visiting phd student law

• Visiting Scholars Program
• International Programs

Columbia Law School’s Visiting Scholars Program has hosted thousands of exceptional international scholars, professors, judges, practitioners, government officials, and civil society leaders.

Visiting Scholars range from senior faculty at the world’s leading research institutions to doctoral students beginning their scholarly careers. Their research and scholarship touch on a multitude of legal disciplines, including comparative and international criminal law, human rights, legal philosophy, commercial and corporate law, constitutional law, and international private and public law.

All Visiting Scholars participate in the weekly Visiting Scholar Forum series, where they present their work in progress to peers from around the world.

With permission from the instructor, Visiting Scholars can audit up to two Columbia classes each semester. They have access to Columbia Law School’s Arthur W. Diamond Law Library, its free printing facilities, and many of its digital databases. 

Note : The term Visiting Scholar is a courtesy designation that does not signify a formal association or academic appointment with the University. Individuals named to these titles may not claim a university affiliation for the purpose of applying for grants or contracts and should not represent themselves in their publications, or otherwise, as having a university affiliation.

For further information about the Visiting Scholars program and application process, please click here .

Apply to Be a Visiting Scholar

• Why Columbia

Visiting Researcher Program

Visiting researchers.

Each year, Yale Law School welcomes a few Visiting Researchers, who are usually faculty or fellows at other universities, to engage in non-degree research. The Visiting Researcher Program is administered by the Graduate Programs Office .  Visitors invited through this program must arrive in January or August to attend during the Yale Law School academic calendar .

Visiting Researchers may audit one or two courses per term, with the consent of individual instructors, and make use of library facilities for their work. The fall term runs from August to December; the spring term runs from January to May. For the 2024-2025 academic year, the registration fee is $4,000 per term or $8,000 per academic year. No financial aid is available from the Law School for participants in this program. 

The application deadlines are March 15 for the fall term and September 1 for the spring term. The process is competitive and all decisions are made shortly after the application deadline.  It is not possible to have an application read outside of this cycle. 

To apply to be a Visiting Researcher, applicants must submit:

• the Visiting Researcher application form
• a current curriculum vitae
• a description of the applicant's proposed research
• a statement explaining why Yale Law School is a particularly appropriate affiliation for the applicant's work
• two confidential letters of recommendation; letters of recommendation must either be mailed directly by the letter writers to the below address, or sent to the applicant in a recommender-sealed envelope for submission by the applicant
• official transcript(s) of the applicant's academic record
• the proposed length and dates of the applicant's stay at Yale Law School
• an official Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) score report, unless the applicant's native language is English, or their undergraduate education or first law degree was completed at an institution where the language of instruction is English.  (Please be sure to specify Yale Law School's institution code (3997). We require a minimum TOEFL score of 100 on the Internet-based test.)
• $75 (USD) nonrefundable application fee (see below)  

Application Fee Information

Payment by check or money order Payment may be made by a U.S. postal money order, traveler's check, or check drawn on a bank with a U.S. branch indicated on the check. Make checks payable to Yale Law School . If the payment is mailed separately from the application documents, it should be sent to the same address as below. We cannot accept cash payments.

Payment by wire transfer Bank of America, New York, NY ABA Number 026009593 Credit to Yale University Account Number 0050296726

For international bank transfers, please use the SWIFT number BOFAUS3N.

The payment must be directed to the attention of Graduate Programs, Yale Law School. All bank fees are the responsibility of the applicant. Be sure that your name is referenced for proper credit. We cannot accept Western Union transfers; we also cannot accept direct deposits into our account.

Note that overpayment of application fees cannot be refunded. The application fee is nonrefundable and will not be credited to the registration fee in the event of admission. The Graduate Programs Office is not responsible for misdirected checks or transfers. Official Transcripts

Final official transcripts may be certified electronic transcripts or traditional paper transcripts. Please include official paper transcripts as part of your document upload with your application materials. It is preferable that the documents come directly from the issuing institution or its authorized agent. All documents must be in English or accompanied by a certified English translation. All requirements are further described on the application form. 

Application documents (form, CV, research proposal, transcript and application statement) may be submitted by email to [email protected] .

Visa Sponsorship and Proof of Funding

Admitted visiting researchers who require a visa sponsorship will work with Yale University’s Office of International Students and Scholars (OISS) to complete the application for a J-1 visa which includes proof of financials. U.S. immigration regulations require that Yale verify and document adequate funding arrangements for all incoming scholars on J-1 visas. This includes program costs as well as living expenses for the duration of the program. Documents submitted to OISS should in all instances meet the minimum level of funding before a visa document/DS-2019 can be issued. To see the total minimum funding, click here and review the “All other J-1 appointments” calculation. 

If you have any questions, please contact the Graduate Programs Office .

Section Menu

• Visiting Scholars and Researchers

International

• LLM & Graduate Programs
• SJD Program
• Exchange Students
• International Affairs Blog

The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s Visiting Scholar and Visiting Researcher Program is intended to accommodate legal professionals who wish to spend a limited period of time at the Law School pursuing research on a particular topic.

The intellectual lives of the faculty and students at the Law School are enriched by the academic and regional diversity of our visitors, and we invite applications from both domestic and international scholars and practitioners.

This program is designed to accommodate international visitors with a broad range of legal experience and qualifications. Visiting Scholars are generally those with a faculty appointment at their home institution or equivalent professional status (e.g., experienced jurists, government officials, and senior practitioners). Visiting Researchers are typically doctoral degree candidates, younger professionals and others who are at the beginning of a promising legal career.

The integration of visitors into the Penn Carey Law community is a central goal of this program. As a result, Visiting Scholars and Researchers may be invited to attend faculty events, ad hoc workshops, legal studies conferences, and colloquia hosted by groups such as the Institute for Law and Economics.

How do I apply?

Applications for the Visiting Scholar and Visiting Researcher Program can be submitted at two times during the year:

• February 1 to March 31
• September 1 to October 31

The link to our online application is accessible only during these submission periods.

Apply to the Visiting Scholar and Visiting Researcher Program

Are applications reviewed on a rolling basis?

To give full consideration to all candidates, Penn Carey Law will review complete applications at the close of each window.

What materials does the application require?

• Online application
• Curriculum vitae
• Research statement (minimum of 1-2 pages; maximum of 4 pages)
• Two letters of recommendation
• Demonstration of English language ability.

Is a TOEFL score mandatory?

While submission of TOEFL/IELTS scores is not mandatory, if you are not a native English speaker and do not submit scores, you will be asked to describe your English language ability in detail. The minimum English requirements for a J-1 Scholar visa can be found here .

Before applying, should I reach out to Penn Carey Law faculty members?

What role is expected of my faculty sponsor.

As a prospective Visiting Scholar or Researcher at Penn Carey Law, you must have a faculty sponsor to be invited to participate in the program. Faculty sponsors are not expected to be research mentors or advisors, though individual faculty may choose to perform these functions. Instead, faculty sponsors are asked to be available to welcome visitors when they arrive on campus and assist them with introductions to other members of the faculty.

How should I plan my dates?

Penn Carey Law offer 3 research periods during the academic year. Visiting Scholars and Researchers can begin their programs on the start date for any of the following research periods:

• Fall: September 1 – December 23
• Spring: January 10 – April 30
• Summer: May 9 – August 31

Most research visits are 4, 8, or 12 months in duration. Should you wish to stay at Penn Carey Law beyond one year, you will need to make a request to renew your status.

How are fees billed for this program?

The Visiting Fee is billed on a per term basis (Fall, Spring, Summer). For 2023-2024, we are projecting a $2,338 visiting fee plus an additional $392 technology fee per term .

What is provided by the program?

Visiting Scholars and Researchers are provided with a Penn ID; an email account; library access; wireless computer network access; use of Lexis/Westlaw; and access to all general Law School events.

With the instructor’s permission, participants will also be permitted to audit a limited number of classes. As space allows, you may also be able to reserve work space in carrels or small offices.

What visa support is available?

If seeking a J-1 visa to support your visit, the Law School can request a DS-2019 form on your behalf and support you with the sponsorship documentation to apply for a J-1 visa. Further details on this process can be found through the university’s ISSS Office .

Note: immigration regulations require all foreign visitors to provide documentation of their ability to support themselves financially while in the United States. Recent guidelines called for at least $2,265 per month per visitor, plus an additional $500 per month for an accompanying spouse and $334 per month for an accompanying child.

Who can I reach out to with questions?

Former visiting scholars and researchers, 2020-present.

• Catherin Cordes (Germany)
• Jeeyoung Oh (Korea)
• Luca Megale (Italy)
• Giulio Mandelli (Italy)
• Wali Mohammad Naseh (Afghanistan)
• Vanessa Turnball-Roberts (Australia)
• Bin Wang (China)
• Eman Aboulkhair (Egypt)
• Cathrin Cordes (Germany)
• Yael Kariv-Teitelbaum (Israel)
• Ey Seul Kim (Korea)
• Felix Martinez (Spain)
• Jawad Moradi (Afghanistan)
• Wendy Pena-Gonzalez (Spain)
• Nicoletta Rangone (Italy)
• Jiaying Xu (China)
• Xu Zhao (China)
• Jinyang Zhu (China)
• Yoshiaki Haraguchi (Japan)
• Hyejin Lee (Korea)
• Andrea Tosato (Italy/UK)
• Ling Chen (China/Canada)
• “Gideon” Jiteng Wang (China)
• Nadzriah Ahmad (Malaysia)
• Hyoyun Kim (Korea)
• Georgia Kogka (Greece)
• Andrea Tosato (Italy)
• Mutsuhiko Yukioka (Japan)
• Mattia Cutolo (Italy)
• Chicheng Huang (China)
• Kumiko Koens (Japan)
• Yohei Kunii (Japan)
• Zeyu Liang (China)
• Yishan Man (China)
• Sanjit Nagi (United Kingdom)
• Sangbum Park (Korea)
• Stephanie Rohmann (Austria)
• Alex Silke (Germany)
• Andrea Tosato (United Kingdom)
• Tommaso Trinchera (Italy)
• Dominika Woclaw (Germany)
• Tal Zarsky (Israel)
• Rodrigo Borges (Brazil)
• Shan Jiang (China)
• Kumiko Nachi (Japan)
• Keigo Obayashi (Japan)
• Marco Pensato (Italy)
• Jose Reis (Switzerland)
• Jakob Rueder (Germany)
• Chenzhu Wang (China)
• Tetsuya Yamashita (Japan)
• Yuhao Yang (China)
• Mianzhi Cao (Germany)
• Quanmei Du (China)
• Sergio Herra Rodríguez (Costa Rica, Spain)
• Lars Leuschner (Germany)
• Elisa Lievevrouw (Belgium)
• Pingxin Lu (China) 
• Tarini Mehta (United Kingdom)
• Laurie Nathan (South Africa) 
• Julia Schichmann (Germany)
• Kui Shen (China)  
• Kotaro Takizawa (Japan)  
• Chunlei Wang (China)
• Ying Wu (China) 
• Shoichi Hara (Japan)
• Peng Jiang (China) 
• Lu Lu (China)
• Saura Masconale (Italy)
• Ikuko Okoyama (Japan)
• Miyuki Shirai (Japan)
• Shintaro Suzuki (Japan)
• Shusaka Tatara (Japan) 
• Astrid Wallrabenstein (Germany)
• Ke Wang (China)  
• Xiaochen Zhang (China)
• Lu Zhou (Hong Kong)
• David Christoph Ehmke (Germany)  
• Federica Coppola (Italy)
• Leandro Galvaire (Argentina)  
• Yoshifumi Kusakabe (Japan)  
• Antti Makkonen (Finland)  
• Jochen Schoefthaler (Germany)
• Toshiya Takekawa (Japan)   
• José Manuel de Torres Perea (Spain)    
• Livia Wanderley (Brazil)
• Yu Zheng (China)  

Visiting Scholars Program

In the News

The Berkeley Law Visiting Scholars Program helps broaden the school’s international connections as well as the influence of its faculty on the legal and scholarly communities around the world, Professor Laurent Mayali says.

11/28/2023 – Berkeley Law News

Visiting Scholars Program Offers ‘Life-Changing Experience’ to International Legal Researchers

To read the article, click here . A shorter version will be in the Spring 2024 issue of Transcript.

The Spring 2025 application submission period is over. 

If you are interested in applying for the visiting scholar or visiting student researcher position in Fall 2025, our next admission submission period is between January 1, 2025, and March 1, 2025.

Our Program The Visiting Scholars Program grants the opportunity for law academics and practitioners from around the world to pursue independent research while in residence.  Program participants are granted basic access to campus resources to fulfill research objectives and are encouraged to participate in the Law School’s scholarly life and academic programs.

Eligibility To qualify as a Visiting Scholar, an applicant must possess a doctorate degree.  The doctorate degree must be earned at least five years prior to the time of the applicant’s proposed appointment start date. 

We will also consider those with only a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree if they are licensed to practice law in their home country and currently do not enroll in any courses or degree programs. The applicant must also have a full-time position at another institution before applying for the visiting scholar position.

Funding All visiting scholars must provide their own funding, and we cannot offer financial assistance. Given inflation and the increasing cost of living in the Bay Area, the minimum funding requirement for J exchange visitors will be increasing effective August 1, 2022. For cases submitted to Berkeley International Office on 8/1/2022 or later, the minimum monthly funding requirement will be $2000 for the J-1 + $600 for a J-2 spouse + $400 for each J-2 child. Additional information about funding documentation is available on our website .

Terms of Appointment

The law school’s minimum visiting appointment length is two months.  Visitors are appointed for periods not to exceed 12 months at a time. The total period of consecutive service with a visiting title shall not exceed two years and counts toward the service limitation explained in general UC policy.

The Berkeley Law Visiting Scholars Program official will review each application and extension request case by case; approval of an appointment or an extension request is not guaranteed.

According to the U.S. Department of State guidance , most activities should be physically onsite. During the visit, one to two telework days are allowed weekly.

Privileges and Responsibilities Visiting scholars are considered “in residence” and are expected to conduct their proposed research on the UC Berkeley campus.  Visiting scholars must reside in Berkeley or the surrounding cities in the Bay Area during the duration of their appointment period.  In addition, visiting scholars are expected to carry out their proposed research for the entire duration of their appointment period.

Privileges include:

Access to UC Berkeley’s libraries  (including the law library  and the law school’s Reading Room)

Access to electronic systems and resources (via a CalNet account)

Issuance of a Berkeley e-mail account

Issuance of a Cal ID card

Access to shared workrooms exclusively for visiting scholars (due to space constraints, we are unable to provide private offices) and private lockers

Access to electronic legal documents via LexisNexis , Westlaw , and Bloomberg Law databases

Visiting scholars are encouraged to participate in the Law School’s and University’s scholarly life and programs, which include a large number of presentations, conferences, and other events that are open to attend throughout the year.  The calendar of events at the law school can be found here .  The calendar of events at the University can be found here .  Visiting scholars are also encouraged to participate in the programs and events sponsored by the VSPA Office and BIO .

Admission Process and Berkeley Law Approval

The process to be granted visiting status is two-fold: (1) approval by the Visiting Scholars Program (Berkeley Law) and (2) authorization by the University (VSPA Office).

Application Submission Period and Supporting Documents – To be considered for a visiting scholar or visiting student researcher appointment for Fall 2025 (August to November) , please submit an online application between January 1, 2025, and March 1, 2025 . – To be considered for a visiting scholar or visiting student researcher appointment for Spring 2026 (January to April) , please submit an online application between June 1, 2025, and August 1, 2025 .

