepping Stones Nigeria.

Helmut Graupner
Helmut Graupner, 1989 Master of Law; 1996 Doctor of Law; 2000 admitted to the Bar in Austria and 2000-2013 in the Czech Republic; since 1991 president of Rechtskomitee LAMBDA (RKL), the Austrian LGBT rights organization; since 1992 Co-President of the Austrian Society fir Sex Research; expert to the Austrian Federal Parliament, to the German Federal Parliament, and to the European Commission on issues of sexual offences legislation, partnership, and anti-discrimination legislation; member of the Expert Committee on the Revision of the Law on Sexual Offences appointed by the Austrian Minister of Justice (1996-2004); since 1999 member of the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS); since 2000 member of the editorial board of the Journal of Homosexuality; since 2000 Co-Director for Europe of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Intersex Law Association (ILGLaw); Austrian member and co-coordinator of the European Commission on Sexual Orientation Law (ECSOL); temporary advisor for UNAIDS; since 2013 Member of the National HIV/AIDS-Commission appointed by the Federal Minister of Health; 2002-2006 lecturer in the law at the University of Innsbruck (“Sexuality and the Law”); since 2006 lecturer at the Academy of European Law; since 2011 lecturer at the Vienna Academy of Sexology. Since 2002 state-approved counselor-at-law for family affairs under the Austrian Family Counseling Advancement Act. 2005-2007 member of the national Helpline for Crime Victims; since 2003 counsel of crime victims in criminal proceedings on behalf of victim protection centers (Vienna Ombudspersons for Children and Adolescents; Vienna Outreach Clinic for Men; Helpline for Raped Women and Girls.) Since 2013 member of the Monitoring Board on Children Rights, Federal Ministry of Economy, Family and Youth. Successfully litigated LGBT-rights cases before the European Court of Human Rights (L. & V. vs. Austria 2003, S.L. vs. Austria 2003; Woditschka & Wifling vs. Austria 2004; Franz Ladner vs. Austria 20056; Thomas Wolfmeyer vs. Austria 2005; H.G. & G.B. vs. Austria 2005; R.H. vs. Austria 2006; X et al. vs. Austria [GC] 2013, E.B. et al. vs. Austria 2013), before the Court of Justice of the European Union (Tadao Maruko vs. VdBB [GC] 2008, Jürgen Römer vs City of Hamburg [gc] 2011), and before the Austrian Constitutional Court (striking down the discriminatory age of consent, deletion of police data stored under discriminatory age of consent legislation; public health insurance benefits for same-sex partners; marriage rights for transsexual persons; several cases on equal rights for registered couples as for married couples) and the Administrative Supreme Court of Austria (change of legal sex without surgery). Author of the book Sexualität, Jugendschutz & Menschenrechte (Sexuality, Youth Protection and Human Rights, 1997); Co-edited the books Sexuality & Human Rights – A Global Overview (2005) and Adolescence, Sexuality & the Criminal Law – Multidisciplinary Perspectives (2005). Since 2011 he contributes the article ‘Gay Rights’ to the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law.

Janet Halley
Janet Halley is the Royall Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature from UCLA and a J.D. from Yale Law School. She has taught at Tel Aviv Buckmann School of Law and in the Law Department of the American University in Cairo. She is the author of Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism (Princeton 2006), and Don’t: A Reader’s Guide to the Military’s Anti-Gay Policy (Duke 1999). With Wendy Brown, she coedited Left Legalism/Left Critique (Duke 2002), and with Andrew Parker she coedited After Sex? New Writing Since Queer Theory (Duke 2011). She is the editor of a collection of essays entitled Critical Directions in Comparative Family Law, in volume 58 of the American Journal of Comparative Law, and the author of “What is Family Law?: A Genealogy,” published last year in the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities. Her current book projects are The Family/Market Distinction: A Genealogy and Critique and Rape in Armed Conflict: Assessing the Feminist Vision and its Law. She is co-director of the Trafficking Roundtable and of the Up Against Family Law Exceptionalism Conference, an international collaboration dedicated to studying the role of the family and family law in colonization, decolonization and contemporary globalization. She was recently awarded the Career Achievement Award for Law and the Humanities by the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities.

