Resource Persons

The resources persons that will share their knowledge and experience in the training are:

Richard Parker is Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Anthropology and Director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Politics and Health at Columbia University, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Global Public Health, as well as Director and President of ABIA, the Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association. Together with Sonia Corrêa, he serves as Co-Chair of Sexuality Policy Watch (SPW). He is the author of more than 200 publications on various aspects of sexuality, HIV and AIDS, health and human rights.

Sonia Corrêa has a degree in Architecture and a post-graduate study in Anthropology and has worked extensively on gender, sexuality and rights issues. Since 2002, with Richard Parker, she co-chairs Sexuality Policy Watch (SPW). She is the author of Population and Reproductive Rights: Feminist Perspectives from the South (in collaboration with Rebecca Reichmann, Zed Books, 1994) and Sexuality, Health and Human Rights (co-authored with Richard Parker and Rosalind Petchesky, Routledge, 2008).

Rosalind Petchesky is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of Abortion and Woman’s Choice (1990), Negotiating Reproductive Rights: Women’s Perspectives Across Countries and Cultures (1998) and Global Prescriptions: Gendering Health and Human Rights (2003), and Sexuality, Health and Human Rights (coauthored with Sonia Corrêa and Richard Parker, Routledge, 2008). Her numerous articles and books on issues of reproductive and sexual rights have been translated into numerous languages and have influenced scholars, advocates and legal forums in diverse countries. She is a member of Sexuality Policy Watch Steering Committee.

Rafael de la Dehesa completed his doctorate in the Department of Government at Harvard University. He is currently an associate professor of sociology at the College of Staten Island and Graduate Center of the City University of New York. For several years, he has conducted research on LGBT/sexual rights activism in Latin America. He is the author of Queering the Public Sphere in Mexico and Brazil: Sexual Rights Movements in Emerging Democracies. His current research focuses on sexual rights advocates' engagement with government health sectors in Latin America. 

Gloria Careaga is a Mexican psychologist and worldwide acknowledged LGBT advocate. She is the founder of the The Closet of Sor Juana, one of the oldest lesbian initiatives in Latin America and   a professor at the Universidad Autonoma  de Mexico  (UNAM).  She is is also the current co-Secretary General of ILGA and a member of SPW Steering Committee. She has extensively researched and published on gender and sexuality topics -- such as lesbianism, masculinities, gender based violence. She has  also been closely engaged with related  legal reform and policy debates in Mexico as well as with UN key policy process in the domain of human rights, gender and sexuality.

Dora Barrancos  is  PHD in History, professor at the University of Buenos Aires, director of  CONICET the main national Argentinean funding mechanism for scientific research in representation of the are of social and human sciences. Her areas of work include history,  gender and sexualities.

Mauro Cabral  has   been involved with trans and intersex activism since 1995. From 2005 to 2007 he was in charge of coordinating the Trans and Intersex Area at IGLHRC Latin American Office. The following three years he worked at Mulabi – Latin American Space for Sexualities and Rights, starting as its Watchdogs Officer and occupying the Executive Director position during 2009. Since 2004 he has regularly participated in political initiatives at the UN and in 2006 he was part of the expert’s group that elaborated the Yogyakarta Principles. In 2009 he compiled the book “Interdicciones. Escrituras de la intersexualidad en castellano” and, in 2010 he  became the co-director of GATE – Global Action for Trans* Equality.  He has been directly involved in the conceptual and political process that resulted in the 2012 Argentinean law on gender identity.

Akshay Khanna  is currently a Research Fellow with the Participation, Power and Social Change team at the IDS, and the convenor of the Sexuality and Development Programme. S/he has been centrally involved in developing a program of work and an intellectual agenda around ‘Unruly Politics’ along with colleagues and students at the IDS.

Mario Pecheny is Professor of Political Science at the Instituto Gino Germani at the University of Buenos Aires and Associate Researcher at CONICET. He is the co-editor of The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America: A Reader on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights (with Javier Corrales, University of Pittsburg Press, 2010) and has collaborated with Sexuality Policy Watch in numerous projects.


Resource persons at the Rio Training 

Emiliano Litardo received his law degree from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) Law School. He conducts research on sexual rights and human rights at the Ambrosio L. Gioja Institute, Faculty of Law. He is an Assistant Professor for classes such as "Law as technologies of gender" and "The bodies of law," both directed by Dr. Paula Viturro, Faculty of Law (UBA). Emiliano is a legal activist that has participated on the National Front for the Gender Identity Law: as an editor for Project 8126 and as a co-author of the recently passed Law on Gender Identity in Argentina, Law 26743.

Jean Wyllys was elected as a Congressman for the Socialism and Liberty Party of Rio de Janeiro (PSOL-RJ) for the 2011-2015 term. He is a writer with three books published, a columnist for the Charter Capital, and an avid supporter of movements that promote the rights of the LGBT community, black women, and other groups that have historically been marginalized.  Jean has also taken action to combat homophobia, religious intolerance and fundamentalism, discrimination against practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions, slave labor, sexual exploitation of children and adolescents, and violence against women. In 2012 he received the Judiciary Merit award from the Superior Labor Tribunal (TST) and was voted the best parliamentary member by the Congresso em Foco magazine. 

Tamara Adrián is a Venezuelan lawyer who graduated from the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas, summa cum laude, in 1976. She further obtained a Doctorate degree in Law and a Diploma in Comparative Law from the Paris Institute of Comparative Law.  As a transsexual lesbian woman, she has constantly been involved in promoting the recognition and protection of the civil and human rights of lesbian, gays, transsexual, transgender and intersexual people. She has been a lecturer in both LGBTI and gender legal issues, in Venezuela, and many other countries.  She is the author of the drafted Gender Identity Law, a Civil Partnership Law, and a Non Discrimination Law and a Civil Registry Law and an active participant in many of the lead legal movements in the country concerning gender and sexual diversity issues.  She has proposed successful amendments to the Venezuelan constitution in 2007 about LGBTI rights, that were further reproduced in the Ecuadorian and in the Bolivian constitutions as of 2008 and 2009.

Cláudia Antunes is Brazilian has worked in journalism for the last thirty years.  She began her carrier at  the now extinct TV Manchete and Jornal do Brasil. In  Folha de S. Paulo,  one of the three main Brazilian newspapers, she was  international editor for a number of years and later on the chief reporter in Rio. Today, Claudia works for the monthly magazine Piauí.