Kseniya Kirichenko (she/her) is an intersectional feminist activist, international human rights lawyer and researcher with two-decade experience in social justice, public interest law, advocacy and NGO management.
Originally from Siberia, Kseniya received her law degree from Novosibirsk State University where she taught legal courses for ten years and finished a PhD course in law focusing on comparative legal research of assisted reproductive technologies. Since 2017, shifting to full-time human rights practice with the focus on gender and sexuality, she has been leading programmes on strategic litigation, national and international advocacy, human rights research and education, monitoring and documentation.
Kseniya has founded and was a director of several organisations in Russia, including a Siberian NGO ‘Gender and Law’ and Transgender Legal Defense Project. She also served as a Board Member of the EuroCentralAsian Lesbian* Community (EL*C), was an International Fellow with the Global Network for Public Interest Law (PILNet) and a Visiting Scholar at Columbia Law School.
In 2016, Kseniya joined ILGA World in Geneva, Switzerland, where she is currently a United Nations Programme Manager. At ILGA World, Kseniya developed, led and implemented projects on women*’s and disability UN advocacy, protection of human rights defenders and strategic litigation before UN treaty bodies. She has authored and published annual research studies on SOGIESC within UN human rights mechanisms, as well as a number of submissions to different UN bodies and guides for activists. Kseniya also supported the work of ILGA World’s Women’s Steering Committee.
Since January 2021, Kseniya is doing her PhD research at the University of Leicester, UK focusing on queer intersectional analysis of UN treaty bodies’ discourses.