About Us

Fellows

Sharmila L. Murthy is a joint Fellow in the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and the Sustainability Science Program at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. Her research focuses on the intersection of human rights, poverty, and the environment. She has written on the relationship between land security and the challenges of realizing the human right to water and sanitation in the slums of Mumbai, India; on the history and meaning of the human right to water and sanitation and its relationship to the controversy over privatization; on the human right to water in the Negev in Israel; on Iraq’s constitutional mandate to ensure the just distribution of water; and more broadly on water governance in the Middle East. She also serves as the Lead Investigator for the Water Sector in an interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral research project on “Innovation and Access to Technologies for Sustainable Development.” Her faculty hosts are Professors Mathias Risse and William Clark.

Sharmila received her JD from Harvard Law School, her Master in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School, and Bachelor of Science in Natural Resources from Cornell University. She clerked for the Honorable Martha Craig Daughtrey on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was a Fulbright Scholar in India and the recipient of the New Advocate of the Year award by the Tennessee Alliance of Legal Services. Previously, Sharmila practiced law with a focus on economic, social and cultural rights, first as a Skadden Fellow with the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands, and then as an associate at Lieff Cabraser Heimann and Bernstein, LLP. She also worked for an environmental consulting firm and in India on public health and microfinance projects. She has served in leadership roles with numerous civic and non-profit organizations, including the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. She is a former Fellow of the Impact Center's Women's Leadership Program. Currently, she serves as the Co-Chair of the Steering Committee of the American Constitution Society Boston Lawyer Chapter, and is a member of the Emerging Leaders in Environmental and Energy Policy Network, which is a joint project of the Atlantic Council and the Ecologic Institute.

email:	sharmila_murthy@hks.harvard.edu
phone:	617.495.8096
office:	R-117

Mark Williams is a Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights. He received his J.D. from the University of California at Hastings in 1990. He has practiced law for nearly twenty years internationally and in the United States.

Over the past few years, Mark focused his research and travel on understanding solutions for improving global access to clean drinking water and sanitation. He co-authored an article with Professor Barbara Cosens of the University of Idaho College of Law that is entitled Resilience and Water Governance: Adaptive Governance in the Columbia River Basin, submitted for publication in the Ecology and Society Journal. He traveled to Ecuador to study the “rights of nature” and “right to water” constitutional amendments, and to Haiti to learn about small-scale water projects. Mark also attended numerous conferences, including “Implementing the Human Right to Water in the West,” held at Willamette College of Law in 2010, the 2011 California Water Law Symposium, and the 2011 American Bar Association Annual Water Law Conference. These experiences inspired a passion for the emerging human rights to water and sanitation and led him to join the Carr Center in 2011 as a Fellow in the Human Right to Water Program.

email:	mark_williams@hks.harvard.edu
phone:	617.495.8355
office:	R-203

Program Staff

Fatima Mendikulova is the program assistant for the Human Right to Water and Sanitation Program.

email:	fatima_mendikulova@hks.harvard.edu
phone:	617.495.0459
office:	R-201b

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