We do not review applications on a rolling basis. Admission decisions will be determined in late March or early April 2024 (for Fall 2024) and late August or early September 2024 (for Spring 2025). We have a strict application deadline policy and do not accept late applications.

To apply, please complete the online application form.  You will be required to upload the following supporting documents:

– To request sponsorship from a faculty member , the applicant must provide the faculty member with a copy of their CV/resume and research statement.  If the faculty member agrees to the request for sponsorship, the applicant and faculty sponsor must complete two Faculty Sponsor Agreement forms.  One is for Berkeley Law Visiting Scholars Program , and the other is for Berkeley International Office .

– The applicant is responsible for submitting the completed Faculty Sponsor Agreement forms to their online application. Please note that your faculty sponsor’s expertise must align with your area(s) of research.  A confirmation from a faculty member does not mean you have been accepted to join the Visiting Scholars Program.  Our prestigious faculty receive many requests for sponsorship and unfortunately can not accept all.

• A one-page statement that describes your proposed research agenda and explains the significance of conducting your research at Berkeley Law.  
• A Signed “ Visiting Scholar / Visiting Student Researcher Agreement “
• A receipt of the application fee of $250

Please do not upload additional documentation (e.g., letters of recommendation, transcripts, funding documentation, English language proficiency documentation, and so forth).  It is important that an applicant properly follow the guidelines above.  One’s ability to properly submit an application is a factor when considering his/her candidacy.  Furthermore, incomplete applications will not be reviewed.

Admission Decisions

The Berkeley Law Visiting Scholars Program determines admission or reappointment decisions; please note that an acceptance email from the hosting department will detail next steps in the admission process. A confirmation from a professor, or emails from other departments does not signify that an applicant has been formally accepted to the Visiting Scholars Program.

No person may be appointed as a visitor if they have an active appointment or current employment with the University of California.

The number of applications we receive far exceeds the number of visiting scholars the law school can accommodate. We cannot reconsider applications once rejected, and admissions decisions are final and non-negotiable.

We cannot provide justification to individual applicants in the case of unfavorable admission decisions.

Conditions of Appointment

Visiting Scholars are considered guests of the University. Service as a Visiting Scholar or Visiting Student Researcher is neither employment nor enrollment as a student at the University of California. 1) A Visitor will not have employment (including as a contractor), including a teaching appointment with the University of California. 2) A Visitor will not be a current UC student.

As non-employees, J1 and J2 visa holders are not entitled to salary, stipend, compensation, benefits, housing, full-time, or part-time positions during the visit period.

Research Scholars are accepted for the conducting of their own research. Berkeley Law does not offer scholars an option to teach an elective course. 

The U.S. Department of State indicated that Visiting scholars / Visiting Student Researchers can only audit (for no credit) ONE course that is incidental to their primary objective research at the law school per semester per instructor approval (non-law school courses are not available to audit). Visiting Scholars must e-mail the course instructor(s) asking for permission. Permission may or may not be granted depending on enrollment size and room capacity. Once the instructor(s) approves, Visiting Scholars can begin auditing the course and are eligible to join the bCourse, if applicable. Please note that these guidelines apply to Visiting Scholars only. All other auditing requests must be directed to [email protected] .

• The Visiting Scholars Program is not a scholarship or fellowship program; there are no forms of awards or funding for scholars to conduct research at Berkeley Law. We will also not assist the applicants/scholars in applying for scholarships or managing the grant for the visitors.

Upon completing the Visiting Scholar / Visiting Student Researcher appointment, the individual cannot be appointed as a postdoctoral fellow or postdoctoral fellow research associate.

Budgetary restraints prohibit us from providing scholars with copying or secretarial services.

Program alterations will be posted on the website as they occur.

Visiting Scholar Symposium

• All admitted VSP scholars will be expected to attend a VSP Symposium where they will present a short paper based on their research project. The VSP Symposium will take place at Berkeley Law once a year and last a full day. Visiting Scholars should provide a draft of their paper to their faculty sponsor for review or comments within two to four weeks prior to the event. The date of the event will be announced on the Visiting Scholars website at the beginning of the Academic Year.

VSPA Authorization

Once an applicant receives department approval, their visiting appointment must be authorized by the VSPA Office.  The process to obtain authorization will be administered by the Director upon the admittee’s payment of the University Services Fee (see “Program Fees” section below).

J Visa for International Exchange Visitors

Most international (non-U.S. citizen/lawful permanent resident) visitors will need to obtain a J-1 visa to pursue their research appointment at Berkeley Law. J-1 and J-2 visas are obtained by the issuance of a Form  DS-2019  document, also known as the Certificate of Eligibility for Exchange Visitor (J-1) Status. J-2 visas can be granted to legally married spouses and children (unmarried and under the age of 21) of J-1 Exchange Visitors who will accompany or later join the J-1 Exchange Visitor in the U.S. 

All applicants must meet specific requirements to be eligible for the Visiting Scholar or Visiting Student Researcher position. After an international applicant is accepted to the School of Law, it would be best to submit the online application and required documents as soon as possible once admitted to the program since obtaining the J visa can range from 2-6 months. The host department will submit the applicant’s information and supporting documents to the Berkeley International Office for J-1 exchange visitor eligibility and processing the Form DS-2019. Click here for more information on the J-1 Exchange Visitor process.

According to U.S. government regulations, J visa holders may not arrive more than 30 days before the program start date shown on the DS-2019. Upon completion of the exchange program, the scholar has a grace period of 30 days to depart the U.S.

Furthermore, to properly and legally maintain your J-1 Exchange Visitor status, please read the tips  here .

SIM Meeting

All international scholars must participate in orientation regarding immigration regulations, travel, employment, resources for families, health insurance, and other practical information. The mandatory orientation will be in a webinar format until further notice.

Self-Report via J Scholar Portal

To comply with federal arrival reporting requirements, all international scholars must self-report their arrival via the J Scholar Portal within nine days of the DS-2019 start date.

If the scholar’s arrival is delayed, please contact the officials at visiting scholar program at [email protected] and J scholar at [email protected] with the following information.

Email us within nine days of the J-1 program start date if the scholar’s arrival is delayed or continued and new anticipated arrival plans. An amended DS-2019 may be needed for entry to the U.S.

If the scholar is experiencing visa delays, please forward the communication about the delay.

If the scholar’s visa application is undergoing administrative processing, please indicate the date and location of their visa appointment and forward any documentation they received from the embassy.

Program Fees

Application Fee: Effective June 1, 2022, a non-refundable application fee of US$250 is required for applying to the Berkeley Law Visiting Scholars Program. The non-refundable reappointment application fee is US$125 (up to 6 months) and US$250 (up to 1 year).  

VSPA University Services Fee : Program participants are required to pay a main campus fee to the VSPA office.  1. Visiting Scholar Position – the fee is $750 (up to 1 year) 2. Visiting Student Researcher Position – the fee is $1,000 (up to 1 year)

Berkeley Law Residence Fee : Program participants are required to pay a fee to the law school.  1. Visiting Scholar Position – the fee is either $3,500 (appointment up to 6 months) or $7,000 (appointment 6 months-1 year). 2. Visiting Student Researcher Position – the fee is either $2,500 (appointment up to 6 months) or $5,000 (appointment 6 months-1 year).

J1 Services Fee : UC Berkeley-sponsored J visa applicants must pay a $850 fee .  To clarify, $650 goes to BIO for processing the DS-2019 application and producing the Form DS-2019 document(s) needed to secure a J visa and the remaining $200 is for the FedEx International Priority shipping costs and other Program incidental/administrative expenses.  If needed, one may expedite the process by paying a $300 fee in addition to the $850 base fee.  If the scholar wishes to defer the appointment’s start date, please submit a request to the host department, VSPA, BIO, and faculty sponsor and ask for approval. Once approved, the scholar will have to pay a deferral charge of $200 ($100 BIO service fee + $100 FedEx shipping charge) for processing a new DS-2019.

J visa applicants are also required to pay the I-901 SEVIS Fee and visa application (DS-160) fee.  If your visa is approved, you may also need to pay a visa issuance fee, if applicable to your nationality.

Health Insurance All visiting scholars must have health insurance for the duration of their appointment.  Information about the health insurance requirements for J-1 and J-2 Exchange Visitors can be found here . If the visitor has insurance with comparable coverage, please contact Garnett-Powers & Associates to receive a waiver.  J1 and J2 visitors may begin enrolling 30 days before the effective date of the appointment.  Dental insurance is optional.

UC Vaccination Policy An updated revision of the University of California Vaccine Program Policy was issued on August 16, 2023, strongly recommending all members of the University community follow vaccine recommendations adopted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) applicable to their age, medical condition, and other relevant indications. The policy also allows for submitting an opt-out/declination of getting the annual influenza (flu) vaccine. 

To comply with the Flu and COVID-19 Vaccine Policy by December 1, 2023 , students, faculty, staff, and visiting scholars need to either:

1. Get a flu vaccine and log those records into eTang in the Medical Clearances section. Flu vaccines are for the current flu season (August 1, 2023 or later). 2. Or submit a declination to be vaccinated on eTang in the Medical Clearances section.

EHS 207: UC Berkeley Guidelines on Protecting Workers from COVID-19 The required online training  is designed to reduce the risk of UC Berkeley employees getting COVID-19 while working on campus during the coronavirus pandemic.

UC Learning Center – Required Training Per UCOP’s direction, Visiting Scholars and Visiting Student Researchers must take additional e-courses during their visit. 1. UC Abusive Conduct in the Workplace 2. UC Cyber Security Awareness Fundamentals 3. UC Preventing Harassment & Discrimination: Non-Supervisors (SVSH version) 4. General Compliance Briefing: University of California Ethical Values and Conduct 5. Workplace Safety

Mask Requirement Visitors not fully vaccinated are no longer required to wear face coverings indoors but are strongly recommended.

Business Hours Monday to Friday:  8:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Questions Please address all questions regarding the Visiting Scholars Program to [email protected] .

Visiting Scholars

The Visiting Scholar Program at Emory Law seeks to facilitate the comparative study of legal systems and institutions, encourage the exchange of legal scholarship and experiences, and promote the rule of law and democratic values on a global scale.

Emory Law hosts scholars from around the world, engaging  post PhD   legal scholars, law school teachers, professionals, and practitioners for residencies ranging from three months to a year.

Each visiting scholar works with a faculty host from among the regular faculty at the law school, who coordinates activities and services, including:

• the opportunity to audit classes (on a non-credit basis), with the approval of the faculty instructor
• the possibility of presenting work-in-progress to law school faculty
• access to faculty colloquia and academic presentations
• access to Emory libraries and book-borrowing privileges
• access to Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw research databases
• Emory University email address.

How to Apply

Emory Law is not accepting visiting scholar applications for the 2024-2025 academic year.

• Complete the Visiting Scholar Application Form »
• Cover letter (explaining interest in the Emory Law Visiting Scholars Program)
• CV or resume
• Description of the research project you are currently working on with Emory Law faculty
• Two letters of recommendation
• TOEFL/IELTS
• copy of your passport
• March 1 for September start (Fall semester)
• August 1 for January start (Spring semester)

Please note that Emory Law has a limited number of spaces for visiting scholars and that spaces are competitive. Applicants should be connected with ongoing projects with the Center for International and Comparative Law , or be part of an established ongoing research relationship with an Emory Law faculty member.

Requirements

A fee of $2,650 per semester (or any portion of a semester) covers administrative costs and services provided by Emory University School of Law. Payment must be made in full (whether for a visit of one semester or two) upon notification of acceptance to begin the visa and other necessary procedures.

Other Requirements

Before you join us, complete the following requirements.

• Full financial support, including family (if accompanying you). Emory recommends $2,500 per month to cover expenses for a single person.
• J-1 visa for international visiting scholars »
• Off-campus housing for graduate students »
• Health insurance for visiting scholars »
• Paid parking secured through the   Transportation and Parking Services office of Emory University »
• Personal computer

University of Virginia School of Law

Visiting Scholar Program

Each year, the University of Virginia School of Law accepts a small number of visiting scholars from around the world. Given the difficulty of choosing among many qualified applicants, we typically limit invitations to full-time academics currently affiliated with a university who have a special need for our library resources in order to complete a well-defined research project. In exceptional circumstances, we also will consider applications from judges, government officials, or practitioners who otherwise meet these requirements. Please note that our visiting scholar program is not open to students currently pursuing doctoral or other degree programs at other academic institutions, whether in the United States or abroad.   Such candidates are invited to consider applying for admission to our LL.M. program .

Under our program, visiting scholars have access to the Law School's library facilities, to the legal research services such as Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg, and to the resident faculty. Scholars may also informally audit up to two Law School courses each semester, provided there is room in the desired courses after degree-seeking students have completed registration.  Please note that our visiting scholars pay research tuition and fees. For 2024-25, this fee is $9,500 per year (or $4,750 per term) for Virginia residents or $10,500 per year (or $5,250 per term) for nonresidents.

Program duration:  Visiting Scholars may choose to visit for any duration of time not to exceed one academic semester (fall or spring). Visits can be as short as one or two weeks and as long as four months (full length of a semester). Visiting Scholars’ tuition and fees are charged per semester and are not prorated, so whether visiting for one week or for four months the full charge per term will apply. In rare occasions a scholar may be allowed to visit for an entire academic year (fall and spring, August to May).  The Visiting Scholars program is not available in the summer months (late May to early August). Please make sure to clearly list the proposed dates for your visit in your application materials.

Space allocation: Given our space constraints, Visiting Scholars are not guaranteed an office space at the law school. 

Those interested in being considered for participation in the program should send an email to @email  with their curriculum vitae, proposed dates of residence, an outline of their proposed research program, at least one letter of recommendation printed in letterhead and signed with a pen (wet signature), and recent (no more than two years old) English proficiency test scores (TOEFL or IELTS accepted), please refer to  this page   for minimum scores required.

Your research proposal and letters of recommendation can be addressed to:

Chair of the Graduate Studies Committee c/o Graduate Studies Office University of Virginia School of Law 580 Massie Rd. Charlottesville, VA 22903-1738

Applications for the Visiting Scholars Program must be received by March 1 for the following academic year or part thereof. Invitations are usually made in April or May.   Candidates who require an earlier response in order to meet the requirements of their prospective funding source, such as the China Scholarship Council, should clearly state in their cover e-mail the date by which they require an answer, and ensure that their application is complete at least 6 weeks prior to that date.

Graduate Studies Office University of Virginia School of Law 580 Massie Road Charlottesville, Virginia 22903-1738 Telephone: (434) 924-3154 Fax: (434) 982-6682 email:  [email protected]

"I know many other libraries, both in the U.S. and in Europe, and I have no doubt to affirm that UVA's law library was the best I have ever known, not only because of its collections but mainly because of the fantastic librarians who helped me a lot during the completion of my LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees." —Carmen Tiburcio LL.M. '87 S.J.D. '98 , Brazil

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University of Bristol Law School

Visiting phd students.

The law school’s visiting PhD students scheme enables national and international PhD students to come to Bristol and spend a period of time conducting research and participating in the school’s collegiate and diverse research community.

Eligibility

PhD students who wish to apply to the Visiting PhD Students Scheme should be current PhD students at another institution either in the UK or internationally. Applicants will need to demonstrate a strong academic record and a viable programme of research to be followed during their visit.

Applicants should identify a sponsor who is an academic member of staff at Bristol University Law School and will personally support their application. 

Applications will only be accepted from students who have the support of their prospective visit with the identified sponsor at the University of Bristol Law School.

If English is not your first language, you need to meet profile level 'B'. Further information about English language requirements and profile levels .