Gert Hekma
Gert Hekma is Professor of Sociology and the director of the Program in Gay Studies at the University of Amsterdam, and has taught in visiting appointments at Queens College (CUNY) and San Francisco City College. He is the Executive Director of the George Mosse Foundation and the founder of numerous other scholarly working groups. He is author or editor of over 25 books, including most recently Homoseksualiteit in Nederland van 1730 tot de moderne tijd (“Homosexuality  in The Netherlands  from 1730 to Modern Times” 2004), ABC van de perversies (“The ABCs of Perversions” 2009), and Past and Present of Radical Sexual Politics(2004). He has served as editor or editorial board member of many periodicals, including the Journal of Homosexuality, the Journal of the History of Sexuality, GLQ, Paidika, Newsletter Forum on Sexuality, Thamyris, Perversions, Sexualities, and Psychology & Sexuality.

James Hunter
James Hunter holds the MSW degree from the University of Maryland, and has worked in a variety of  settings, including  individual therapy, family counseling, group-work, team coordination in a residential treatment program, and the supervision of staff in a program of the de-institutionalization of people with developmental disabilities.  This work, at one point, included providing psychotherapy to people diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder). He has also provided many educational experiences, both in workshops and doing in-service training and clinical supervision to staff. He has published about a dozen papers in social work journals, as well as several books of fiction.

Donald Lien
Donald Lien holds the Richard S. Liu Distinguished Chair in Business at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Dr. Lien has published more than 200 papers in academic journals in the fields of economics, finance and statistics. Dr. Lien’s primary field of interest is in the futures market with supporting areas in econometrics and development economics. In addition to his academic duties, Dr. Lien is the assistant vice president for the UTSA East Asia Institute.  The UTSA East Asia Institute promotes appreciation and understanding of East Asian societies and cultures both on campus and in the community through research, outreach, networking, education, student/faculty exchange and business development and cooperation.He has twice received the President’s Distinguished Achievement Award in Research from UTSA.  His teaching honors include the Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence and the Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Kansas. He is a member of the advisory board of the Alamo Asian American Chamber of Commerce. Together with Dr. Berg, Dr. Lien has published articles on the disparity in earnings between gay and straight employees.

Florian Mildenberger
Florian Mildenberger is Professor of History at the Europa-University Viadrina in Frankfurt an der Oder. A specialist in the history of medicine, he has written numerous books, including works on the history of psychiatric understandings of homosexuality, medical subcultures and wonder healers in German history, homeopathy, and biographies of notable physicians and medical historians, as well as the pedophile activist Peter Schult.

Mary Sue Molnar
Mary Sue Molnar is the executive director of Texas Voices for Reason and Justice. Texas Voices is a grass-roots, all-volunteer, non-profit organization established in 2008. TVRJ advocates for common sense, research-based laws and policies through education, legislation, litigation, and support for people who are required to register as well as for members of their families. 

Jules Mulder
Jules Mulder (b. 1950) is a psychologist and a psychotherapist with 30 years experience in the forensic field. Twenty years ago he started the first outpatient clinic in the Netherlands for court ordered non-residential treatment for sex and other offenders, de Waag. Now de Waag has eight offices in the Netherlands, with over 8000 new clients each year. He has been its director until a year ago. Now he is a consultant and treatment provider for pedosexual offenders and has initiated Stop it Now! in the Netherlands, a helpline for men with pedophilic feelings and their families. He has published on the treatment of sex offenders and on other forensic topics in Dutch and English language journals.

Yasmin Nair
Yasmin Nair is a writer and academic from Uptown, Chicago. She is the co-founder, with Ryan Conrad, of Against Equality (www.againstequality.org) and the Volunteer Policy Director of Gender JUST (www.genderjust.org). She writes frequently on topics like gay marriage, sex offender registries, feminism, and neoliberalism. Her work can be found at www.yasminnair.net.

Ryan H. Nelson
Ryan H. Nelson is an associate in the Long Island office of Jackson Lewis LLP, a national law firm dedicated to representing employers in all aspects of workplace law. He is a member of the firm’s Affirmative Action and OFCCP Planning and Counseling practice group where he prepares employers’ affirmative action plans and defends employers against allegations of discrimination in connection with audits initiated by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). He also defends employers against charges of discrimination filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and analog state and local agencies. His scholarship focuses on the intersection of employment law and LGBT rights in the areas of employment discrimination, employee benefits, leave time, and workplace policies. He is a member of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce’s Legal Industry Counsel and was recently named one of the National LGBT Bar Association’s Best 40 Lawyers Under 40, Class of 2013.

