Biography
Liiri Oja is a PhD candidate in Law at the European University Institute. After her legal training in native country Estonia and graduate degrees from Oslo University and Georgetown University Liiri worked as a legal advisor for the Estonian Parliament’s Research Department and taught Constitutional Law to undergraduate law students. During her PhD she has done research at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (Harvard University), and instructed workshops on reproductive rights for doctors and youth counsellors.
Her thesis titled “Who is the ‘Woman’ in Human Rights Law: Narratives of Women’s Bodies and Sexuality in Reproduction Jurisprudence” is a feminist critique of power and reproduction. Specifically, she is interested in how transnational human rights forums have constructed narratives about women in reproduction jurisprudence (cases concerning abortion, home birth bans, forced sterilisations, assisted reproduction, “virginity testing”, maternal mortality).
