People

Kelley Loper

Kelley Loper is a professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and the director of the Ved Nanda Center for International and Comparative Law. She also sits on the advisory board of the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law and the international advisory board of the Centre for Comparative and Public Law (CCPL) at the University of Hong Kong. Before joining the Sturm College of Law in February 2024, she was an associate professor and the director of the LLM in Human Rights Programme in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. She also served as the director of the Centre for Comparative and Public Law from 2017-2019 and was co-editor-in-chief of the Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law from 2012-2024.

Her scholarship centers on the implementation of international human rights law in domestic contexts, especially Hong Kong, mainland China, and other Asian jurisdictions. She has published on several related topics including human rights and refugee protection in Asia, the rights to education and legal capacity in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, dignity as a constitutional value, and gender constitutionalism. She has taught courses on international human rights law, comparative equality law, international refugee law, the national protection of human rights, and human rights research methods.

In addition to her academic work, she has also served on the boards of the Hong Kong Dignity Institute, the Hong Kong Refugee Advice Centre (as past chairperson), Justice Centre Hong Kong, and Amnesty International (Hong Kong). She has advised various other organizations including the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UN Women, and Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor on a range of issues and has made submissions before the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Anne Aguirre

Anne Aguirre joined the Ved Nanda Center for International & Comparative Law in 2015. She manages and directs all operations, budgets, and programs for the Center in its goal of engaging the broader legal community in the Center's pursuit of academic excellence under the leadership of Center Director Professor Kelley Loper. She is a Master of Arts graduate of the Korbel School of International Studies with degrees in International Political Economy and Policy Analysis. A Denver native, beginning at the age of 1½, she lived in Lahore, Pakistan, Colombo, Sri Lanka, Dakar, Senegal, and Dhaka, Bangladesh. She has worked in government, non-profit, banking, high-tech, and education sectors in marketing, program, project, and research positions.