Fee structure

A fee of £1000 per term is payable for visits up to 12 months, maximum fee £3000  ( pro rata fees apply for any period less than 3 months ). A waiver of the fees may apply and a case should be made in this respect in the application form. The waiver will be assessed on grounds of academic merit of the applicant or the applicant’s personal circumstances.

Scholars may apply for visiting periods of between 4 weeks to 12 months.

Scheme objectives

The Visiting PhD Students scheme at Bristol Law School seeks to enhance the already vibrant research culture and learning environment of the school. With this in mind, the aims of the scheme are to: 

• offer external to the University PhD Candidates the opportunity to carry out research with a view to presenting or publishing their work.
• enhance the research community at Bristol Law School through their active participation in the academic life at Bristol.
• further develop and promote external research links with other universities, institutions and practitioners in the United Kingdom and overseas;
• provide the law school staff and research students with the opportunity to work with and learn from PhD students from outside Bristol.

Relationship with the law school

Depending on the length of their visit and the nature of their research, visitors are welcomed to contribute actively to academic life in the school. Depending on the applicant’s qualifications, the school may provide you with the opportunity to:

• deliver a presentation on your research to PGR students, including a networking element
• deliver a guest lecture to undergraduates/postgraduates in relevant module(s)
• attend the staff seminar series and Primary Units or Research Centre events

Provision of resources

Visiting PhD students will receive/be provided with:

• a University Card
• the sponsorship of a Bristol Law School staff member, who will meet with the visitor and provide guidance and advice when the visitor first arrives in Bristol. It should be noted that it is up to the individual visitor to arrange this initial meeting with their sponsor
• assigned a PGR student associate (buddy) to assist with cohort building
• full access to the Bristol University Library and all other University Library Services
• access to electronic holdings, databases and journals
• the visitor's email address will be added to the graduate mailing list, so that he or she is notified of any law school events that may be of interest or relevance

End of visit report

At the end of the visiting term, scholars are asked to submit a brief written report summarising their contribution to the school research committee. This report may be excerpted and published by the school.

How to apply

• A letter confirming that you are currently studying a PhD. This will need to be on official headed paper and signed or stamped by your university. If the original letter is not in English we will also need to see an official translation. The letter must include the expected end-date of your studies.
• Complete the Visiting PhD Students Application Form.
• Reference from your primary or secondary PhD supervisor at your home institution. It is your responsibility to ensure that the reference letter from your supervisor is sent in before the designated deadline. The refrence should be an official headed paper, signed, dated and include official contact details of your referee.
• Statement of support from the academic member of staff at University of Bristol who will sponsor your visit.
• CV (2 x A4 pages maximum length).
• Academic transcripts and degree certificates from first and subsequent degrees. We require scans of original documents and certified translations of documents issued in any language other than English. 

Application review

Applications are reviewed by the Schools Postgraduate Research Director, School Manager, PGR Administrator and proposed academic sponsor.

Applications should be submitted electronically to  [email protected] .

You will be advised, in writing, of the outcome of your application within four weeks on submission. 

The University of Bristol Law School is only able to host up to 3 visiting PhD students at the same time.

Visa requirements

All visiting students from outside the UK require a visa, regardless of length of study. Some students will need to apply for this visa in advance, some can travel through eGates on arrival. For visits six months of less, please read the  short-term visa guidance . For longer visits, a  student visa  is likely to be needed, and you must meet the eligibility requirements for this.

If you are already in the UK on a Student visa (and you are visiting from another UK institution) you need to be studying at a partner institution or agree to the visit as an agreed temporary location. You should contact  Student Visa Services  for advice. 

Visiting and occasional student applications

To apply to become a visiting student please refer to our application form:  visiting and occasional student application form (Office document, 146kB) ‌

All enquires and completed forms should be directed to  [email protected] .

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Visitors to the Faculty

The Faculty has an established procedure for granting visiting scholar status for academic visitors who hold a post at another institution. If an individual wishes to be a visiting scholar at the Faculty, an academic member of the Faculty must propose that individual and confirm that she or he knows the visitor personally and is familiar with the proposed visitor’s academic work . (In the case of applications for visitor status that are made via Faculty Centres that operates formal visitor schemes, the proposal is made by the Director of the Centre acting in that capacity, and there is no need for the Centre Director to know the visitor personally provided that the Centre’s Management Committee supports the request.) If a member of the Faculty (or a Centre) wishes to support the request, the visitor will be asked to complete an application form . In addition to the application form, the visitor will be asked to submit a CV and a brief description of the work they intend to pursue at Cambridge.

Nominations for Faculty visitor status are then put to the Faculty Board for consideration and a maximum of 12 Faculty visitors are permitted at any given time because of space constraints. The Faculty Board expects that academic members of the Faculty, other than those acting in their capacity as Director of a Centre, will not normally propose more than one academic visitor per academic year. Priority correspondingly is given to nominations made by Faculty Members who are not already sponsoring a visitor in the academic year concerned. If approved by the Faculty Board, visitors are given access to the Squire Law Library, as well as to the computing facilities, and access to the Faculty’s Senior Common Room (SCR) and the hot-desks area outside of it.

The Faculty member who put the nomination to the Faculty Board acts as the visitor’s first point of contact at the Faculty, and must be available to help the visitor familiarise her/himself with the Faculty building. (In the case of visitors who are sponsored by Centres, this responsibility falls to the Director of the relevant Centre or to a member of the Centre nominated by the Director.) Unfortunately, the Faculty cannot provide research support or supervision, or provide assistance in finding accommodation for the visitor.

The Faculty will only be able to accept visitors under the sponsorship of a Faculty member. The Faculty does not accept speculative applications for visitor status.

A bench fee of £175 per month or part month is charged to visitors.

Full payment must be made in advance of arrival in Cambridge. This can be done online.

Applications may be submitted at any time and are welcome both during and out of term time. Visitors are normally limited to 2 visits within a 4-year period.

Applications to visit the Faculty are normally limited to a maximum of 6 months for those who require visas. Where visas are not required, applications to visit the Faculty for a period of longer than 6 months will require the sponsoring member of the Faculty to make a specific case. Such long stays will not be permitted if there is limited space in the Faculty.

All enquiries or correspondence relating to Faculty visitors should be sent to [email protected] .

Visitors to the Squire Law Library

Academic visitors.

Academic visitors can request access just to the Squire Law Library. Under these circumstances no bench fee is payable. Applications should be made in advance to the Squire Law Librarian, Mr David Wills via the Library’s email address: [email protected]

Visitors should indicate the dates of their stay.

Academic visitors to the Squire Law Library are also required to apply for a Library Card. Cards are issued by the Reader Registration Office at the main University Library in Cambridge. Details concerning the procedure to apply for a Library Card can be found on the University Library’s webpage .

With regard to these arrangements for academic visitors to the Library, it is not possible to allocate specific desk space in the library and access to the Senior Common Room is not permitted.

PhD visitors

Requests to visit the Squire Law Library can be made by research students working at PhD level. Applications for access to the Library’s resources should be made in writing to the Squire Law Librarian ( [email protected] ). Applications from research students to visit the library should include details of the dates of the proposed visit and should also be supported by a letter from the student’s PhD supervisor at the student’s home university.

Research students at PhD level are also required to apply for a Library Card. Cards are issued by the Reader Registration Office at the main University Library. The Library Card entitles visitors to use the University Library as well as, by arrangement, some other libraries at the University of Cambridge including the Squire Law Library. Details concerning the procedure to apply for a Library Card can be found on the University Library’s webpage .

Visiting PhD students to the Squire Law Library need to be entirely self-sufficient in terms of their research activity and also regarding their financial and accommodation arrangements while in Cambridge. It should also be noted that academic staff at the Faculty of Law are not in a position to provide supervisions to, and are not obliged to meet with, visiting students and researchers who are permitted to use the Squire Law Library.

Other visitors to the Library

Taught Masters students , and undergraduate students at other UK universities , wishing to use the Squire Law Library during vacation periods only are required to contact the Squire Law Librarian for permission to use the Library and then, if permission is granted, to apply for a University Library card following the University Library procedure . It is not usual for sixth form students to be granted permission to use the Squire Law Library.

All other visitors who wish to visit the Squire Law Library may write to the Squire Law Librarian ( [email protected] ) to request access. It should be noted that it may not always be possible to grant permission to use the Library.

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Telephone: +44 1223 330033 Email: [email protected]

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Visiting Scholar Program

The Visiting Scholars program is offered to Doctorate in Law candidates, practicing lawyers, law school faculty and other legal professionals. 

• Appropriate book storage space and book-borrowing privileges
• Access to the Internet and Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw research databases
• University e-mail address
• Participation in appropriate faculty colloquia and presentations
• Office space is based on availability
• Educational programming to grow research skills and build global connections

The Law School does not provide the following:

• Personal computer, printer and office supplies
• Secretarial support
• Housing (see below)
• Medical benefits/insurance (see below)

Application Process Potential candidates should email a curriculum vitae, statement of their research plan (including why Northwestern Pritzker School of Law would be an ideal site in which to conduct their research), and one or two letters of recommendation to [email protected] . Applicants for this program whose native language is not English should indicate their degree of fluency in English.  Requirements for English proficiency documentation can be found here . Applicants in the process of completing a degree must provide a letter from their institution detailing the applicant's affiliation with the university and anticipated graduation date.

Deadline Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.  Please wait 6 to 8 weeks to receive a decision.  We recommend applying at least 4 months before your anticipated start date. 

Housing The Law School does not assist participants in obtaining housing. However, we will provide a list of local short-term housing providers. Participants are not eligible for University housing.

Medical Benefits/Insurance Participants in this program are not employees of the University and are not eligible for benefits. Once they are accepted into the program they will be required to purchase health insurance through Northwestern University's Office of Risk Management .

Visa The Law School will assist accepted applicants in completing paperwork to obtain a J-1 visa. The current visa processing fee is $250. The scholar is required to submit proof of financial support in the form of a notarized financial document. All J-1 applicants must provide proof of funding for themselves for the duration of their stay at a rate of: $1,765/month or $21,180/year. J-2 Dependent: $525/month for spouse of J-1 and $442/month for each child of J-1. Once an applicant is admitted to the program a complete visa packet will be e-mailed to the scholar from Northwestern University's International Office .

Faculty Supervision Applicants are required to have a faculty supervisor. Please visit our faculty profiles section to learn more about the expertise and specialties of our faculty members.  Applicants are encouraged to identify ideal supervisors in their research proposal.  The law school will put forth effort to match applicants with a faculty supervisor if the applicant is not directly recommended by a Northwestern Law faculty member.

Fees The fee for this program is $3,000 for each academic semester and $3,000 for the summer.  Terms shorter than 8 weeks are considered half-semesters and the fee is reduced to $1,500.

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International & Comparative Law Visiting Scholars Program

Visiting scholar applications are currently CLOSED until further notice. Thank you for your interest in the GW Law Visiting Scholar Program.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at [email protected] .

The George Washington University Law School's Visiting Scholars Program allows legal scholars and lawyers from around the world to conduct specific legal research at the law school. Most of our visiting scholars participate in the program with stays between six months to one year. The program is tailored towards independent legal research. Our scholars are entitled to use our law school library facilities, and are encouraged to participate in law school events, lectures, conferences, and symposia. They are also given access to a knowledgeable and accommodating library staff. While office space is not available, efforts are made to provide visiting scholars small carrels in the library when they become available.

The beginning dates for visiting scholar stays throughout the year are:

• September 15 – For Fall visits
• February 15 – For Spring visits

Required Admission Materials

To be considered for the GW Law Visiting Scholars Program, please submit the following:

Resume/Curriculum vitae

Statement of Purpose: A short statement (one page) of the research objectives you seek to accomplish while at the law school 

Statement of Commitment: Each candidate must provide a written statement that the visit is for the principal purpose of conducting research and writing at the law school, and that the candidate intends to visit the law school on a frequent (daily is recommended) basis for purposes of conducting this research and writing.

• A copy of a certified English-language test no older than two (2) years (TOEFL minimum: 80; IELTS minimum band score: 6.0 with no individual score less than 5.0). We will conduct a departmental interview in addition to the proof of language proficiency.
• Statement of Funding: Each candidate must demonstrate that they have funds to obtain the J-1 visa, if needed, and to cover medical insurance and any administrative fee to be imposed. Please note that the J-1 visa requires that the documentation, written in English, show funding in the amount of US $2000 per month for the principal visitor, US $1000 per month for the spouse, and US $500 per month for each child plus medical insurance coverage. 

Please note that visiting scholars are charged a modest fee based on the duration and nature of their stay at GW Law. If you have additional questions regarding the fee, please email us at [email protected] . 

Admission Process and Guidelines

Our application deadlines throughout the year are as follows: January 15 – For Fall visits August 15 – For Spring visits

We are now accepting application materials through this online form . If you have issues accessing this form, please email us. 

Apply for Our Program

Interviews and decisions about a candidacy will be made after receipt of all the admission materials. If accepted as a visiting scholar, the candidate will receive a formal invitation letter and a request for additional information, concerning the application for a J-1 visa (if needed). Please note that the law school will attempt to secure the J-1 visa for admitted candidates, but we cannot make any assurances that the visa will be issued.

Applicants seeking visa sponsorship from GW are encouraged to apply at least 5 months before their intended arrival date due to visa processing times.

GW Law does not provide fellowships, scholarships, or funding of any kind to visiting scholars. Please keep in mind that you will have to secure funding from an organization, government, or provide personal funds before a visa can be issued. Once GW Law has agreed to host a scholar, and the scholar has accepted the invitation, it is expected that the scholar will withdraw any other applications to potential host institutions.

Additional Information

The law school does not have housing; therefore, each visiting scholar is responsible for arranging his or her own housing. Program staff can provide information on identifying possible accommodations, but we make no assurances of the quality, price, safety, etc. of accommodations.

The George Washington University does not provide medical insurance coverage for visiting scholars and their J-2 dependents. Visiting scholars must acquire their own travel insurance that complies with J-1 visa health insurance requirements . It is the responsibility of the scholar to find and secure travel insurance. We can provide information on commonly used travel insurance companies, but we cannot provide exhaustive lists of companies or consult on which companies best suit a scholar’s individual needs.

Please email [email protected]  if you have any questions. We look forward to hearing from you.

Home > PhD Program > Doctoral and post-doctoral visiting fellows

Doctoral and post-doctoral visiting fellows

Each year the Sciences Po Law School's doctoral program hosts visiting students and visiting researchers from around the world. Visitors are generally doctoral students or post-doctoral researchers in Law at institutions overseas who are eager to pursue their research within Sciences Po Law School academic community.

They normally are in residence at the Law School for up to one academic year.

Eligibility

To qualify as a doctoral visiting fellow, an applicant must be enrolled in a doctorate degree program (preferably in the field of law, other PhD students in social sciences will be considered if they justify that their research would benefit from a research stay at the law school).

Doctoral students must be at least in the second year of their studies at the time of their visit. Students entering their first year are not eligible.

To qualify as a post-doctoral visiting fellow, an applicant must be enrolled in a university or research institution and have defended his/her PhD in the last 3 years.

Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Visiting Fellows must be sponsored by a faculty member who is willing to act as an advisor to the proposed research project, and it is their responsibility to contact appropriate faculty members and arrange for such sponsorship.

All Visiting Fellows must provide their own funding.

Duration of stay

Research stays might be planned from a minimum of 3 months to one year. Although visits may extend into the summer, visits for the summer months alone will not be approved.

Any renewal will have to be approved by the Doctoral jury.

Benefits of participation

The Fellowship Program provides visitors access to facilities of the Law School and of Sciences Po (full library privileges, attendance of and participation in colloquia and other scholarly presentations at the Law School...), in order for them to conduct research on an approved topic while in residence and to consult with faculty members.

