Kelly Matheson

Kelly Matheson's picture
Kelly Matheson
Job Title: 
Senior Attorney and Program Manager
Organization: 
WITNESS

Kelly Matheson is an attorney, filmmaker and human rights advocate with a specialty in environmental human rights and the use of video in criminal justice investigations and proceedings. As an attorney, she worked in East Africa researching citizens’ rights to bring suit against their governments when governments broke their own laws. She then practiced throughout the western United States working on issues where environmental and human rights converge. Her film career began in 2003. Her film projects focused on indigenous and environmental rights in Central America and the United States. This led to a year-long research project as a Fulbright Scholar in Congo-Brazzaville where she collaborated with a video-centered outreach project to determine the effectiveness of video to change health and conservation practices. Currently, she is a Senior Attorney and Program Manager with WITNESS, an international human right organization that specializes in using video to support change in human rights practice, policy and law. At WITNESS, she launched the inaugural Video Advocacy Institute, began the North America program and now leads WITNESS’ Video as Evidence project which supports human rights lawyers and activists to enhance the evidentiary value of the video they collect in hopes that it can be used to hold perpetrators of human rights abuses accountable. She received her JD for the University of Oregon School of Law and her MFA in Filmmaking from Montana State University.

 

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