Contributors • Periscope

Lopeti Senituli

KAS Australia — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 04:09:24 +0000

Lopeti Senituli is a Law Practitioner in Tonga and former Political Advisor to two Tongan Prime Ministers, Dr. Fred Vaka’uta Sevele and Samiuela ‘Akilisi Pohiva. He was founding Director of the office of the Tonga Human Rights and Democracy Movement (2000–2003). Prior to that, he was Director of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre Inc, the secretariat of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement (NFIP), based in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand (1987–1993) and Suva, Fiji (1993–2000). He has also served the Tongan government in various capacities including CEO of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (2012–2015). He served as representative of the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) to the Churches Commission on International Affairs of the World Council of Churches (WCC-CCIA) in Geneva (1999–2006). He was appointed as the representative from the Polynesia region to the Pacific Islands Forum – Specialist Sub-Committee on Regionalism (PIF-SSCR) (2015–2018) and has been a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Diplomacy Training Program (DTP) of the University of New South Wales-Law School since 1994. He is a former President of the Tonga Law Society.

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Sabina Wölkner

KAS Australia — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 01:30:22 +0000

Sabina Wölkner has been Director of the Regional Programme Australia and the Pacific of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, based in Canberra, since August 2025. Prior to this, she headed the 2030 Agenda Department in Berlin, focusing on climate and energy policy, sustainability, global health, and development policy. Her international experience also includes leading the Multinational Development Dialogue in Brussels (2014–2019), where she worked at the intersection of development policy, democracy, security, and climate policy. During this time, she represented the Foundation in the European Network of Political Foundations (ENoP) and co-coordinated the EU-funded project “Get involved: Women Empowerment in Morocco and Benin.” From 2009 to 2014, Sabina Wölkner headed the KAS country office in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where her work focused on democratization, EU integration, and reconciliation.

She began her work with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in 2006. Before that, she was a Resident Fellow in the Central Europe Programme of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin.

Sabina Wölkner (M.A.) studied Political Science and East Slavic Studies at the Universities of Mannheim and Warsaw.

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Mag. Daniela Kirchmeir MA

KAS Australia — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 03:02:26 +0000

Daniela Kirchmeir works as an Information Security Consultant at HiSolutions (Berlin). After completing her degree in education in 2018, she worked in the education sector for four years. In 2023, she completed her master’s degree in integrated risk management at the University of Applied Sciences Campus Vienna. In her research on scientific espionage, she dealt with the difficult balancing act between freedom of research and knowledge protection and identified prevention methods for the sustainable protection of research results. 2023 she was awarded first place in the Security category at the European Students Research Conference for her master’s thesis.

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Dr Sandra Kostner

KAS Australia — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 04:03:30 +0000

Dr Sandra Kostner is a historian and sociologist specializing in migration research. She studied history and sociology at the University of Stuttgart and received her doctorate from the University of Sydney with a comparative thesis on the educational attainment of second-generation students of Greek and Italian origin in Germany and Australia. During her doctorate, she also worked as a lecturer in the Department of History and the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Sydney. Dr Kostner gained several years of non-university practical experience, including working as an employee in a consulting program for museums for Far North Queensland and in the Cairns City Council in the municipal development department and Department of Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. Since 2010, she has been managing director of the master’s program “Interculturality and Integration” at the Schwäbisch Gmünd University for Education in southern Germany. Dr Kostner’s research focuses on comparative migration and integration policy with a focus on Germany, Australia and Great Britain; migration-related diversity as a challenge for liberal-democratic states; and social cohesion in diverse migration societies.

Among her many publications are the anthology “Lessons learnt from 9/11. How the West has dealt with Islamism” (‘Lehren aus 9/11. Zum Umgang des Westens mit Islamismus’; co-edited with Elham Manea, published in 2021/2022; the edited volume “The Identity-Left’s Redemption Agenda. A Debate on its Consequences for Countries of Immigration” (Identitätslinke Läuterungsagenda: eine Debatte zu ihre Folgen für Migrationsgesellschaften); and articles such as” Teaching and Learning Diversity: Making (Higher) Education More Accessible and Equitable” (2016-2017). Dr Kostner also authored the foreword to the German edition of “The Disuniting of America. Reflections on a Multicultural Society” by Arthur M. Schlesinger (2020), and edited a volume containing responses to Schlesinger’s essay, titled: The Us-against-Them-Society (Die Wir-gegen-die-Gesellschaft, to be published January 2024).

Aside from her academic research and teaching, Dr Kostner’s work has a distinct applied focus: she has, for example, been the leading research consultant for a number of government initiatives on integration and diversity at the state-level, such as for educational staff who teach children and adolescents from migrant families, or support of the ‘Welcome to Baden-Wuerttemberg! Engagement for Refugees and Asylum-Seeker’ project (2015-2017).

In February 2021, Dr Kostner co-founded the ‘Academic Freedom Network’, an association of academics dedicated to strengthening a liberal academic climate, by defending the constitutionally enshrined freedom of research and teaching against ideologically motivated restrictions and political censorship.