Visiting PhD and post-doctoral researchers are entitled to the Sciences Po Law School Visiting Doctoral / Post-Doctoral Fellow title.

Conditions of fellowship

Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Fellows are:

• expected to conduct their proposed research on Sciences Po premises
• encouraged to participate in the law school’s and Sciences Po’s scholarly life and events
• encouraged to present their research at a Colloquium organized by the Doctoral program
• encouraged to mention in the publications resulting from their stay in Sciences Po Law School, the following: "This paper has benefited from a Visiting Fellowship at Sciences Po Law School in [date]"

Appointment as a Sciences Po Law School Fellow is incompatible with any concurrent appointment (i.e. teaching, fellowships, practice etc.).

Application

Because of the large number of applications we receive each year, the Sciences Po Law School is unable to accommodate all those who express interest in visiting for research purposes. Applications are examined by a Committee for Doctoral Studies in Law. In selecting applicants for visitor status, the Committee considers the applicant's background and motivation, academic achievement, and research proposal, as well as the availability of SPLS faculty for consultation in the proposed research area. The Committee pays particular attention to the relevance, the coherence and the originality of the research proposals.

Applications for academic year must be received no later than March 15th.

A completed application consists of the following components:

• the application form completed
• copy of ID (Passport)
• resume or curriculum vitae
• letter(s) of recommendation

These documents must be sent by e-mail to Lidiwine Kerbourc'h , Administrative Officer of the PhD program in Law.

Application Form (Word, 72 Ko)

Testimony of Aslihan Deniz Bilgehan, Doctoral Visiting Fellow

She shares her experiences about her stay at Sciences Po Law School

Read the article .

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International and Comparative Law Research Scholars

Each year we welcome 15 to 25 scholars from around the globe into our community as non-degree International and Comparative Law Research Scholars to conduct research and engage fully in the intellectual and social life of Michigan Law School. Visits vary in length from a few weeks to one year.

As you can imagine, we receive many more excellent applications than we could ever accept, so those chosen are senior scholars with impressive accomplishments, mid-career intellectuals who are beginning to make their mark, or early-career researchers who show special promise for the future. While they may come from many walks of life—junior or senior faculty members in law or related fields, doctoral or postdoctoral students, and public service practitioners—in all cases, they are exploring areas of law that intrigue our faculty members and for which we can provide meaningful academic support.

International and Comparative Law Research Scholars pay a fee of $2,500 for each semester or $5,000 for each full academic year in residence, prorated for stays of less than a semester.  Requests for fee reductions or waivers are considered on a case-by-case basis.

Research Scholar Program Privileges 

With the intention of ensuring that all our Research Scholars have productive, lively and satisfying experiences while they are with us, our program includes the following privileges:

• Assigned personal workspace (private office or individual workstation) within a large suite that is dedicated solely to Research Scholars and SJD  students.
• Attend JD classes with the permission of the professor.
• Access the Law School’s extensive library collections and first-rate research facilities, including Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis.
• Access the library resources of the larger University.
• Participate in a weekly colloquium of Michigan Research Scholars and SJD students to discuss works in progress.
• Assist in organizing the Michigan Law School Junior Scholars Conference.
• Attend workshops, lectures, and other events.
• Engage with the broader University campus, including other schools, departments and centers.

Program Participants

Most recently, our research scholar program has included faculty members from Kyoto University in Japan, the University of Osnabrueck in Germany, Peking and Renmin universities in Beijing, the University of the Philippines and of Aix-Marseille in France, as well as the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland; a counsel to the Slovenian Ministry of Justice, the former chairperson of the Irish Society for European Law; staff members of the Japanese and Korean Ministries of Justice; a consultant to the UNHCR office in Morocco and a policy adviser to the Danish Refugee Council; counsel to the Brazilian legislature; a deputy chief at the Supreme Commercial Court of the Russian Federation; and doctoral students from major universities all over the world. Their research interests have encompassed a broad array of legal and interdisciplinary subjects.

How to Apply

You will need a Google account to access, save, and submit applications.

Next, please complete the online Michigan Law Research Scholar application form. The application form asks for biographical data, educational and work history, proposed dates of stay, and the names of the University of Michigan Law faculty with whom you would like to confer during your stay.

Please note that you are not expected to contact Michigan Law professors in advance of your application. We will notify the appropriate faculty on your behalf as part of the admission process to gauge their level of interest.

You will also be asked to upload the following materials with your application:

• CV or resume
• Description of your intended research project and its purpose (e.g. doctoral thesis, journal publication), as well as a description of how a research scholar visit will be of value
• Two letters of reference from academics familiar with your work
• Level of English fluency, in particular speaking and listening comprehension, and a description of your training and experience in EnglishTOEFL or IELTS score and/or academic records may be requested on a case by case basis.

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International and Comparative Law Research Fellowships 

Applicants to the Law School’s research scholar program may be eligible for very limited supplemental funding, which is granted on a competitive basis and considerate of need. 

After submission of the applicant’s International and Comparative Law Research Scholar application, those interested in being considered for these fellowships will be asked to submit a separate fellowship application. 

International and Comparative Law Research Fellowships are intended to assist with living expenses while researchers are in full-time residence. Most research scholars are supported by funds from other sources, such as Fulbright or sabbatical leave salary from their home university. Because of stiff competition for Michigan Law funding, applicants are encouraged to seek alternate sources of support. 

Due to funding limitations, we are not in a position to provide support for accompanying family members. 

Deadline: January 15 

The application deadline for the International and Comparative Law Research Scholar Program and for International and Comparative Law Research Fellowships is January 15 for visits proposed in the following summer, fall, or winter terms (June through May). 

Applicants are encouraged to apply to multiple institutions as the selection process is competitive. Although applications are welcome at any time during the year, those who apply after January 15 risk that space and funding may no longer be available.​​

Research Scholars

Bio:  Luís Armando Saboya is a Brazilian lawyer and professor. He holds a degree in Law from the University of Fortaleza, a postgraduate degree in Business Law and Management from the University of Fortaleza, and a master’s degree in Constitutional Law from the University of Fortaleza. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate in Commercial Law at the University of São Paulo.

Research Focus:  Luis’ research focuses on the rights of minority shareholders in cases of Judicial Recovery.

Languages: Portuguese (native), Spanish (fluent), French (beginner-level proficiency)

Bio:  Maxim Bönnemann is a research fellow at Humboldt University Berlin and the Kassel Institute for Sustainability. In 2022 he defended his PhD in the law and politics of Special Economic Zones at Humboldt University for which he was awarded the Law School Prize for Best Dissertation in Public Law. Since 2021, he has also been a permanent editor of the Verfassungsblog, covering comparative constitutional and environmental law. Maxim has been a visiting researcher at the National Law University, Delhi, and at the Centre for Policy Research ( CPR ). Before his legal studies, he worked for a human rights NGO in Moscow. Maxim has authored several papers and book chapters on comparative legal theory and has edited a book on “The Global South and Comparative Constitutional Law” ( OUP , 2020).

Research Focus:  Maxim’s main research interests lie in comparative legal theory, political institutions and international economic law. During his stay at Michigan he will pursue a project on the role of non-majoritarian institutions in environmental and climate governance, in addition to a comparative project on the evolution of national Special Economic Zone laws.

Languages : German (native), Russian (proficient), French (elementary)

Bio:  Jonathan Bonnitcha is an Associate Professor, in Law at the University of New South Wales. He holds the degrees of DP hil, MP hil and BCL from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes scholar, and the degrees of LLB and BE c from the University of Sydney.

Jonathan’s research examines international and domestic legal regimes governing foreign investment. He is the author of two books on investment treaties, including (with Lauge Poulsen and Michael Waibel) The Political Economy of the Investment Treaty Regime.

Much of Jonathan’s research is inter-disciplinary. His article (with Emma Aisbett) ‘A Pareto Improving Compensation Rule for Investment Treaties’ won the John Jackson prize for the best article published in the Journal of International Economic Law in 2021. A forthcoming article (with Zoe Phillips Williams) in Law & Policy empirically examines the impact of investment treaties on domestic governance in developing countries, through cross-country quantitative analysis and a detailed qualitative case-study on Myanmar.

Research:  Jonathan is currently working on two research projects. The first (with Taylor St John) is a comparative study of domestic investment laws. The project seeks to identify and explain shifts in the functions and content of national investment laws over time and space. The second (with Zhenyu Xiao) uses a series of case studies from across the Belt and Road Initiative to explore the legal and political dynamics in renegotiation of infrastructure contracts between Chinese foreign investors and host governments.

Languages:  Spanish (intermediate); Burmese (basic)

Bio:  Mireille is a doctoral student in legal history and civil law at Université Laval’s Faculty of Law in cotutelle with the Sciences Po Law School in Paris. She is a member of the Groupe de recherche sur les humanités juridiques. Mireille holds a bachelor’s degree in civil law and common law from the McGill Faculty of Law (2016) and a master’s degree in law and society from the University of Victoria (2018). Her master’s thesis focused on the intellectual contexts of the 1900 Comparative Law Congress in Paris. A member of the Quebec Bar since 2018, she worked as a law clerk at the Quebec Court of Appeal from 2018 to 2020. 

Research Focus:  Mireille’s research focuses on the contributions of civil society to the development of the civil law in the controversy over the nature and origins of legal personality in 19th-century France. In particular she looks at the way legal arguments published by lawyers and non-lawyers in the public press contribute to transforming the formal legal landscape in caslaw and doctrinal works. She is interested in developing a law and humanities research framework that can be applied in civil law countries, by mobilizing existing French-language theoretical resources and translating some English theoretical pieces to French.

Languages : French, Spanish

Bio : Jiwon Jheong has been a presiding judge of Geochang Branch of Changwon District Court of the Republic of Korea since 2020. She served as an associate judge of Seoul Central District Court from 2018 to 2020, and served as an associate judge of Ansan Branch of Suwon District Court from 2015 to 2018. She worked as a law clerk at Seoul High Court from 2014 to 2015. Before entering her profession, from 2012 to 2013, she was assigned to the two-year program at the Supreme Court of Korea’s Judicial Research and Training Institute. As a judge and a former law clerk, she has dealt with a wide range of labor cases as well as civil and criminal cases. She won 2020, 2021 Outstanding Judge of the Year by Gyeongsangnam-province Bar Association. 

Jiwon is also a member of the Labor Law Community of the Supreme Court of Korea. She is one of the co-authors of the revised edition of “The Commentary on the Trade Unions and Labor Relations Adjustment Act ( TULRAA )”, a notable legal commentary in Korea.

She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Seoul National University College of Humanities in 2012 and a Master of Laws degree in administrative law from Seoul National University School of Law in 2018. 

Research Focus : Jiwon’s research first focuses on the criteria for deciding an appropriate bargaining unit in the U.S. legal system. Korea’s collective bargaining system is unique in that the TULRAA defines the bargaining unit as a business or workplace. However, the Labor Relations Commission ( LRC ) may divide the bargaining unit if there is any considerable disparity in working conditions, employment status, and bargaining practices. As there is a scarcity of precedents on the separation criteria of bargaining units, she hopes to deepen her understanding of the concrete criteria for determining an appropriate bargaining unit in the U.S. 

The second part of her research focuses on the legal principle of joint employment in the U.S. A segment of Korean legal society argues that the adoption of the U.S. approach will represent an expansion of the nature of employers as a party to collective bargaining compared to the currently dominant interpretation under TULRAA . Scrutinizing the legal principle of joint employment in the U.S. will provide an additional perspective on the concept of an employer in a collective bargaining setting and determining whether it is possible to expand the concept of a client company in an in-house subcontracting relationship. 

Languages : Korean (native), Chinese (intermediary), Japanese elementary)

Bio:  Dr. Muhammad Asif Khan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Law at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities in the National University of Science and Technology Islamabad, Pakistan. He is also the Head of the Department of Law. He holds an LL .B. from University of Peshawar (Pakistan), and an LL .M. from the University of Liverpool ( UK ) in Public International Law. He defended his PhD thesis “Adjusting Business Entities in a Globalized World: The Concept of an International Treaty Regulating Transnational Corporations against Violations of International Law” at the University of Salzburg (Austria) in May 2015. He has vast experience in teaching Public International Law and has served in different public sector universities in Pakistan. He has worked as a consultant with the International Committee of the Red Cross ( ICRC ) in Pakistan. He has also worked as a Business and Human Rights Specialist with the United Nations Development Program ( UNDP ) in the Decentralisation, Human Rights and Local Governance Project ( DHL ) in Pakistan. He has remained a member of the governance committee of teaching business and human rights forum for one year (2021-2022). He is an associate editor of the  Manchester Journal of Transnational Islamic Law and Practice  and the  NUST Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities . His teaching activities include undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Public International Law, International Humanitarian Law, Business and Human Rights, Human Rights Law and Jurisprudence.

Research Focus:  Dr. Khan’s research activities focus on Business and Human Rights along with issues related with International Humanitarian Law including cyber warfare. Previously, his research has focussed on the regulation of transnational corporations and other business entities through an international treaty. At Michigan he will be focussing on human rights protection through international investment law. The major outcome will be to explore the possibility of including human rights protection clauses in bilateral investment treaties and international investment agreements from the perspectives of South Asian states. 

Languages:  Pashto (native), Urdu and English

Bio:  Kana Koyasu is a public prosecutor in Japan. She graduated from Waseda Law School with a Juris Doctor degree. After she passed the Japanese Bar Exam, she was appointed Public Prosecutor in December 2017 and has been working at the Sapporo District Public Prosecutors Office since 2023. She has been working in both the criminal and trial division of a number of District Public Prosecutors Offices for six years, gaining experience as a public prosecutor.

As a practicing lawyer, she has handled a number of difficult and complex criminal cases and has successfully prosecuted and argued a number of them. She was recommended by the Public Prosecutors Office in Japan and is currently beginning studies and research at the University of Michigan Law School as a research scholar.

Research Focus:  Kana’s research focuses on recent developments in the legislation and practice of the criminal justice system in the U.S. In general, the U.S. is much quicker than other countries in reflecting changes in socioeconomic conditions in its legal systems and practice. There are many lessons that Japan should learn in order to timely catch socioeconomic changes and expeditiously take legislative and other actions in line with such changes. A general study of such recent legislation and its practice will be indispensable for the future development of the criminal justice system in Japan.

Languages:  Japanese (native)

Bio:  Isola Clara Macchia is a Ph.D. Researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Her Ph.D. project investigates how the European Union enforces sustainable development clauses in its Free Trade Agreements, and whether variations in enforcement can be detected. She holds a Law degree from the University of Bologna and an MS c in European and International Public Policy from the London School of Economics. Isola Clara is a member of the Jean Monnet Module “Reforming the Global Economic Governance: The EU for SDG s in International Economic Law” research team at the University of Bologna, funded by the European Union. Before her Ph.D., she worked at the European Commission in the Directorate-General for Employment as a trainee on Directives’ implementation and infringement proceedings. She also served as a researcher at the Attorney General’s Office in Bologna working on regional cooperation in law enforcement and as a research assistant in international law at the University of Bologna. 

Research Focus:  At Michigan Law School, Isola Clara’s research will focus on the comparison between the EU ’s and U.S.’ approaches to enforcing international law, specifically in the area of trade and sustainable development. The choice to compare these two legal systems stems from the recurrent juxtaposition of the EU ’s cooperation-based model with the U.S.’ sanction-based one. The doctoral project investigates the mutual supportiveness of these two different approaches and whether their combination can help in ensuring a more consistent enforcement.

