CrimProf Spotlight: Cynthia Alkon

This week the CrimProf Blog spotlights Appalachian School of Law CrimProf Cynthia Alkon.

Cynthia Alkon joins the Appalachian School of Law after working to promote the development of rule of law in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union and after many years experience as a criminal defense attorney with the Office of the Los Angeles County Public Defender. She earned an LL.M. in Dispute Resolution from the University of Missouri-Columbia, a Juris Doctor from the University of California-Hastings, and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, magna cum laude, from San Francisco State University.

From 1991-1998 she worked as a Deputy Public Defender in Los Angeles handling a full range of criminal cases including a serious felony caseload in the courts in Compton and Downtown Los Angeles. In 1998 she began working in Eastern Europe. She worked in Belarus for the American Bar Association Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative promoting rule of law reform in the country. She left Belarus to work as the head of the legal department for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Albania.

From 2002-2006 she was the Head of the Rule of Law Unit for the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, based in Warsaw, Poland. During those years she worked in countries of the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia primarily focusing on providing assistance in criminal justice reform. Her main area of academic interest is dispute resolution including how alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is used in criminal cases, and how ADR might contribute to rule of law development in countries in transition to democracy. [Mark Godsey]