Trustees

Anca Giurgiu is from Romania and is a co-founder of the LMN member group Environmental and Social Change, a diaspora group based in London which works on issues such as mining, fracking, deforestation, social justice and climate change. Anca has been involved since 2005 in the Save Rosia Montana campaign (Romanian’s biggest environmental and social movement against the development of the largest gold mine project in Europe) and has worked on campaigns to ban cyanide mining in Europe and Romania together with Mining Watch Romania and Alburnus Maior. She specialises in community organising and using creative methods and collective artworks in campaigns against destructive mining. She currently coordinates the Climate Change Team for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and works with vulnerable and deprived communities in London, developing climate change and fuel poverty initiatives and community owned energy projects which puts power in the hands of people and communities at the heart of the energy system. She has been part of LMN since 2015 and sat on LMN’s Advisory Committee before becoming a trustee in June 2019.

Andrew Hickman is a specialist on Indonesia. He worked as a researcher for Amnesty International before working for several years for Down to Earth, the campaign for ecological justice in Indonesia. Down to Earth was a founder member group of London Mining Network but was wound up in 2016. He is now a trustee of TAPOL, the Indonesian human rights organisation, which is also a founder member group of London Mining Network. He has lived in Indonesia and has specialised in the impacts of extractive projects on human rights, particularly researching the operations of London-listed BHP, Bumi in Kalimantan and BP and Rio Tinto in West Papua. He is currently working on a project to establish relationships with communities directly affected by the Grasberg mine in West Papua.

Andy Whitmore (‘Whit’) is currently a freelance contractor, primarily working as finance advocacy officer of the Deep Sea Mining Campaign. Andy has worked on the issues of mining and affected communities since becoming a founder member of the Minewatch collective in the late 1980s. He helped to found London Mining Network in 2007. He has been Coordinator at Indigenous Peoples Links (PIPLinks) and managing editor of the Mines and Communities website. Andy has an MA in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) and is the author of “A Material Transition”, editor/author of “Pitfalls and Pipelines: Indigenous Peoples and the Extractive Industries”, co-author of “Indigenous Peoples and the Extractive Industries: Towards a Rights-Respecting Engagement”, as well as various articles or chapters on similar issues. He has been keynote speaker at a number of events including the 2015 International Conference on Peoples Mining in the Philippines.

Dorothy Guerrero (‘Dottie’) is from the Philippines and works for LMN member group Global Justice Now. Dottie joined Global Justice Now in January 2017. Her work as organiser, researcher/analyst, educator, and campaigner in social movements and NGOs spans almost 30 years. She works on and writes about climate change and energy issues, impacts of globalised trade and investments on people’s livelihoods in Asia, China‘s new role in the global political economy and other economic justice concerns. She has worked in the local, regional and international levels and has lived in The Netherlands, Germany, Thailand and South Africa as well as the UK. She previously worked with the Asian regional organisation Focus on the Global South, Asienhaus Deutschland and Institute for Popular Democracy in the Philippines. She also worked as guest lecturer in MA Development Programs in universities in Asia and Germany. She is currently working particularly with the international movement calling for a UN binding treaty on business and human rights.

Francis Okeke studied law at the University of Southampton and at SOAS University of London. He has experience in commercial and corporate law, international arbitration and regulatory compliance. He has taken an interest in the human rights impacts of corporate mining and in developing work on mining finance. He has served as an LMN trustee since autumn 2020.

Patrick Scott has taken an interest in mining issues since the 1990s when he became involved with the Minewatch Collective (which ceased to operate in the late 1990s) and has a particular interest in mining in the Horn of Africa. He acted as LMN’s Treasurer in its early years before a Finance Worker was appointed in 2012. Patrick has postgraduate degrees from London Guildhall University in Politics (MA) and from London Metropolitan University in Human Rights (LLM) and Labour and Trade Union Studies (MRes). He has had a varied work history which has included working as an Adult Education Tutor for the Workers’ Educational Association.

Peter Frankental is Economic Affairs Programme Director for Amnesty International UK, an associate member group of LMN. He joined Amnesty in 1998. Peter has been an adviser to the International Commission of Jurists panel on corporate complicity, and was on the Steering Group of a three-year research project (2004-2007) to develop a methodology for human rights impact assessments and apply it to five case studies of affected communities. Peter has undertaken research on UK Export Finance and on the UK National Contact Point’s handling of human rights complaints. He is a founding trustee of an organisation that takes music-making into immigration detention centres to release the words, music and life stories of the people held inside.

Sue Willman is a solicitor/consultant at legal aid firm Deighton Pierce Glynn, with 30 years’ experience of innovative public interest litigation and collaboration with non-profit organisations and activists. She is also Assistant Director of King’s College Legal Clinic where she leads the Human Rights and Environmental Law Clinic. She chairs the Law Society of England and Wales Human Rights Committee. Sue is committed to using legal strategies as a means of challenging social and environmental injustice. She is particularly interested in the impact of extractives in Latin America having visited indigenous and campesino mining communities in Guatemala and Colombia, She is a founding Director of the Colombian Caravana UK which was established in 2008 to support the work of human rights lawyers in Colombia. She has worked on various public law environmental cases in the UK and collaborates with the Environmental Law Foundation and Wild Law UK. She worked with LMN on an amicus re the diversion of Arroyo Bruno which affected communities near the Cerrejon coal mine.

Terry Blackman spent his professional career in public sector accounting and joined LMN in 2017 as volunteer treasurer. He has experience in reviewing the finance and governance arrangements of major local government and health bodies. Since joining LMN, he has developed a particular interest in how mining companies account for the damage they have done and the cost of putting it right, and related matters such as the finances of trusts set up in response to major disasters.