Languages:  Italian (native), Spanish (intermediate), French (elementary)

Bio:  Csongor István Nagy is professor of law at the University of Szeged and research professor at the Center for Social Sciences of the Hungarian Research Network. He is a recurrent visiting professor at the Central European University (Budapest/New York/Vienna) and the Sapientia University of Transylvania (Romania), and an associate member at the Center for Private International Law at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. 

Csongor graduated at the Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences (dr. jur.), where he also earned a Ph.D. He received master ( LL .M.) and S.J.D. degrees from the Central European University and a D.Sc. degree from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He pursued graduate studies in Rotterdam, Heidelberg and Ithaca (New York) and had visiting appointments in the Hague, Munich, Brno, Hamburg, Edinburgh, London, Riga, Bloomington (Indiana), Brisbane, Beijing, Taipei and Rome. 

He has more than 260 publications in English, French, German, Hungarian, Romanian and (in translation) in Croatian and Spanish. 

Research Focus:  The purpose of Csongor Nagy’s research in Ann Arbor is to put the current European rule-of-law debate in the context of comparative federalism and to provide a normative analysis through the lens of US constitutional ideas. Benchmarking Europe’s idiosyncratic “federalism” should be an important facet of the social discourse on the “European project”, and comparative federalism could contribute significantly to the resolution of the EU ’s current constitutional crisis. The path the EU is walking in the direction of an “ever closer Union” is far from unprecedented and, as far as multilevel constitutionalism is concerned, EU law may draw on the experiences of various regimes where centralized human rights protection and state constitutional identities coexist.

Languages : German (fluent), Hungarian (native), Romanian (fluent), French (working knowledge), Spanish (basic)

Bio : Since November 2021, Orlando has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for European Law, KU Leuven. He obtained his master’s degree in law from the University of Pisa and his LL .M. in European, Comparative and International Law from the European University Institute. He holds an Honors Degree and a PhD in Law from Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa. He was a visiting graduate student at the University of Toronto. After his PhD, Orlando was an Emile Noël Global fellow at NYU School of Law and a postdoctoral researcher at LUISS Guido Carli in Rome. He is admitted to the Italian Bar and is author of  Radical Constitutional Pluralism in Europe  (Routledge, 2023).

Research   Focus:  At Michigan, Orlando will be working on the incorporation of federal rights and on the subsequent emergence of New Judicial Federalism in the United States. This study of the American system is part of a broader research project on the incorporation of rights and on the reaction at the level of the constituent units in federal and quasi-federal systems. Part of the broader ERC RESHUFFLE at the KU Leuven, the project aims at comparing the twofold dynamic of incorporation and subsequent contestation in the United States, Canada, and the European Union.

Languages : Italian (native), French (advanced).

Bio:  Johannes Thierer is a PhD student at the Chair of Constitutional Law (Professor Johannes Masing) at the University of Freiburg (Germany) where he also worked as a research assistant from 2020 till 2023. He studied law at the University of Freiburg and the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg (Sweden) and graduated in 2020. In his position as research assistant, he taught first and second semester students in constitutional law and European law. 

He currently works on his thesis about the European and American single market. His doctoral research is funded the German National Academic Foundation.

Johannes’ interests include European law, constitutional law and comparative law.

Research Focus:  Johannes’ PhD-project explores constitutional constraints against economic regulation of single member states in federal systems. It compares the fundamental freedoms of the European Union with the dormant Commerce Clause of the American Constitution. Whereas the doctrines and tests of the European Court of Justice and the US Supreme Court seem strikingly similar at first glance, Johannes’ aim is to examine the different notions and concepts behind the norms. Building on this, the project intends to rethink the EU ’s fundamental freedoms.

Languages:  German (native), Swedish (intermediate), French (elementary)

Bio:  Holding a Master’s Degree in Law  magna cum laude , Justin started his career as a researcher at KUL euven (Belgium). After completing this first professional experience, he wanted to gain practical experience and help disadvantaged groups. Therefore, Justin worked as a legal counsel in an association helping young people. After this first practical experience, he undertook the bar traineeship. Justin was fully admitted to the bar after successfully passing the bar exam in 2016. While doing his bar traineeship, he also started working at UCL ouvain (Belgium) in 2012. Justin has been lecturing various courses as a teaching assistant and, since 2020, as a lecturer. In 2021, he defended his Ph.D. thesis dealing with distressed sovereign debts. Justin will conduct postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan Law School as a B.A.E.F.  Fellow.

Research Focus:  In his Ph.D. thesis, Justin analyzed the regulation of the so-called “vulture funds” and proposed a new judicial approach in order to better address their speculation on sovereign debts. He wishes to expand the scope of his research findings and undertake a deeper comparative analysis during a one-year postdoctoral research stay at the University of Michigan Law School. The goal of this research project is to outline a legislative proposal concerned with profiteering in sovereign debts. Such a proposal appears to be of paramount importance given the boom in borrowing following the pandemic crisis.

Languages : French (native) and Dutch (proficient)

Bio : Eva-Maria Wettstein is a PhD student at the University of Cologne in Germany. She completed her state exam in law in 2022, which included a specialization on private international law, civil litigation, and economic law. Wettstein currently works as a trainee lawyer at Osborne Clarke’s Dispute and Risk Team in Cologne, where she is involved in an investor state arbitration proceeding. Additionally, she is a research fellow with the International Investment Law Centre Cologne ( IILCC , University of Cologne). In this capacity, Wettstein contributes to research and teaching in international investment law, arbitration law and public international law. As speaker of the German doctoral researchers’ network for international investment law, Wettstein regularly organizes events and encourages interaction between practitioners and academics.

Research Focus : Wettstein’s research focuses on the enforcement of investor-state arbitration awards between European investors and European Union member states (“intra- EU arbitration awards”) in the USA . The heart of the research question – whether intra- EU arbitration awards are enforceable in the USA – lies in the relationship of public international law, EU law and US law. Against this background, the research project aims to explore the interaction between courts of both sovereign EU member states and the USA as well as the interaction between their laws from an international legal perspective.

Languages : German (native), French (intermediate), Portuguese (elementary)

Bio:  Ms.Xiaodan ZHU is a Chinese professor specialized in International Tax Law. In this capacity, Xiaodan works at the Law School, Dalian Ocean University, where she also is the director of both Bachelor and Master Degree programs in Law. Prof. Zhu obtained a Ph.D. in International Tax Law from Xiamen University of China in 2013. She has been a Grotius Research Scholar of the University of Michigan Law School during 2015 and 2016. Her teaching activities include courses on international economic law, China’s tax law, and international tax law. Her wiritings (including journal articles and monographs) have appeared in many Chinese and English academic publications. Moreover, Professor Zhu is also a brilliant practical expert in tax law. She has been seconded to the Department of Tax Policy, Ministry of Finance of China in 2020, and she has been a part-time tax lawyer for almost six years in China.

Research Focus:  Professor Zhu’s research is titled “ Interaction Between the OECD ’s Global Minimum Tax Proposal and Tax Competition Rules: From the Perspective of China”, and the project addresses the following key issues: (1) What is the impact of OECD ’s Global Minimum Tax 

Proposal (Pillar 2) on China’s tax competition rules and domestic tax law? (2)Is there any legal experience in US tax law relating to minimum income tax which is valuable for China? (3) How would China figure out the tax reforms conflict between international “Global Minimum Tax ” and domestic “Tax and Fee Reduction Policy”? 

Languages:  Mandarin Chinese (native)

Bio: Niklas Burkart is a research assistant at the Institute for Public Law, Department of Constitutional Law at University of Freiburg. He currently works on his thesis about the conflict between Freedom of Art und Copyright. Burkart studied Law at Freiburg and Speyer. He was a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law. During his legal clerkship he worked at a law firm specialized in administrative law and at the German Federal Foreign Office, Department of Human Rights, in Berlin. Burkart coordinates the DFG (German Research Council) project “Handbook of Constitutional Law – German Constitutional Law from a Transnational Perspective”. In his position as research assistant, he teaches first and second semester students in constitutional law. 

Research Focus:  Burkart’s PhD-project explores the relationship between Freedom of Art and Copyright from a fundamental law perspective. The thesis is driven by the idea of strengthening Art without threatening Copyright. This requires to reveal the parts of Copyright that are not based on Freedom of Property but on Personality Rights. Given the fact that German Copyright Law is regulated by European Law, the thesis has to address not only German but also European Fundamental Rights. To contrast the results, the conflict between Freedom of Art and Copyright shall also be examined under US  Law. 

Languages:  German (native), French (elementary)

Bio:  Andrew Cecchinato is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the University of Michigan Law School and the School of History at the University of St Andrews. He is PI of the Horizon 2020 project on  John Selden’s Harmonic Jurisprudence. A European Interpretation of English Legal History . Previously, he was a postdoc in St Andrews, working on the ERC project  Civil Law, Common Law, Customary Law: Consonance Divergence and Transformation in Western Europe from the late eleventh to the thirteenth centuries . 

Andrew is book review editor for the American Journal of Legal History. He has received scholarships from the Max-Planck-Institute für europäische Rechtsgeschichte and the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. He has also been a visiting researcher at the Robbins Collection in Civil and Religious Law, the Georgetown University Law Center, and the Library of Congress. He studied law at the University of Trento, where his PhD on  The Legal Education of Thomas Jefferson  won the faculty prize. 

Research Focus:  Andrew’s main research aims to repurpose the idea of Europe by studying how the seventeenth-century jurist, historian, and Hebraist John Selden harmonized the history of English law and the authority of the European legal tradition. His project will center on Selden’s effort to preserve and harmonize the history of English law within the inclusive order of nations recognized by a distinct reading of medieval and modern European jurisprudence. The research will thus focus on the cogent yet overlooked reasoning by which Selden proved that no law, however discrete, can rightfully be understood if isolated from the continuum of legal experience. 

Languages:  English and Italian (native), French and German (elementary)

Bio:  Fabian is a PhD Candidate in public international law at Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge. His doctoral research is funded by a W.M. Tapp Studentship and the German National Academic Foundation. Previously, Fabian was a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, and read law in Hamburg (Dipl. Jur.) and Oxford (M.Jur.).

At the University of Cambridge, Fabian has supervised undergraduates and conducted workshops for Cambridge LL .M. students in International Investment Law and International Law as a Legal System. He is currently an Associate Editor at International Law in Domestic Courts ( OUP ) and an Assistant Editor for Investment Arbitration at Kluwer Arbitration Blog.

In recent years, Fabian has worked as a research assistant for Professor Campbell McLachlan, Professor Eyal Benvenisti and Sir Christopher Greenwood. In 2022, his article on informal communications to the ICJ was awarded the Rosalyn Higgins Prize of The Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals.  

Research Focus:  Fabian’s research interests lie in the areas of general international law, international dispute settlement, international investment law and German public law. His PhD project (“Self-Judgment in International Law”) investigates to what extent states can authoritatively auto-interpret international law. It traces the evolution of self-judgment throughout the history of international law, unearths links between self-judgment and the concept of obligation in international law, and assesses the approach of international courts and tribunals. Against this background, the project develops a theoretical and doctrinal framework to accommodate self-judgment in international law. 

Languages: German (native), French (proficient, C1 ), Spanish (advanced, B1 / B2 ), Hindi (Basic), Italian (Basic)

Bio : Hijratullah Ekhtyar is an International & Comparative Law Research Scholar of the University of Michigan Law School. He served as a lecturer at the Nangarhar University Faculty of Law and Political Science since 2012 to 2021, and also was provincial director for the Independent Administrative Reform and Civil Services Commission of Afghanistan in Nangarhar province since 2018 to 2021. Ekhtyar also worked as a local coordinator and journalist for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting ( IWPR ) in eastern provinces (Laghman, Nangarhar, Kunar, and Noristan) from 2011 to 2014. He served as a Lawyer and Provincial Commissioner for the Independent Electoral Compliant Commission ( IECC ) of Afghanistan in Nangarhar province from 2009 to 2011. Moreover, he served as an administrative clerk for the Economic Committee of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009. He also worked for Mediothek Afghanistan, a German based NGO as an in-charge of Academic and Cultural Affairs from 2007 to 2008.

He obtained LL .M degree in Sustainable International Development ( SID ) program from the University of Washington Law School in 2017, and completed his undergraduate studies in the Nangarhar University Faculty of Law and Political Science in 2008.

Ekhtyar participated in the University of Washington School of Law visiting scholar program in 2015, and attended the International Visitor Leadership Program ( IVLP ) of the State Department of the United States in 2013.

Ekhtyar also run Ekhtyar Legal Services ( ELS ), a non-profit legal assistance provider organization in Nangarhar province from 2009 to 2015. He was a certified defense lawyer under the Afghanistan Independent Bar Association during 2009-2015.

After completion of his graduate studies in the University of Washington Law School, he served as a Legal Research Intern in the Library of Congress in 2017.

During his tenure with IWPR , Ekhtyar wrote about 30 articles for  www.iwpr.net . He also published an article about combating corruption in Afghanistan in  https://nsuworks.nova.edu/ilsajournal/vol24/iss1/4/  and  https://www.ijlsr.in/ijlsr_special_issue_june_2018 . Furthermore, he wrote/ translated more than 20 books and numerous articles that are published in national language, Pashto.

Ekhtyar received a Medal of Excellence from Zhwand Group of Companies and Green Motion for his writings in 2014. 

Research Focus : Ekhtyar’s research focus is on International Law of Armed Conflicts, Good Governance, Corruption, and Constitutional Law. He recently completed his research project on the Hiring Process of lecturers in Afghanistan universities. He is currently working on another research project focusing on Constitutionalism in Afghanistan. The main theme of his research is how to adopt a comprehensive constitution for Afghanistan to end up the long-lasting crises and war in that country.

Languages : Pashto and Dari (native), English (excellent), and Urdu (elementary).

Bio: Giulia Giusy Cusenza is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law at the University of Udine in Italy, where she is also an adjunct professor of administrative law at the Engineering Faculty. She earned her Ph.D. in administrative law from the University of Trento in 2020, and in 2018 she obtained an Intensive International Master of Laws ( I.I.LL.M. ) held by the European Public Law Organization in Athens. In recent years she has been lecturing various courses as a teaching assistant and as a lecturer. Moreover, she became a lawyer in 2018, and she was awarded the title of lawyer specialized in administrative law in June 2022 by the Italian National Bar Council.

Research Focus: Giulia’s research investigates the implications of the digitalization process and the application of artificial intelligence on public administrations and judicial activities. She is conducting comparative research on assessment procedures for developing algorithmic systems within the public administration. Her current project aims at studying the benefits of prioritizing stakeholders’ welfare in algorithm design for public administrations by implementing democratic and participatory processes. Her research interests revolve around administrative law and comparative administrative law.

Languages: Italian (native)

Bio:  Maria Haag is a lecturer of European law at Tilburg University Law School (Netherlands). She holds an LL .B. from Durham University (United Kingdom), and an LL .M. from the European University Institute (Italy). She defended her PhD thesis “A Sense of Responsibility: The Shifting Roles of the Member States for the Union Citizen” at the European University Institute in October 2019. She has previously worked as a trainee at the Legal Service of the European Commission and a research assistant at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advance Studies (Italy). From August to December 2016, Maria visited Michigan Law School for the first time as a Grotius Research Scholar. She is an editor for the European Law Blog and an external editor for the European Journal of Legal Studies. Her teaching activities include undergraduate and postgraduate courses on EU constitutional law, internal market and free movement law, judicial protection, and migration law.

Research Focus:  Maria previously developed the concept of responsibility as a prism to re-evaluate the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, and to differentiate between the roles that the home and the host Member States play for EU citizens. Building on this, she now wishes to examine further aspects of the concept of responsibility: the responsibilities of citizens in EU law, on the one hand, and the responsibility of the Union as whole for its citizens, on the other.

