Schell Center Announces 2024-25 Postgraduate Fellows in Human Rights

The Orville H. Schell Jr. Center for International Human Rights has announced that five Yale Law students and recent graduates will receive Robert L. Bernstein Fellowships in International Human Rights and Robina International Human Rights Fellowships for the 2024–25 academic year.

Both fellowships fund full-time human rights work for recent graduates of Yale Law School. The Bernstein Fellowship supports a year of full-time work in human rights advocacy. The Robina Fellowship also funds full-time human rights work, particularly at international or foreign courts and tribunals and intergovernmental human rights agencies.

Read about this cohort of fellows and their projects.

Al Brady ’24

Brady will spend their Bernstein Fellowship year as a Climate Fellow with the International Refugee Assistance Project, representing clients who cannot return to their countries of origin due, in part, to environmental or climate factors. They will work closely with the Senior Climate Attorney to develop test cases to introduce novel legal arguments into our legal system about how environmental factors affect the harm people may face if forced to return to their countries of origin. Brady has been involved in environmental advocacy work since elementary school, working on behalf of their community in South Minneapolis to fight disproportionate pollution faced by public school children. They are excited to continue this legacy of environmental and climate justice advocacy with IRAP. 

While at Yale Law School, Brady prioritized technical skill-building, such as legal research and writing, through clinical work, academic journal leadership, and research assistantships. They believe building these skills has been the best preparation for them to support existing movements, organizers, and community organizations on the front lines of climate change. Brady was a member of the Environmental Protection Clinic, the Sovereignty Project’s Supreme Court Track, and Legal Assistance: Immigrant Rights Clinic. They were also an Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of Law and Liberation. During summers, they worked for the Environment and Land Section of the California Department of Justice and Earthjustice’s Alaska Office. Concurrent to law school, Brady works with local attorneys in their home community in South Minneapolis to challenge multiple polluters creating cumulative pollution in an already environmentally overburdened neighborhood. 

Before law school, Brady worked as a Fulbright Research Fellow, supported by the U.N.’s Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene division, studying water justice; at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Inspector General’s Office investigating the EPA’s role in the Volkswagen Clean Air Act violations; and as the Founder and Executive Director of an award-winning environmental justice non-profit organization focused on narrative change. They plan to dedicate their career to collective liberation and environmental and climate justice law.

Anuj Chand ‘23 LLM

Chand will spend his Bernstein Fellowship year in Nepal working with the Informal Sector Service Centre to monitor the status of the Government of Nepal’s implementation of the Universal Periodic Review recommendations. 

At Yale Law School, he was a member of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. With a four-member team, he traveled to Kenya to research the situation of online hate speech and the violation of relevant international human rights standards. He also worked on a separate Lowenstein Project with the Institute for Integrated Transitions. He was the Managing Editor (Development) of the Yale Journal of International Law and an editor for the Yale Journal on Regulation.

Chand is currently an Assistant Professor at Jindal Global Law School, where he teaches Public International Law, International Human Rights Law, and Jurisprudence. Earlier, he was engaged with Neupane Law Associates for over three years. As a student, he was adjudged the second-best speaker at the 17th Red Cross IHL Moot in Hong Kong. He is also the best-ranked Nepali oralist at the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. He was a part of the team that won the regional rounds of the 14th Henry Dunant Memorial Moot Court Competition in Iran. He has coached and mentored many teams that have represented Nepal internationally. He holds a B.A. LL.B. degree (with university gold medal) from Kathmandu School of Law.

Medha Damojipurapu ‘24 LLM

Damojipurapu will spend her time as a Robina Fellow at the Headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva. At the ICRC, she will be involved in a project exploring convergences and divergences between the rules governing the conduct of warfare in international law and those found in other normative and religious traditions. She will also be engaged in carrying out research on the development of International humanitarian law treaties, particularly highlighting the contributions of states from the Global South.

At Yale Law School, Damojipurapu is a member of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic and a Senior Features Editor at the Yale Journal of International Law. Damojipurapu is also a Fellow at the Centre for International Law Research and Policy, an international law think tank based in Florence, Italy, in which capacity she pursues research on a wide variety of issues at the intersection of human rights and international law.

Jonathan Epps ‘24 

Epps will spend his Bernstein Fellowship year working with the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s Docket Initiative. Epps’s work will focus on pursuing accountability for perpetrators and enablers of international crimes and supporting Ukrainian, Venezuelan, Congolese and other survivors in their pursuit of justice, with a thematic focus on sexual and gender-based violence.

At Yale, Epps was a student clinician and coach in the Veterans Legal Services, Challenging Mass Incarceration and Access to Law School Clinics. He was a 2023 recipient of the YLW+ Critical Race Theory Award and Susman Godfrey Prize. Epps spent his summers with the Mecklenburg Defenders and Southern Center for Human Rights. He holds a B.A in Political Science from Morehouse College.

Akriti Gaur ‘22 LLM

Gaur will spend her Robina Fellowship year at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. She will clerk for Judge Darian Pavli and will conduct research at the Research Unit of the Directorate of the Jurisconsult. Gaur is a doctoral candidate (J.S.D.) at Yale Law School, where she serves as a Tutor in Law. She is a Resident Fellow at the Yale Information Society Project and a researcher with the Mass Atrocities in the Digital Era Project, Yale Genocide Studies Program. As an LL.M. student, she was a Submissions Editor of the Yale Journal of Law and Technology and a student member of the Yale Cyber Leadership Forum. She also worked with the International Refugee Assistance Program Clinic. Before coming to Yale, Gaur was a policy advisor and an independent researcher focusing on technology and human rights in India. She has worked with think tanks and advised the Indian Government and the Supreme Court of India on contemporary technology policy reforms. She holds Bachelor’s degrees in Laws and Arts degree from National Law University, Jodhpur, India (2015).