Krzysztof Smiszek
Krzysztof Smiszek (b. 1979) received his law degree in 2003 from the Faculty of Law and Administration of Warsaw University in Poland. In 2006 obtained his degree in European Law (Warsaw University, post-graduate studies). From 2003 until 2005 he worked as a lawyer at the Office of the Polish Government Plenipotentiary for Equal Status of Women and Men - national equality body responsible for combating discrimination. From 2005 until 2008 he worked as a senior legal specialist at the Polish Prime Minister Chancellery. Krzysztof Smiszek is a certified legal trainer of the EU anti-discrimination law. He cooperates with the Polish nationwide LGBT organization Campaign Against Homophobia where he heads the Legal Team. He has been involved as an adviser on law & equality to numerous Polish NGOs, trade unions and businesses. Krzysztof Smiszek is an author of a number of articles and papers on EU anti-discrimination legislation. He is a co-author (together with Karolina Kedziora) of the book Bullying and discrimination at the workplace (Warsaw 2008, C.H. Beck). He is the current Deputy President of the Polish Society of Anti-discrimination Law which brings together a range of Polish law practitioners, policy experts, lawyers of Polish human rights, NGOs, and academics interested in promoting and improving anti-discrimination legislation (www.ptpa.org.pl). Since 2008 he has been working as a Policy Officer in Equinet - the European Network of Equality Bodies (Brussels). Along with Helmut Graupner, he is Co-chair of the European Commission on Sexual Orientation Law (ECSOL).

Kurt Starke
After receiving his doctorate in 1967, Kurt Starke became the head of the Central Institute for Youth Research of the German Democratic Republic in 1972; in 1981 he also obtained a professorship at the University of Leipzig. Among his books are Fit for Sexpower? Eine sexualwissenschaftliche Untersuchung zu Bravo Girl (“A Sex-scientific Inquiry into Bravo Girl” 2001), Schwuler Osten. Homosexuelle Männer in der DDR (“The Gay East: Homosexual Men in the GDR” 1994), Pornografie und Jugend. Jugend und Pornografie (“Pornography and Youth; Youth and Pornography” 2010), and Lexikon der Erotik (“Lexicon of Eroticism” 1996).

Kathryn Bond Stockton
Kathryn Bond Stockton is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Utah. She is also a core faculty member of Cornell University’s School of Criticism and Theory, and in 2008 received the Modern Language Association’s Crompton-Noll Prize for the Best Essay in Gay and Lesbian Studies. In 2011 she delivered the keynote address for the inauguration of Durham University’s Centre for Sex, Gender, and Sexuality. Notable among her money publications is her 2009 book The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century, published by Duke University Press.

Robert Teixeira
Robert Teixeira is completing his Ph.D. dissertation in the Sociology Department at York University in Toronto. His scholarly foci include governmentality studies, critical sexualities, queer theory and child and youth studies. His research takes a critical look at contemporary child protection legislation, analyzing the socio-legal regulation of young people and sexuality in Canada. As a former Goth kid (in the 1980s) he has not lost his love for the music and black attire, although his preferences are now for modern composition, experimental electronic, sound-art, and noise. His current obsession is with John Cage.

William Thompson
Bill Thompson is a forensic criminologist. He has conducted over 200 successful investigations into false allegation/conviction cases including freeing Patrick Nicholls who spent 23 years inside for ‘the murder that never happened.’ Having conducted the first comparative study in pornographic content between Europe and the UK in 1990, he was invariably consulted in contested obscenity cases in the UK. He has just published his twenty year research into the myth of moral panic, and is currently studying the criminal injustice system in the USA.

Daniel Williams
Daniel Williams is the Field Organizer and Legislative Specialist for Equality Texas. Daniel believes that LGBT people must understand how laws are made to be successful in their fight for equality. In his role with Equality Texas Daniel helps implement the organizations legislative agenda and engage everyday Texans with the legislative process. Daniel the recipient of the 2010 Horizon Award for Emerging Leadership in the Transgender Community and the 2012 Brenda Thomas Award from the Houston Transgender Unity Committee and the 2011 Leadership Award from the Houston GLBT Political Caucus.

Hans Ytterberg
Hans Ytterberg was born in Stockholm in 1956. He has an LLM degree in law from the University of Stockholm (1990), has served as a court of appeals judge and as a legal advisor to the Swedish Parliament's Advisory Committee on European Union Affairs. He was then recruited to the Ministry of Justice as legal advisor and in 1999 he was appointed Sweden's Ombudsman against Sexual Orientation Discrimination. After that office was merged with others into a single Equality Ombudsman in 2009, he was attached to different Government Ministries as Director General, mainly working on new disability rights legislation and on evaluation of the Government's National Human Rights Action Plan. He has served in a number of national and international expert roles in the field of non-discrimination and human rights, inter alia as expert to the European Commission on discrimination issues, board member of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency and Chair of the Committee of Experts of the Council of Europe on Discrimination on grounds of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (DH-LGBT).