Languages : German (native), French, Dutch

Bio:  Lucas Hartmann is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Legal Theory at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Prior to that, he conducted research at the Institute for German and European Administrative Law at the University of Heidelberg. Lucas’ research interests focus on legal theory, on comparative law studies, and on European Union Law.

Lucas defended his PhD entitled “The Codification of EU Administrative Law” (“Die Kodifikation des Europäischen Verwaltungsrechts”) at the University of Heidelberg in 2019. He was also a visiting researcher at Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne (France) in 2021 and was awarded a three-year full-time Senior Researcher Fellowship (“Eigene Stelle”) from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – DFG ) in 2020. 

Research Focus:  At Michigan, Lucas will focus on his comparative research project on judicial lawmaking. The aim of this research project is to compare German concepts of dynamic interpretation with similar understandings concerning the role of judicial lawmaking in the USA , France, and the EU that allow or forbid courts to develop the constitution, statutes, or “the law” in general. In particular, he intends to learn about the American practice and literature on constitutional and statutory construction, common law reasoning, and judicial activism/restraint.

Languages:  German, English and French

Bio:  Moshe Jaffe is a JSD candidate at Bar Ilan University, and an LLM Graduate from Columbia Law School. Jaffe is a constitutional law Adjunct Professor at the Academic Center of Law and Science in Israel, and an Adjunct Professor at Cardozo School of Law. As an Israeli lawyer, Jaffe represented dozens of cases before the Israeli Supreme Court with emphasis on Religion and State, Human Rights, and National Security. Simultaneously, Jaffe serves as a legal advisor for the Counter-Terrorism section in the IDF ’s Department of the Legal Advisor to Judea and Samaria. Jaffe also serves as an administrative judge on the Confiscation of Funds Committee of the Money Laundering Headquarters tribunal.

Research Focus:  Jaffe’s research comparatively addresses the constitutionality and the use of proportionality tests in judicial review of tax legislation. The research focuses on three different judicial systems — Israel, the U.S, and Jewish Law. Alongside the main issue, the research addresses the questions of tax definitions and equality in tax law. The research’s main argument is that the Israeli proportionality doctrine is the most effective and correct instrument for applying judicial review to tax legislation. This stands in contrast to the use of the scrutiny doctrine, which struggles to adapt itself to the flexibility and balances that tax laws require.

Languages : Hebrew – native, Spanish – proficient, France – elementary.

Bio:  Shajan Kreuter is a PhD student at the University of Freiburg in Germany. He studied law at the University of Frankfurt and spent his clerkship at the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt. 

Shajan Kreuter is admitted to the bar and works at Sullivan Cromwell LLP in Frankfurt.

Research Focus:  In his PhD thesis Kreuter portrays the regulation of crypto assets in Germany, the EU and the US . The thesis examines the current regulation of crypto assets in Germany and the EU and analyses the digital finance package of the European Commission which contains three draft legislations constituting the first comprehensive regulation of crypto assets in the EU . Furthermore, the thesis describes the current regulatory landscape and developments in the US and compares the EU draft legislation with the US regulatory regime.

Languages:  German (native), French (proficient)

Bio:  Linda Meister is a PhD student at the Department for Private International Law, International Civil Litigation and Comparative Law at the Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen in Germany. After her state exam in 2020 which included a specialization on Private International Law, International Civil Litigation and Comparative Law, she started working as a Research, Teaching and Grading Assistant at the University of Tuebingen. In this capacity she has taught courses in Public Law, Private Law and Private International Law. During her undergraduate and doctoral studies, she also participated successfully in the certificate programs “Law, Ethics, Economics” and “Human Rights Law in Practice”.

Her interests include Principles of Private International Law, International Civil Litigation, Comparative Law and Human Rights Law.

Research Focus:  Linda’s research focuses on the principle of neutrality in Private International Law. This area of law determines which country’s law is applicable in a case with connections to multiple countries. The classical European approach aims to treat all legal systems equally and abstracts the question of applicable law from the content of the different laws. This abstraction is called the principle of neutrality. However, this principle is being challenged. Developments in Europe and especially teachings in the US focus on a just outcome rather than a neutral decision. Linda tries to substantiate the principle of neutrality and assess deviating developments.

Languages:  German (native), French (intermediate), Spanish (intermediate), Turkish (elementary)

Bio:  Zhiruo Ni is a PhD candidate in the College of Comparative Law, China University of Political Science and Law, in Beijing. Prior to her PhD studies, she received a Master of Laws at King’s College London and a Bachelor of Laws at the University of International Business and Economics in China. In 2017 she was a Visiting Student at Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv (Israel). From 2016 to 2018, she held legal internships in the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission ( CIETAC ) and JunHe LLP , China. Her research interests mainly include Antitrust Law and Comparative Law.

Research Focus:  Ni’s research focuses on antitrust regulation toward vertical integration. She has found that antitrust law is getting primary attention in China, but there is still a lack of Law & Economics studies and relevant cases, due to a long-term regulatory and judicial oversight before the information age. As vertical integration has been a dominant characteristic of some major 

industries in the U.S., she hopes to build a comparative antitrust study on the issue between both jurisdictions, where the digital platforms could be the most suitable legal subjects for antitrust analysis at present.

Languages:  Chinese (native)

Bio:  Saba Pipia holds a Ph.D. degree in Law from Tbilisi State University (Tbilisi, Georgia). He taught international law at several universities in Tbilisi, Georgia. Throughout his doctoral and post-doctoral studies, he was a visiting researcher at Michigan State University ( USA ), The Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Germany); The University of Groningen (The Netherlands); Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece); Max Planck Institute for Comparative and Private International Law (Germany), Peace Palace Library (The Netherlands) and Jerusalem Institute of Justice (Israel). He was an invited lecturer at the University of Porto (Portugal) and the University of Iasi (Romania). He is a recipient of multiple research scholarships including from the Georgian National Scientific Foundation, German Academic Exchange Service ( DAAD ), European Commission (Erasmus program), and the US State Department (Fulbright Visiting Scholars program). Areas of his research include international humanitarian law, international criminal law, global animal law, and international environmental law. He has published academic publications in Georgia and abroad.

Research Focus:  Saba’s research project is about missing persons. He intends to study the issue of missing persons from all possible international legal angles and provide an analysis, which will be useful for various target groups, including academics, students, governments, and armed forces. Saba thinks that there is a need to develop the concept of ‘international law of missing persons’ and examine this multi-dimensional issue through the lens of various international law instruments to determine the body of law, that regulates the issue of missing persons, and which can be 

applied whenever there is a need to deal with missing persons. The most important goal of this research visit is to promote legal scholarship in the emerging field of international law – missing persons law – and eventually to produce an academic publication on this topic.

Languages : Georgian (native), Russian (limited working proficiency), Hebrew (elementary proficiency)

Bio:  Dr. Elena Pribytkova is a Lecturer in Law at Southampton Law School. She received a Doctor of the Science of Law ( J.S.D. ) degree from Columbia Law School and is a Habilitation candidate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Basel. She held various research and teaching appointments at leading universities and research institutes all over the world, including Columbia Law School, New York University School of Law, University of Oxford, European University Institute, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg University, Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, University of Basel, Radboud University Nijmegen, and National University of Singapore. She has more than fifty publications, including publications in top U.S. law reviews and internationally recognized peer-reviewed law journals, such as the  Chicago Journal of International Law ,  University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law ,  Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie ,  RphZ – Rechtsphilosophie – Zeitschrift für Grundlagen des Rechts , and  N.Y.U. Journal of International Law & Politics .

Research Focus:  Elena has worked extensively on individual and collective multidisciplinary research projects on theories of justice, human dignity, law and morality, governance, and human rights, in particular, socio-economic rights and their role in reducing poverty and inequality as well as in promoting social, global, and environmental justice, and sustainable development. Her current project  Towards a World of Accountability: Extraterritorial Obligations in the Area of Socio-Economic Rights from Philosophical, Legal and Practical Perspectives  pays special attention to human rights obligations of non-state actors. Her Habilitation monograph  A Decent Social Minimum in the Language of Human Rights  focuses on mechanisms for ensuring the social minimum guarantees in international, regional, and national orders.

Languages:  Russian (native speaker); English & German (fluent); French (intermediate); Slavic languages & Swiss German (basic knowledge)

Bio:  Sabrina Ragone (PhD) teaches comparative law at the University of Bologna’s Department of Political and Social Sciences, where she holds the post of Head of International Relations. She is also a member of the scientific committee of the Buenos Aires Campus and the excellence college of the University. She is Senior Research Affiliate of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg), where she pursued her research between 2015 and 2017. Previously, she was a García Pelayo Fellow at the Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales – Madrid (2012-2015) and researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (2011-2012). She has taught comparative law in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, and Argentina. 

She has collaborated with several competitive national research projects funded by the Italian and Spanish ministries of education as well as by research institutes in Latin America. Between 2018 and 2021 she was the PI of the Jean Monnet Module CRISES “Critical Risks for Integration and Solidarity in the European Space”, Erasmus+ Program. See:  https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/sabrina.ragone2/cv-en  

Research Focus:  Sabrina Ragone’s research comparatively addresses constitutional adjudication, territorial organization, and the interaction between international and domestic laws. She deals with Latin American constitutionalism from a comparative perspective, taking into account its transnational dimension. Her book on constitutional adjudication on constitutional amendments was the first comprehensive assessment of the issue (“I controlli giurisdizionali sulle revisioni costituzionali” 2011 in Italian, 2012 in Spanish). She then focused on the core constitutional issues of European integration, publishing several pieces on the issue, among them, the edited book “Managing the Euro Crisis. National EU policy coordination in the debtor countries”, Routledge 2018, and the volume “Parlamentarismos y crisis económica: afectación de los encajes constitucionales en Italia y España”, Bosch, 2020.

Languages : Italian (native); Spanish (proficient); German (good); French (intermediate); Portuguese (working knowledge); Catalan (working knowledge) 

Bio : Lea Schneider is a PhD student at the Institute for International Law and Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. From 2020 to 2022, she served as Research and Teaching Assistant at the University of Zurich, where she taught courses and co-organized the 22nd Conference of Young Research Scholars in Public Law ( Junge Tagung Öffentliches Recht ) and co-edited the annual anthology for young legal researchers of the University of Zurich ( APARIUZ ). Prior to pursuing her PhD studies, she received an LL .M. in Transnational Law from King’s College London and a Master of Laws from the University of Zurich. Her interests include public international law, public law, international economic law, transnational law and human rights law.

Research Focus : Lea Schneider’s research centers on the regulatory landscape of transnational corporations ( TNC s) regarding human rights and environmental standards. In her PhD thesis she analyses what insights are gained from a transnational perspective on the regulatory landscape of TNC s. Schneider conceptualizes transnational law, along the lines of Peer Zumbansen, as a methodology. In her thesis, she claims, for example, that a transnational perspective allows us to gain an enhanced understanding of the role and functioning of international soft law-initiatives in this regulatory area.

Languages : German (native), French (proficient), Italian (elementary)

Bio:  Francesco Tumbiolo is a Ph.D. student in Legal Sciences at the University of Milan-Bicocca. He was awarded a doctoral scholarship for his research project about cryptocurrencies’ taxation. Francesco is also a teaching assistant at the University of Insubria (Como), where he graduated in law. He was admitted, ranking among the top five students, to the School of Specialization in Legal Professions of the University of Milan. After getting the specialization diploma, he passed the bar exam, and he is currently an attorney-at-law in Italy at a renowned tax law firm with branches in Rome and Milan.

Research Focus:  Francesco’s research focuses on cryptocurrencies’ taxation, especially from the Italian tax law point of view. However, he is now interested in giving his doctoral thesis a comparative perspective: his aim is to find what are the solutions adopted by different OECD members, like the US , to fix the same problems every country faces in taxing cryptocurrencies. Since they are in rapid development, he agrees that policymakers have to progress in considering cryptocurrencies’ tax implications in order to find a shared best practice.

Languages : Italian (native)

Bio : Wu Weiding is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Law of Renmin University of China ( RUC ). His areas of interest include corporate and securities law and arbitration law. He received his Bachelor of Laws degree and Juris Master degree respectively from China University of Political Science and Law ( CUPL ) and Peking University ( PKU ). Wu has participated in several research programs, such as “Research on Major Problems of Bankruptcy of Listed Companies” and “Improvement of Governance Mechanism of Listed Companies”. He has worked as an intern in Beijing JunZeJun (Changsha) Law Firm, Beijing Tiantong Law Firm and the People’s Court of Changping District. Currently, he is an editor of  Renming University Law Review . Wu has also already published a number of academic papers in core journals of China.

Research Focus : Wu has been focusing on social enterprises in the form of companies in China. Social enterprises are the types of enterprises pursuing both profits and public welfare. In China, there are a large number of social enterprises taking the form of companies. The core problem is that in China, the company is an organizational form purely pursuing profit-making goals, and Company Law of the People’s Republic of China does not provide any strong institutional guarantee for social enterprises to achieve social goals. Questions to be addressed in Wu’s research are as follows: Why do an increasing number of social enterprises exist in the form of companies in China? How can these social enterprises achieve their social goals without “mission drift”?

Languages:  Chinese (native) and German (elementary)

Bio:  Ms.Xiaodan Zhu is a Chinese professor specialized in International Tax Law. In this capacity, Xiaodan works at the Law School, Dalian Ocean University, where she also is the director of both Bachelor and Master Degree programs in Law. Prof. Zhu obtained a Ph.D. in International Tax Law from Xiamen University of China in 2013. She has been a Grotius Research Scholar of the University of Michigan Law School during 2015 and 2016. Her teaching activities include courses on international economic law, China’s tax law, and international tax law. Her writings (including journal articles and monographs) have appeared in many Chinese and English academic publications. Moreover, Professor Zhu is also a brilliant practical expert in tax law. She has been seconded to the Department of Tax Policy, Ministry of Finance of China in 2020, and she has been a part-time tax lawyer for almost six years in China.

Bio:  Zhiyu Li is an Assistant Professor in Law and Policy at Durham Law School and a Fellow at the Durham Research Methods Centre. She holds undergraduate degrees in law and economics from the East China University of Political Science and Law and a J.S.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Zhiyu’s research investigates issues that lie at the intersection of law and policy, with a particular emphasis on the role of courts in democratic and authoritarian regimes. The findings of her research have been published in or accepted by U.S. and international journals, including the  Harvard International Law Journal , the  Columbia Journal of Asian Law , and the  Cornell International Law Journal , and presented at various fora, such as the Stanford International Junior Faculty Forum and the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Comparative Law.

Research Focus:  Zhiyu’s current research asks whether the rejection of the separation of powers principle in socialist jurisdictions makes it easier for courts to take on extrajudicial functions and exercise influence in ways that are salutary but forbidden to their liberal democratic cousins.

At Michigan, she will work on a joint project that aims to study cognitive biases of legal professionals and lay persons through survey experiments fielded on judges and university students. The project findings are expected to have normative implications for institutional choices in the civil and criminal justice system. She will also further her work on specialized judicial empowerment.

Languages:  Mandarin Chinese (native)

Bio:  Sarah Zimmermann is a PhD student at the Max-Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) where she also works at the European and Comparative Legal History department.

Zimmermann studied Law and European Studies in Mainz (Germany), Maastricht (Netherlands) and Dijon (France). Prior to pursuing her PhD, she obtained the German State Exams and a Masters (Maîtrise en Droit) from the University of Dijon with a focus on European economic law. She also holds a joint LL .M in international private law and European Law from the universities of Mainz and Dijon. She has received various scholarships during her studies and for her PhD research. During her legal clerkship she worked at the Frankfurt office of WilmerHale obtaining professional experience in the field of regulatory affairs and European Law.

