Contributors

Stephanie Leclair is Director for Communications and Digital Transformation with WUS Canada.

Before Tad Mitsui’s appointment to WUS International as associate secretary for East and Southern Africa, a position he held from 1975 to 1979, Tad taught at the University of Lesotho and chaired WUS Lesotho. He was detained and expelled from South Africa for his work with anti-apartheid organisations. After his WUS years he worked for the Canadian and World Council of Churches to support justice-oriented organisations in Southern Africa and Palestine. An ordained minister of the United Church of Canada, his pre-retirement job was the administrative head of the Synod of the United Church of Canada, Eastern Ontario and Quebec.

Thorvald Stoltenberg (8 July 1931 – 13 July 2018) was a Norwegian politician and diplomat. He served as Minister of Defence from 1979 to1981 and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1987 to 1989 and again from 1990 to1993 in two Labour Governments. He has been ambassador to the United Nations, UN head representative mediator to the Balkans from 1993 to 1996, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, ambassador to Denmark and President of the Norwegian Red Cross. For the five Nordic Governments he made a report in 2009 with proposals for closer foreign and security policy cooperation between the Nordic countries. He chaired a commission for the Norwegian government that delivered a report on new drug policy for Norway.

From 1983 to 1986 Tina Wallace undertook a research project for WUS UK to investigate the outcomes for students from Ethiopia and Eritrea who had received WUS scholarships for study not only in the UK but in other African countries. Successes and problems were investigated, including barriers for women to enter higher education. WUS work led her to focus on women and gender equality and rights, especially immigrant and refugee women.

Tony Dykes held various positions with WUS UK between 1979 and 1992, the final one as Director of Information and Programmes. Subsequently he was head of Southern Africa at Christian Aid, 1993-2007 and Director of Action for Southern African, 2007 to 2018.

Mr Thiagharan’s time with WUS spanned the years 1957 to 1976. He was elected student general secretary of Madras University WUS, then student executive secretary of WUS India and finally executive secretary of WUS India for 14 years. He oversaw the shift in WUS activity from services for students, to student involvement in development in local communities and regional assistance projects. At very short notice he organised the 1970 International WUS General Assembly and was involved with other international WUS activities. After WUS he undertook private business ventures. Sadly, he died in April 2021.

Veronika is managing director of WUS Austria and has been working for the organisation since 2001. She is an expert in international project management, organisational development and fundraising and she has a profound knowledge of trends and developments in higher education. Additionally, through her long experience in the non-profit-sector, she contributes as a member of the Executive Board to the strategic objectives of the organisation. Since 2019 she is also a member of the Styrian Parliament for the Green Party.

Wolfgang Benedek is professor emeritus at the University of Graz. He was director of the Institute of International Law and International Relations and of the European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (ETC) of the University of Graz; lecturer at Vienna Diplomatic Academy, University of Ljubljana and at the European Master Programmes on Human Rights and Democracy in Venice and Sarajevo. He was OSCE rapporteur under the Moscow Mechanism on Chechnya (2018) and on Belarus (2019). He holds doctorates h.c. from Universities of Sarajevo and Pristina for leading the assistance to those universities during and after the war. In 1983 he was co-founder of WUS Austria and long-time head residing in Graz. He is at present chair of its supervisory board, leader of many projects in the field of the right to education and human rights in the Balkans and beyond and editor of the Manual on Human Rights Education: Understanding Human Rights, available in 17 languages.

Wolfgang Nies joined WUS in 1960 when a student in Heidelberg as a staff member of the local committee there. At the General Assembly in Heidelberg in 1961 he was elected to the Executive Board of the German Committee of WUS, where he served until the General Assembly in Hamburg in 1964. He then moved to the main committee, which at that time was to deal with longer-term aspects of the work and tasks of WUS. Also, during his professional activity as a banker (Deutsche Bank AG, Helaba Luxembourg and Helaba Dublin as Managing Director), he remained connected to WUS as a personal member and took over the task of the internal cash audit of the association for some time.

WUS International existed as a group of independent national committees between 1950 to 1995, when the International Office in Geneva closed. Individual national committees continue today in Austria, Canada, France and Germany while in the UK research and archival work continue,