OAJA Project Editor
Michael Bazyler is professor of law and the 1939 Society Law Scholar in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies at Chapman University in California. He is holder of previous fellowships at Harvard Law School and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. In 2006, he was a Research Fellow at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (The World Holocaust Remembrance Center) and the holder of the Oppenheim Chair for the Study of Racism, Antisemitism and the Holocaust. He received his B.A. from UCLA and his JD from USC. and is currently completing his PhD at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) in Germany. He is an award-winning author of seven books and over 50 book chapters and essays on subjects covering Law and the Holocaust, restitution following genocide and other mass atrocities, public international law, international human rights law, and international trade law, comparative law and the Russo-Ukrainian War.
OAJA Researchers
This is a partial list of researchers who have found and translated one or more of the Acts in this work:
Isabella Azieb Debas graduated from the Johann-Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, with a Bachelor of Arts in History, and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology in 2004, and a Master’s in Political Science, in 2008.
Mehmet Guclu earned his Bachelor of Arts in Business in 2009 from Ansbach University of Applied Sciences in Germany. His Turkish parents immigrated to Germany in the ’70s where Turkish was spoken in the home, but German in school. Mehmet has an interest in history and documentaries, mostly about World War II. He now lives in the United States with his wife.
Dominik Jacobs received a BA in Political Science from UCLA in 2007, and a BS in Psychology from the University of Oregon in 2009. In love with the English language, Dominik Jacobs left Germany for the US as a young man. Shaped by his own immigrant experience, he cares deeply about 21st-century minorities such as transgender individuals and victims of digital bullying.
Joan Paez received her Bachelor of Arts in Ancient History from UCLA and her Master’s in Classics from the University of California, Irvine. Her academic interests include Ancient Greek and Latin language and literature; late Roman Empire; and literary theory.
Ziba Shadjaani is a cum laude graduate of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in 1999, and an award-winning writer and filmmaker. Born in Iran, she grew up in Hamburg, Germany. She then moved to Los Angeles in 1993 where she not only got involved in the film industry but also became an active promoter of American educational institutions as the Executive Vice President of the International Education Service. She resigned her post as VP to pursue other projects.
Franziska Wagener is a freelance translator from Germany. She graduated from the Georg-August-University Goettingen with a Master’s Degree in Theology in 2011. After graduating, she started working on her PhD in Church History and was a research associate at the Department for Systematic Theology / Dogmatics and Church History at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. Her area of interest is Early Christian Apologetic writings. In 2012 she came to the US with her husband and graduated in 2014 from a hospital chaplain residency program at UCLA in Westwood.
Legal Researchers
Jennifer Allison is a legal researcher and editor. From 2012 to 2022, she served as a librarian for foreign and international law at the Harvard Law School Library. She earned a JD from Pepperdine Law School and an LLM in German law from the University of Würzburg.
Andrei Bogancha is a Ukrainian attorney from Kharkiv. He received his law degree from the Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University in Kharkiv.
Sherli Frank is an attorney. She earned her BA from the University of California, Berkeley and her JD from Pepperdine School of Law.
Oleksandr Gladushko is a lawyer with over 19 years of professional experience, specializing in business law, tax law, and legal aspects of natural resource management. He earned his Master’s degree from Yaroslav Mudryi Law University in 2004. Oleksandr has been a researcher on Prof. Michael Bazyler’s Ukraine War Law Handbook project at Chapman University Fowler School of Law and is an active member of the entrepreneurial networking community in the U.S.
Kate Wraith is a legal researcher. She earned a BSc in Sociology from the University of Bath and an LLM in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law from Lancaster University.
Pro Bono Research Assistance
The OAJA project has worked with a number of law firms and their attorneys who have provided pro bono research assistance, including:
Cooley – Samantha Zhang.
Covington – Laure Berthelot, David Diesbach, DeDe Mann, Denitsa Marinova, Mia Neafcy, Emily Ranger-Murdock and Stacy Young.
DLA Piper – Rodi Adelsson, Jsa Imaggi, Lara Joy Pabst, Marie-Christine Plettenberg.
Goodwin Procter – Joshua Angrave, Hanna Kaufhold, Gleb Lidman and Matthew Reese.
Latham – Reina Kern, Marty Taxay and Bernie Toledano.
Additional Student Researchers
McCoy Bradley is an attorney who grew up in the Pacific Palisades, California. Graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2019 with a Bachelors degree in Philosophy. Received a Juris Doctors degree from Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law in 2024 with an Entertainment Law Emphasis. Legal researcher and author studying under Professor Michael Bazyler.
Arrian Farr is an attorney in California. He graduated from UCLA with a bachelor of arts degree in history in 2021 and he earned his JD from Chapman University in 2024.