Her interests include European law, procedural law, comparative law and administrative law.

Research Focus:  Zimmermann’s PhD research focuses on the procedural law of the Courts of the European Union. It looks at the emergence of these rules in the 1950s from a historical and comparative legal perspective. She is evaluating to which extent the ECJ procedural rules during that time were comparable to the national procedural rules of the member states and to those of international courts. She is using sources from the archives of the European institutions and the relevant ministries of the founding states and seeks to give insight into one of the first decision making processes of the Community.

Languages : German (native), French (proficient), Dutch (elementary)

Bio:  Alain is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the School of Law, University of Glasgow ( UK ). Alain holds graduate degrees in Philosophy ( MS c, London School of Economics), History ( MA , Graduate Institute) and Law ( LL .M., Toronto). He was awarded his doctoral degree at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. His doctoral dissertation was published as a monograph with Routledge ( The ECHR and Human Rights Theory ). Alain subsequently obtained three post-doctoral fellowships funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the European University Institute in Florence (Max Weber Fellowship) and the University of Oslo (PluriCourts Centre of Excellence).

Research Focus:  Alain’s research aims to reconstruct and evaluate the practices of constitutional law, human rights law and international law from the perspective of normative theory. In particular, Alain has examined the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, UN treaty bodies and the International Criminal Court. His research has appeared in leading peer-reviewed journals such as  International Journal of Constitutional Law  (2019, 2022),  Global Constitutionalism  (2016, 2021, 2022),  Ratio Juris  (2019),  Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy  (2019, 2021),  Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence  (2016) and  Criminal Law and Philosophy  (2018), among others. Alain is also currently Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oslo (PluriCourts Center for Excellence) for a two-year project (2021-23) studying the nexus between theories of populism and the practice of the European Court of Human Rights. His monograph on the topic is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

Languages : English, French, German, Spanish

Andrew Cecchinato is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the University of Michigan Law School and the School of History at the University of St Andrews. He is PI of the Horizon 2020 project on John Selden’s Harmonic Jurisprudence. A European Interpretation of English Legal History . Previously, he was a postdoc in St Andrews, working on the ERC project Civil Law, Common Law, Customary Law: Consonance Divergence and Transformation in Western Europe from the late eleventh to the thirteenth centuries . 

Andrew is a book review editor for the American Journal of Legal History. He has received scholarships from the Max-Planck-Institute für europäische Rechtsgeschichte and the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. He has also been a visiting researcher at the Robbins Collection in Civil and Religious Law, the Georgetown University Law Center, and the Library of Congress. He studied law at the University of Trento, where his Ph.D. on The Legal Education of Thomas Jefferson won the faculty prize. 

Research Focus

Andrew’s main research aims to repurpose the idea of Europe by studying how the seventeenth-century jurist, historian, and Hebraist John Selden harmonized the history of English law and the authority of the European legal tradition. His project will center on Selden’s effort to preserve and harmonize the history of English law within the inclusive order of nations recognized by a distinct reading of medieval and modern European jurisprudence. The research will thus focus on the cogent yet overlooked reasoning by which Selden proved that no law, however discrete, can rightfully be understood if isolated from the continuum of legal experience. 

English and Italian (native), French and German (elementary)

Apostolos Chronopoulos is Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London.

Apostolos has studied law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He continued his studies at Queen Mary University of London ( LLM Lond.) and the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich ( LLM Eur. and Dr. Jur.). During his Ph.D. studies, he was supported by a scholarship from the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition, and Tax Law (now MPI for Innovation and Competition). At the postdoctoral level, he has received scholarships that allowed him to conduct research as a visiting scholar at Stanford Law School and as an invited overseas researcher at the Institute of Intellectual Property in Tokyo, Japan.

His research interests span the broader field of intellectual property and competition law. Currently, his focus is on US and EU trademark law, unfair competition law, patent law, economic analysis of intellectual property law, comparative intellectual property law, the relationship of intellectual property law and general private law, the interface between Intellectual property and antitrust law.

His latest publications include: Exceptions to Trade Mark Exhaustion: Inalienability Rules for the Protection of Reputational Economic Value [2021] 43(6) European Intellectual Property Review 352-365; Reconstructing the Complete Patent Bargain: The Doctrine of Equivalents , [2020] Intellectual Property Quarterly, Issue 2, 138-160; Strict Liability and Negligence in Copyright Law: Fair Use as Regulation of Activity Levels , 97 Nebraska Law Review 384-468 (2018).

English, German, Greek

Viviana Galletto Farro graduated from the Catholic University of Uruguay with a Juris Doctor degree. She has been a professional judge in Uruguay since 2014, and she is currently nominated by the Supreme Court of Justice of this country for an upcoming promotion. She has attended on a wide range of cases in both civil and criminal law matters, gaining experience as a judge.

She is a contract law specialist and holds an LL .M degree in Contract Law. In addition, she is pursuing an LL .M degree in Criminal Procedure Law, while she currently works on her Ph.D. thesis in Legal and Research Sciences from the Catholic University of Argentine.

She is a graduate teaching assistant in civil and procedural law at the Catholic University of Uruguay. Her writings have been published in numerous legal publications. She has received multiple scholarships and awards, including the Fulbright Scholar grant to study at the University of Michigan Law School as a research scholar.

The purpose of the research will be to identify the relevant legal standards for the admission, evaluation and sufficiency of the evidence presented by the parties in the intermediate stage of the criminal process, in order to discover the truth and achieve effective, fast and fair solutions.

The main focus will be to analyze the objective parameters that constitute the rules of evidence by which judges issue their rulings, so these criteria could be used as a framework in the Uruguayan Criminal Procedure System during the intermediate stage of trials.

Spanish (native), Italian (elementary). 

Jaka Kukavica is a Ph.D. Researcher at European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His Ph.D. project comparatively examines consensus analysis as an interpretative method in various multilevel polities. He is also working as a researcher on “The Court of Justice in the Archives” project at the Academy of European Law and the “Judicial Networks between Supreme Courts in Europe” project led by Prof. Mathias Siems. Before commencing his doctoral project, Kukavica studied law at Ljubljana and Cambridge. He is the Head of Section for European Law at the European Journal of Legal Studies and he served as an Editor of the Cambridge International Law Journal in the past. He has received multiple scholarships and awards, including the Mary Higgins Scholarship and the Lilian Knowles Prize awarded by Girton College, University of Cambridge.

Kukavica’s doctoral research examines the relationship between the structure of multilevel polities and the types of consensus analysis courts use when interpreting legal norms. Kukavica argues that different types of consensus analysis imply different understandings of the value of state autonomy. On these grounds, he examines whether courts use consensus analysis in a way that fits the structure of the multilevel system in which they operate. In particular, he focuses on the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court, the Court of Justice of the EU , the European Court of Human Rights, and the UN Human Rights Committee.

Slovenian (native), Serbo-Croatian, and Italian (proficient)

Caroline Maciel is a doctoral researcher in open data of the Quality of Law Research Clinic, which is a member of the International Association of Legislation. She works as Regulatory Affairs and Government Relations at Stone Co (financial and software solutions) and is interested in Big Techs entrance in financial markets and how regulation should approach this matter. She studied Law at UFMG (Brazil) and University of Leeds ( UK ) and won two of the university’s prizes (best in civil and procedure law). Her master degree Institutions and Public Policies (Arraes: 2019) won two awards. She was a Research Fellow at AI Labs in a project on artificial intelligence to understand Congress. Her teaching and academic activities include courses on law and technology, constitutional law, administrative law and legal theory. Her writings have been published in numerous peer-reviewed publications, some in english.

Caroline’s research addresses how technology, such as machine learning-based systems, can be used to improve regulatory and legislative risk management. She argues that Brazil has substantial unequal access to public data and political players. Given this, tools to automatically process, analyze and categorize data, identify trends and predict best courses of legal action could change how advocacy is done, reducing this asymmetry. She analyzes some of these situations in financial market, as Big Tech’s started to provide payment services in Brazil. She chose to collect improvements from the US private and public sector because it is one of the front-runners in AI and algorithmic transparency, which can be used in Regulatory Impact Assessment Brazilian models. She evaluates how to decipher the government’s decision-making process patterns (without losing the political aspect) and the possible benefits to the democratic and economic development. 

Portuguese (native), English (proficient) and Spanish (intermediate)

Veena Manikulam is a PhD student at the Institute for International Law and Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. From 2019 to 2021, she served as Research and Teaching Assistant at the University of Zurich, where she taught several courses and co-authored three articles in the area of international economic law. Prior to pursuing her PhD studies, she received an LL .M. in Transnational Law from King’s College London and a Master of Laws from the University of Zurich. In 2016, she was an exchange student at the National Law School of India University. Her interests include international economic law, transnational law and human rights law.

Veena Manikulam’s research centres on the reform of international investment law. In her PhD thesis she addresses to what extent the concept of investor accountability has been incorporated in investment law. Based on the insufficient adoption of investor accountability in existing investment agreements, her research focuses on the question how mechanisms to enforce substantive standards (including human rights, labour and environmental standards) could be designed to adequately incorporate the notion of investor accountability in investment law. Manikulam argues that a transnational approach to this question presents the chance to propose innovative enforcement mechanisms.

German (native), Malayalam (native), French (proficient), Hindi (limited working proficiency), Arabic (limited working proficiency)

Marcin Menkes is an Associate Professor at Warsaw School of Economics, in the Department of Business Law, where he also heads the Post-Graduate Studies of Law and Economics of the Capital Market. He is a member of the International Law Association Committee on the Rule of Law in International Investment Law and the Investor-States Dispute Settlement Academic Forum. He has held visiting fellowships at top universities including Cornell University, Cambridge University, Università di Torino, Università degli Studi di Firenze, and Università di Bologna.

His research interests include international investment arbitration, international monetary and financial matters, sovereign debt restructuring, sovereign immunities, and economic sanctions. He has published four books, over 100 scientific articles, and more than 1,000 blog posts, newspaper articles, etc.

Besides his academic work, he is also Of Counsel in Queirtius, an international litigation and arbitration law firm.

Menkes’s recent piecemeal projects are part of a larger research agenda on the evolution of public international law. His overarching hypothesis is that current diagnoses of the Westaphalian international order crisis are superficial and address only symptoms, not the roots of change.

While at Michigan Law School, he will examine the extent to which blockchain carries the potential to go beyond what has been debated and analyzed so far: to undermine the legal personality of states, to recognize the personality of MNE s, to open up the catalog of sources of law, and, ultimately, to undermine the foundations of the entire system.

Polish (native), French (proficient), Italian (proficient), Spanish (Intermediary), Dutch (elementary)

Zarina Mussakhojayeva is a lawyer specializing in international trade law and compliance, focusing particularly on regulatory compliance, international sanctions, and anti-bribery regulations. Zarina has worked for multinational companies, advising on corporate compliance and governance issues in the areas of Antitrust, U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, U.K. Bribery Act, Antiboycott and economic sanctions. Zarina is an experienced lawyer qualified to practice law in Kazakhstan with professional experience covering matters related to mining operations, corporate finance, and mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas industry.

Zarina received her B.A. in law from Kazakh Humanitarian Law University in 2006, where she received the University President’s Scholarship award. In 2008 she obtained her LL .M. degree at Duke University School of Law. Zarina was awarded a prestigious Kazakhstan Government-sponsored International Scholarship to pursue her studies at Duke. Zarina studied at American University in Washington, D.C. and Minnesota State University as an exchange student under the U.S. Department of State “Freedom Support Act” Fellowship Program.

Zarina’s research focuses on regulatory and legal aspects of implementing global compliance practices in Russia and Kazakhstan. The research is intended to identify regulatory compliance challenges faced by multinational corporations operating in the region. It is aimed at analyzing applicable regulatory environment in these post-Soviet countries, understanding available compliance function and established practices, and investigating recent FCPA enforcement actions. The research identifies the OFAC -imposed economic sanctions and Russian countersanctions and conflict between Russian antimonopoly legislation and U.S. anti-boycott regulations as key areas for further examination. In addition, some of the essential legal concepts are proposed to overcome the identified challenges.

Kazakh (native), Russian (native), and English (fluent)

Azusa Ogasawara has been a public prosecutor in Japan for six years. She graduated from Kyoto University Law School with a Juris Doctor degree. She has worked on a wide range of cases in both the investigation and trial departments, gaining experience as a practicing lawyer. She was recommended by the Public Prosecutors Office in Japan and is currently studying at the University of Michigan Law School as a research scholar.

Azusa’s research investigates legislative and operational issues related to laws against money laundering. In recent years, Japan has seen an increase in the amount of money laundering cases. However, the reaction of Japan to these crimes has not been fulfilling due to the lack of our experience in this field; thus, Japan must consider further strengthening its regulations while referring to the efforts of other countries. She chose these issues, because she believed that studying in the U.S., where research in this field is more advanced, would provide meaningful results for Japanese criminal justice.

Japanese (native)

Aparna Singh is a lawyer licensed to practice in India. She holds law degrees from the University of Cambridge ( U.K. ) and the University of Delhi (India).

After graduating from Cambridge with an LL .M. degree in International Law, she joined Fietta LLP (London). At Fietta LLP , she assisted in ongoing investor-state arbitrations and even worked on several maritime law issues including, but not limited to, extent of the territorial waters of archipelagic states.

Prior to pursuing the LL .M. program, Aparna practiced law in India for four years. As a Senior Associate at a premier law firm, she represented private parties and government authorities in cases covering diverse areas of law, ranging from government regulation to cross-border transactions. Aparna also had the opportunity to work on several international arbitrations and received favorable awards for the firm’s clients.

Before coming to the University of Michigan Law School, Aparna practiced as an Arbitration Consultant in India, advising clients on international and domestic arbitration issues. 

Aparna’s current research includes a comparative analysis of regulatory regimes adopted in developed and developing countries to promote cross-border transactions and foreign direct investment. She intends to expand the scope of this research by looking at regulatory practices adopted by the U.S. and how India’s recent reforms stand in comparison. In light of India’s recent termination of many of its Bilateral Investment Treaties ( BIT s), this research will also encompass India’s dispute resolution system, both within and without the new Model BIT , and how it can be improved to meet the challenges ahead.

Hindi (native), Spanish (basic/learning)

John Trajer is a doctoral researcher in law at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Over the course of his PhD, he has been a visiting fellow at the Amsterdam Centre for Migration and Refugee Law (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and at the Dickson Poon School of Law (King’s College London). Prior to commencing his doctoral degree, he obtained a BA from the University of Oxford, a Joint MA from the universities of Göttingen and Groningen, and an LLM from the European University Institute. He has acquired professional experience in the field of migration and refugee law at a range of NGO s and international organizations, including the AIRE Centre (Advice on Individual Rights in Europe), the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, and the Council of Europe.

John’s doctoral research explores the scope of states’ protective duties towards trafficked

persons under international and regional European law. Specifically, it examines the conditions under which host states are obliged to ensure access to rehabilitative assistance for trafficked migrants, focusing on points of intersection between anti-trafficking, human rights, and refugee law. Beyond his PhD project, John is interested generally in the fields of migration, criminal, and international human rights law. At the European University Institute, he is one of the coordinators of the Migration Working Group (Migration Policy Centre) and an active participant of the Human and Fundamental Rights Working Group (Law Department). He is also a member of the Human Trafficking Research Network based at Queen’s University Belfast.

John is proficient in Hungarian and Italian, while he speaks Dutch and German at an upper-intermediate level.

