Lisa J. Laplante received her Bachelor of Arts from Brown University with a concentration
in Public Policy. She earned the distinction of summa cum laude while earning her Masters
in Education from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst, followed by becoming a
Root-Tildern-Kern Public Interest Scholar at New York University School of Law, where she
earned her Juris Doctorate in 1999.

Her qualifications as both a practitioner and researcher arise out of a variety of projects
over the last ten years with institutions such as Human Rights First (formerly Lawyers
Committee for Human Rights) (NY), Human Rights Watch (NY), the International Institute of
Human Rights in Costa Rica and the Center for International Justice and Law (Costa Rica).
In 2002 she won funding from the International Justice Program of Notre Dame School of
Law to serve as a researcher with the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC) where she conducted a study on the experience and perceptions of victims
participating in TRC public hearings as well as assisted in the development of the TRC’s
Integral Plan of Reparations. During this time, she also became a legal consultant for an
association of victims in Peru demanding reparations for their unjust and arbitrary
detention for terrorism, collaborating in the preparation of their petitions to the Inter
American Commission of Human Rights. As Deputy Director with PRAXIS, she has
directed several studies while based in Peru.

Recently, she conducted a study on “The Enforceability of the Right to Mental Health for
Victims of Peru’s Internal Armed Conflict”, which was funded by the Ford
Fundation/Consortio de Salud del Peru, resulting in a book with that title. Currently, she is
directing the United States Institute of Peace funded study, “When the Truth is Not Enough:
The Politics of Reparations in Post-Truth Commission Peru.” She has participated in
international conferences as well as published in such journals as Netherlands Human
Rights Quarterly, Essex Review of Human Rights, and the Redress Reparation Report: Bi
Annual Journal She has articles forthcoming in Human Rights Commentary, Human Rights
Quarterly and a chapter in the book Paths to International Justice, forthcoming University of
Cambridge Press. She has also been a correspondent with Latin American
Press/Noticias Aliadas.

In Peru, she has been the only lawyer invited to join the Working Group on Mental Health of
the National Coordinator of Human Rights, as well as to present at the Minister of Health’s
National Conference “Models of Intervention in Mental Health in Regions Affected by
Political Violence.”