Our Board

Robert van Voren (1959) is Professor of Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania, and the Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. He ais also visiting professor at Boris Grinchenko University in Kyiv, Ukraine. In addition, he is Chief Executive of Human Rights in Mental Health-FGIP and on the board of several foundations in human rights and mental health. Starting in 1977 he became active in the Soviet human rights movement. For many years he traveled to the USSR as a courier, delivering humanitarian aid and smuggling out information on the situation in camps, prisons and psychiatric hospitals. The information was used in Western campaigns for the release of Soviet dissidents. Van Voren has written extensively on Soviet issues and, in particular, issues related to mental health and human rights, and published a dozen books. His most recent ones are On Dissidents and Madness (2009), Cold War in Psychiatry (2010) and Undigested Past – the Holocaust in Lithuania (2011).

Semyon Gluzman is a Ukrainian psychiatrist and a human rights activist. He is currently the President of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association. In 1971 Gluzman wrote a psychiatric report on General Pyotr Grigorenko, in which he open the use of psychiatry for political purposes. In his report, he concluded that Pyotr Grigorenko was mentally sane and had been taken to mental hospitals for political reasons. In May 1972 he was arrested by the KGB for the “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda", and sentenced to seven years in labor camp and three years in Siberian exile. During staying in the camp continued to engage in scholarly and journalistic activities. He is one of the authors of a Manual for Dissenters how to behave during psychiatric examination in order to avoid a diagnosis of mental illness imposed on them.
In 1991 Gluzman organized the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association (UPA) and was its executive secretary for many years. In June 2011 he was elected as President of the UPA. Gluzman is author of many publications on the themes of human rights, ethics and rights in psychiatry, and is considered a moral beacon for Ukrainian society.

Mridula Ghosh is a development professional and Human Rights expert, columnist and writer, hails from Kolkata India. After graduating in Political Science from Presidency College, she further specialized in International Relations and Foreign Policy in the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv University. Her earlier positions include UNDP Program Advisor, Board member, the Renaissance Foundation and Managing Editor, the Eastern Economist. Now she chairs the Board of the East European Development Institute and the Tagore Center in Kyiv.