European Yearbook of Disability Law

Gerard Quinn is the Director of the Centre for Disability Law and Policy at the NUI Galway School of Law. Called to the Irish Bar in 1983, he holds a masters (LL.M.) and doctorate in law (S.J.D.) from Harvard Law School. His specialization is international and comparative disability law and policy. He is a member of the Irish Human Rights Commission and helps co-ordinate the work of National Human Rights Institutions worldwide on disability issues. He led the delegation of Rehabilitation International (RI) during the UN Working Group that elaborated the basis for the new Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. He has worked in the European Commission (as a civil servant), and held a number of posts such as Director of Research for the Irish Government’s Law Reform Commission and Vice President of the European Committee of Social Rights (Council of Europe). He sits on various advisory boards dealing with disability law and policy issues such as the Commonwealth Secretariat, SOROS-OSI (Washington, DC), Disability Rights Fund (Boston, MA), European Foundation Centre Consortium on Disability(Brussels), European Coalition for Community Living (London), Interights (London). In January 2012 President Michael D. Higgins appointed Professor Quinn to the Republic of Ireland’s Council of State.

Lisa Waddington holds the European Disability Forum Chair in European Disability Law. Professor Waddington’s principal area of interest lies in European and comparative disability law, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and European and comparative equality law in general. In 2000, she received an ASPASIA award from the NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research). Between 2004 and 2007 she coordinated a large EU research and education project on European non-discrimination law. She also coordinated the involvement of Maastricht University in the FP7 EuRADE project (European Research Agendas expanding Disability Equality) and the Marie Curie Initial Training Network DREAM (Disability Rights Expanding Accessible Markets, 2011-2015). She is a scholar of the Maastricht Centre for European Law and a member of both the Ius Commune Research School and the Human Rights Research School. Between 1993 and 2004 she was the editor of the “Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law”. She is currently a board member of a number of Networks and organizations, including the European Equality Law Network and the Academic Network of European Disability experts. She has been an associate professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in 2000 and a visiting professor at the University of Melbourne in 2015.