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Dr Josefin Graef

KAS Australia — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 04:00:54 +0000

Josefin Graef is an Associate Researcher at Aston University, Birmingham, UK. Her work centres on the place of far-right violence and terrorism in the social and political imagination of Europe and the global “West” since the end of the Second World War. She received her PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK, in 2017. She has previously been a DAAD/AGI Research Fellow at the American-German Institute, Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, DC (summer/autumn 2023) and a Dahrendorf Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hertie School in Berlin (2018-1019). Josefin has published on narrative methods, political violence, the populist radical right, and German politics. This paper draws on her PhD work as well as her book Imagining Far-right Terrorism: Violence, Migration, and the Nation State in Contemporary Western Europe, which was published as part of Routledge’s Studies in Fascism and the Far Right Series in 2022.

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Senator the Hon David Fawcett

KAS Australia — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 05:02:07 +0000

Senator the Hon David Fawcett served in the Australian Defence Force for over 22 years. An Army pilot, he flew helicopters and fixed wing aircraft and was the Senior Flying Instructor at the School of Army Aviation in Queensland. Graduating as an experimental test pilot from the Empire Test Pilots’ School (UK), he finished his full time career in Defence as the Commanding Officer of the RAAF Aircraft Research and Development Unit.
Elected to the House of Representatives as the Member for Wakefield (SA) in 2004, he served in the Parliament until 2007. David continued to fly as a test pilot and ran a small business working in the Defence and Aviation sectors prior to being elected to the Senate in 2010, 2016 and again in 2019. In the 45th Parliament, David was sworn as the Assistant Minister for Defence. David is currently the Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, a member of the Senate Standing Committees on Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade – both Legislation and References, and a member of the Senate Standing Committee of Privileges.

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Dr Berenika Drazewska

KAS Australia — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 06:11:43 +0000

Dr Berenika Drazewska is a Senior Research Fellow at the Yong Pung How Faculty
of Law, Singapore Management University. She holds a Ph.D. in international law from
the European University Institute in Florence, Italy (2016), an LL.M. (2011) from the
same institution, and a Master’s degree in law from the University of Warsaw, Poland
(2010). Following the completion of her Ph.D., she did postdoctoral research work
at the Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University in Israel, and the British Institute
of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) in London. Berenika has published
and peer-reviewed articles in international law reviews, and published a scholarly
monograph which addresses the legal configuration and interpretation of military
necessity – an issue critical to the understanding of the protection of cultural heritage
in armed conflict in international law (Brill, 2021).

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Alina Holzhausen

KAS Australia — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 06:10:43 +0000

Alina Holzhausen is a Researcher in Environmental and Climate Change Law at
BIICL. She is also a PhD student at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, researching
climate change litigation and human rights. Alina graduated from the University
of Bayreuth with a German diploma in law and holds a Maîtrise in International Law
(University of Bordeaux) and an LLM in International Law and International Relations
(University of Aberdeen). She practised law at the German Parliament before coming to the UK in 2019. Alina has been teaching tutorials in Constitutional Law in Bayreuth,
and tutorials in EU Law, Comparative Law, and Public International Law in Aberdeen.
She has also been teaching lectures on Sustainable Development and Renewable
Energy for LLM students, as well as lectures part of BIICL’s training programme. Her
main research interests include Human Rights Law, Climate Change Law, International
Environmental Law, and Public International Law.

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Kristin Hausler

KAS Australia — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 06:09:24 +0000

Kristin Hausler is the Dorset Senior Fellow and the Director of the Centre for International
Law at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, in London.
Since joining the Institute in 2007, she has developed and led several research projects,
including on human rights and climate change. Her area of expertise is cultural
heritage law. She regularly leads training on heritage protection and provides advice
on legislative drafting regarding cultural heritage matters. She has also spoken at
events around the world, including at the United Nations, and is regularly invited to
teach cultural heritage law, such as at the University of Geneva, Leiden University, or
Georgetown Law. Previously, she worked in a museum in Canada on a project focused
on the return of Ancestral remains to Indigenous communities. Since 2010, she has
been an elected member of the ILA Committee on cultural heritage.

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Dr Petra Butler

KAS Australia — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 06:07:45 +0000

Dr Petra Butler is the Director of the Institute of Small and Micro States (ISMS).
ISMS’ aim is inter alia to provide independent expert advice, especially in the area of
law reform and the placement of (regional) experts. One of the signature events is the
yearly Small States conference, co-organised with Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP
and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL), which discusses
issues relevant for small states. Petra is also a professor at Victoria University of Wellington. She specialises in domestic and international human rights, public and private comparative law, and international commercial law with an emphasis on international commercial contracts and international dispute resolution. She has published extensively in those areas and is invited regularly to speak at conferences, workshops and seminars. Petra has particular expertise in law reform, including leading and has most recently lead the Commonwealth Secretariat study into judicial diversity in small Commonwealth states and into international commercial arbitration in the Commonwealth. Petra is a fully qualified German and New Zealand lawyer. She is admitted as a barrister to the High Court of New Zealand and regularly advises private and public clients in her areas of expertise.

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