Luna Borges Pereira Santos

Dr Luna Borges is a Lecturer in Law, Supervising Staff Attorney and Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Human Rights Institute and Clinic, where she spearheads projects on systemic inequalities, climate change, and the protection of human rights defenders in historically targeted territories. She is passionate about mentoring students interested in transformational advocacy, building sustainable partnerships with community-led organizations from the Global South, and supporting legal work within Regional and International Systems for Human Rights. As a lawyer and international human rights advocate, Luna brings nearly thirteen years of professional and academic experience working with civil society organizations and social movements across Latin America and the Caribbean on a variety of social and legal advocacy strategies for gender justice, and sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice.

Having recently completed a PhD in Constitutional Law at the University of Brasilia, Brazil, where she also obtained a Master's degree in Law, her academic research examines the interconnections between gender, race, class, and territory within the law. As a PhD candidate, she was one of the graduate scholars awarded the Dan David Prize scholarship for her paper Zika Virus, Feminist Activism, and Inequality in Brazil: Constitutional Interpretation through a Reproductive Justice Framework. Her current research focuses on international and comparative law, feminist legal theory, health law and policy, social and racial justice.

Dr Borges received her LLM from Harvard Law School where she was a Lemann Foundation fellow and, upon graduation, a Public Service Venture Fund fellow. Before starting her PhD, she worked for the Brazilian government on cases before the Inter-American System concerning police brutality, truth and accountability, forced labor, as well as institutional racism and maternal health before the United Nations. She has also worked withing the policy realm of social development, food and nutrition security, and gender equality in bilateral and multilateral levels.