I am Professor of International Law and Co-Director of  PluriCourts – Centre for the Study of the Legitimate Roles of the Judiciary in the Global Order , University of Oslo, Norway. I have been Director of the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo. I was Co-chair of the International Law Association’s Study Group on the ‘Content and Evolution of the Rules of Interpretation’ and am Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board, Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law, Luxembourg. I have been a member of the Executive Board of the European Society of International Law.

I will give a special course as part of the 2022 Hague Academy Winter Course on ‘Deference by International Courts and Tribunals to National Organs’. I have committed to write a book on the basis of the lectures, to be published in the Academy’s  Collected Courses . I am looking forward to writing the book in the research environment provided by the University of Michigan.

English (some German and French)

Thomas Verellen is Assistant Professor in European Union and International Law at Utrecht University (Netherlands) and a Research Fellow at the Institute for European Law, KU Leuven (Belgium). Thomas is an expert in EU and comparative foreign relations law and has a particular interest in the impact of geopolitical change on the governance of EU trade and investment policy. 

Thomas defended his PhD entitled ‘ EU Foreign Relations Federalism. A Comparison with the United States, Canada and Belgium’ at KU Leuven in September 2019. From 2018 to 2020, Thomas practiced EU and international trade law at the Brussels office of Bird & Bird LLP . Thomas has held visiting positions at the University of Michigan Law School (2016-2017) and the Université de Montréal (2015) and was a trainee in the chambers of Professor Koen Lenaerts, President of the Court of Justice of the EU  (2015).

At Michigan, Thomas will start a comparative research project on legal and political accountability mechanisms in EU and U.S. trade and investment policy, and he will work on the book version of his PhD, which will be published in 2022 as part of Oxford University Press’ Comparative Constitutionalism series. In addition, Thomas will teach European Union Law at Michigan during the 2022 Winter Term.

Dutch, French and English

Dr. Eddie Wei is an International and Comparative Law Research Scholar at the University of Michigan Law School under the mentorship of Professors Catharine MacKinnon and Kimberly Thomas. During his stay in Michigan, he is also a postdoctoral fellow in the China- US Scholar Program, which is administered by the International Institute of Education. Dr. Wei received his PhD in Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge and JSD from City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include judges’ gender and sentencing, sexual abuse and violence, and feminist judgments project. He received the Graduate Student Paper Award from the Division on Women and Crime, American Society of Criminology in 2019, as well as the Jiang-Land-Wang Outstanding Student Paper Award from the Association of Chinese Criminology and Criminal Justice in the same year. His publications can be found in peer-reviewed journals, such as Feminist Criminology, Feminist Legal Studies, British Journal of Criminology, Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, and International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology . He has been a member of the All China Lawyers Association since 2008.

Legal studies worldwide have documented the ways in which sentences of rape are influenced by victims’ relationships with offenders. The systematic failure to effectively sanction private sexual violence speaks to the influence of extra-legal factors on judges’ decision-making processes. Nevertheless, what typically has been found in the literature on the categorization of rape offenders is the dichotomy between strangers and non-strangers to victims. Such classification is problematic because of the distinct nature of the relationships captured in acquaintance rape. I will use a more refined categorization of victim-offender relationships to examine the predictive power of relationship type in sentencing outcomes.

Mandarin (native) and Cantonese (proficient)

Sonya Ziaja is an assistant professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where she teaches Environmental Law; Climate Adaptation, Law and Equity; and Property. Ziaja holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Arizona; M.Sc. in Water Science, Policy and Management from the University of Oxford; and J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

Ziaja’s research interests focus on the overlapping areas of environmental governance and law, technology and society: How can environmental law and institutions sustainably adjust to rapidly changing bio-geophysical conditions and societal demands associated with climate change? And with what consequences for equity and democratic participation? Her approach to these questions draws on her interdisciplinary background in geography, water policy and law, as well as her practical knowledge of energy regulation.

Prior to entering academia, Ziaja worked in energy regulation at the California Public Utilities Commission and was the research lead for the Water, Energy, Climate Nexus at the California Energy Commission. She was a lead author of California’s Fourth Climate Assessment. Her research has informed the climate adaptation strategy of the U.S. National Parks Service and the first climate adaptation regulation of investor-owned energy utilities in California.

Dr. Ziaja’s current research project examines an emerging paradox in climate adaptation and equity. Climate adaptation is necessarily dependent on algorithm assisted decision making. These algorithmic tools are new fora for deliberation and environmental lawmaking. But these necessary tools also embed value laden assumptions and biases that make them counter to democratic participation and equity. This project is based on multiple years of qualitative research and detailed analysis of two cases where decision support software has informed climate adaptation for water and energy sectors. Through these case studies, Ziaja’s research provides a novel framework for evaluating procedural and substantive equity in algorithmic tools. Early versions of this research benefitted from discussions at the University of Columbia’s Sabin Colloquium for Innovative Environmental Scholarship and the University of Michigan Law School’s Junior Scholars Conference. Ziaja’s article, How Algorithm Assisted Decision  Making is Influencing Environmental Law and Climate Adaptation , is forthcoming in volume 48 of Ecology Law Quarterly .

Lorenzo Giovanni Luisetto is a Ph.D. student in Comparative and European legal studies from the University of Trento in Italy. Prior to receiving his scholarship to pursue his Ph.D, studies, he received an M.A. in law at the University of Trento. Luisetto received the Giorgio Ghezzi Award - Mention of Merit in 2018 for the adoption of a comparative and multidisciplinary method in his master’s thesis, entitled  “Working Conditions at “Amazon”: a Comparison between the United States and Italy.”  In 2018 he was a Visiting Researcher at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations ( AFL - CIO ), Washington D.C. ( USA ), and in 2020 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven ( BE ), where he worked at the Institute for Labour Law. His research interests include Comparative Labor and Employment Law, Antitrust Law and EU  Law.

Luisetto’s research focuses on the interaction between Antitrust Law and Labor and Employment Law. He is conducting a comparative study between the United States’ and the European Union’s models of anti-competition law and their application to labor issues. His research question is based on the ineffectiveness of both Labor and Employment Law in protecting workers and the possibility of antitrust principles providing better protections for workers in different kinds of labor markets. Luisetto argues that antitrust should not only focus on consumer welfare but also on other important interests, such as the welfare of workers. More generally, he believes the goals of anti-competition law should be reconsidered in order to expand protection for labor. 

Francesco Marotta is a doctoral student in commercial law at the University of Padua. He was awarded a doctoral scholarship in 2019 after submitting a research project aimed at investigating the main legal issues posed by the Italian insolvency law reform. After graduating in Law at the same university in 2017, he worked for a year and a half as a deputy Public Prosecutor’s assistant in the section of the Prosecutor’s office specialized in economic, financial and tax crimes. He currently holds lessons and seminars for students at the university during the course of Commercial Law and Business Crisis Law. Marotta published academic articles/papers on insolvency and commercial law in various Italian law reviews. He is also a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute (International member) and the International Association of Restructuring, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Professionals ( INSOL ). 

Marotta’s research interests lie primarily within international comparison of insolvency laws, with a particular emphasis on the different legislative policies aimed at preventing insolvency and promoting business rehabilitation. Marotta’s research project analyses, with a comparative approach, the differences between the Italian and American legal regimes governing the prevention of business crisis. His purpose is to verify if the U.S. system is the most suitable for preventing insolvency without jeopardizing companies themselves. In this way, it will be possible to draw several inspirations to improve the Italian insolvency law, especially considering the high percentage of businesses that will probably experience financial difficulties due to the outbreak of the COVID -19 pandemic.

An Guohui is a Ph.D. candidate majoring in law and economics at China University of Political Science and Law. He focuses on economic analysis of law, especially administrative law and tort law. He studied law in China-Euro School of Law and received a Juris Master. Before he started his Ph.D. program, he worked in the China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation, Chinese official Export Credit Agency. He previously was in an internship at the International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group) as a temporary consultant.

The social disciplining on various wrong doings is a new and fast-growing means of regulation. The wrong doings consist of criminal offense, administrative offense, contempt of court, bad faith in civil cases, etc. These are supposed to reduce the social transaction cost by reinforcing the authority and enforcement of law. As a very new regulation with universal influences, the disciplining is lack of prudent demonstration. Especially, an economic analysis needs to be used to deliberate the cost and benefit of the regulation. Due process in the disciplining is also a key issue.

Janis Beckedorf is a fellow of the doctoral research group “Digital Law” at Heidelberg University, an interdisciplinary institution of the Faculty of Law and Computer Science carrying out fundamental research to prepare and accompany the development of legal expert systems. Janis studied law at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany and at the University of Michigan during the fall term of 2014. Currently, he works on his PhD thesis and conducts a research project on “Complex Societies and the Growth of the Law” with three other scholars. Janis’ research is funded by the Foundation of German Economy (Stiftung der deutschen Wirtschaft) and the State of Baden-Württemberg. He is co-founder of iusio, a company providing customized software to law firms and insolvency administrators. 

Tax law is regularly criticized for being too complex. What does complexity mean in respect of law, how can it be quantified and what insights can be gained about law? To answer these questions, the research uses insights from economics, systems theory and network science. The first objective is to elaborate a definition of legal complexity. The second objective is to develop new methods to measure legal complexity laying a focus on network science. As underlying data for these approaches, the research uses federal laws of the United States and Germany as well as court decisions.

Won Kyung Chang is an associate professor in the Scranton Honors Program at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea. She received a joint doctoral degree (Ph.D. in Law and Social Science) from the Maurer School of Law and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University-Bloomington.

Her research addresses a broad range of issues related to society, law, and public administration, including legal consciousness and legal culture, alternative dispute resolution, collaborative public administration, biomedical law and ethics, legal interpreting, and school violence. She has published around 30 articles in journals of law and public administration, such as  Asian Journal of Law and Society ,  Canadian Journal of Law and Society , and  Public Administrative Review . She also serves as a member of the Conflict Management Committee in the Ministry of Justice, Republic of Korea, and as a member of the board of directors in the Korean Society for the Sociology of Law and the Asian Women Law Association.

Dr. Chang’s main research question has always been how to design a legal apparatus that gives a sense that the justice system is, in fact, just. In searching for answers, she studied different concepts of justice—procedural, distributive, restorative, and relational—in alternative disputes resolution, public participation in administrative procedure, and biomedical law and ethics. Currently, she is investigating the institutionalization and evolution of American class actions, a project she believes will provide a basis for analyzing the mobilization of collectivized disputes in South Korea, and, ultimately, contribute to elaborating the theory of interaction between social transition and legal systems.

Lukáš Hrdlička is a Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Law of Charles University in Prague and a former bills drafter working for the Ministry of Finance. Lukáš was asked to draft a bill implementing the EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (“ ATAD ”), thus becoming the author of the first rules dealing with hybrid mismatches enacted in the Czech Republic. He was also a member of the team drafting the first exit tax and CFC rules in the Czech Republic.

Regarding his studies, Lukáš is the principal investigator of the “International Co-operation in Tax Matters” research project funded by the Grant Agency of the Charles University and a researcher of several other research projects. His article about loopholes in the ATAD ’s CFC rules won the faculty prize and led to an amendment of a proposed bill implementing the ATAD . Lukáš is a co-author of a commentary to the Income Tax Act and a recipient of the prestigious Hlávka Foundation scholarship.

Lukáš’ research encompasses both taxation and financial regulations, but his visit to the University of Michigan Law School shall be focused rather on tax policy, income taxation, and, particularly, international taxation from the US and EU perspective, e.g. hybrid mismatch rules, CFC rules. In his current research, Lukáš analyzes the impact of the OECD anti- BEPS project on the European tax system and how the proposed and/or enacted EU rules implementing this project should be amended to become more effective and bring a greater fairness to the European tax system.

Dr. Constantin Hruschka works as a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich since November 2017. He is part of the Research Initiative of the Max Planck Society in “Challenges of Migration, Integration and Exclusion” (for further information see:  https://www.eth.mpg.de/4397290/wimi ). 

Before fully returning to academia, he had inter alia worked as head of the protection department at the Swiss Refugee Council (2014-2017) and as a lawyer for UNHCR , the UN Refugee Agency (2004-2014) in Nuremberg and Geneva. Dr. Hruschka studied law, history and philosophy in Würzburg, Poitiers and Paris. He holds a PhD in history from the university of Würzburg and a maîtrise en histoire from Université Paris IV (Sorbonne). In addition, he is a fully qualified lawyer and has passed his bar exam in 2002. 

He is teaching European Law and European Asylum Law as well as Human Rights Law mainly at the Universities in Germany and Switzerland. 

His current research project is focused on responsibility sharing mechanisms in the asylum context from a regional and global perspective. He looks into the structural challenges of regional and global asylum governance as well as into the compatibility of existing schemes with the 1951 Convention and the human rights standards. This focus derives from his longstanding research on the Common European Asylum System and on the 1951 Convention.  In addition to his research on refugee law, he is currently working on a research project looking at the access of European Union citizens to welfare in other EU Member States in cooperation with the University of Lausanne.  He has authored many publications on international, European, Swiss and German asylum and migration law inter alia he co-authored (with Francesco Maiani) a commentary on the Dublin III Regulation, is co-editing a comprehensive commentary on the Swiss migration law (5th edition 2019) and is the editor of the first German language commentary on the 1951 Convention (forthcoming 2020).

Niamh Kinchin is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Law, University of Wollongong, NSW , Australia. Niamh teaches Administrative Law, Constitutional Law and Refugee Law. From 2008-14 she was as a sessional lecturer at the University of Wollongong and the University of New South Wales ( UNSW ), teaching a variety of subjects including Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Torts and Contracts Law. Prior to teaching, she worked at the Commonwealth Administrative Appeals Tribunal as a legal officer. Niamh was admitted as a legal practitioner to the Supreme Court of NSW in 2002. She holds a Bachelor of Social Science from University of Newcastle, a Bachelor of Laws (Hons Class 1) from Western Sydney University, a Masters of Administrative Law and Policy from University of Sydney and a PhD from UNSW . The title of Niamh’s PhD is ‘Accountability in the Global Space: Plurality, Complexity and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’.

Niamh’s primary research interests are in global accountability and administrative justice, administrative decision-making within the refugee context and constitutional interpretation within the international and Australian settings. Her current research includes projects on the potential and risks of artificial intelligence in refugee status determination, the accountability of UNHCR in a time of Global Compacts, the interpretation of the constitutions of international organizations, NGO participation in the United Nations ( UN ) and the evolution of constitutional principles in Australia. In December 2018, Niamh published a monograph with Edward Elgar Publishing ( UK ) focusing upon Administrative Justice within the UN .

Andreas Th. Müller is Full Professor at the Department of European Law and Public International Law of the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He studied law and philosophy at the Universities of Innsbruck, Strasbourg and Yale Law School. He has been a regular Visiting Professor at the University of Alcalá, Spain, the Universidad Panamericana, Mexico, as well as Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. In 2009/2010, he clerked for Judges Abdul G. Koroma and Bruno Simma at the International Court of Justice. His habilitation thesis dealt with Effet direct. The Direct Effect of EU Law. He is the principal investigator of the research project “Permissive Rules in Public International Law”, funded by the FWF (Austrian Science Fund). His teaching activities include courses on public international law, EU law, constitutional law, asylum and migration law and legal philosophy. 

Müller’s research focuses on international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international and European migration and asylum law, EU constitutional law and questions of legal philosophy and legal theory. His current research project starts from the observation that lawyers are trained to focus on rules ordering or prohibiting a certain conduct. However, numerous examples for permissive rules can be found also in public international law. The research project seeks to identify and systematize them and examine whether a distinction between thin and thick permissive rules may help to better conceptualize the architecture of contemporary public international law.

Tatjana Papić ( LL .B. Belgrade, LL .M. Connecticut, PhD Union Belgrade) is a professor of international law at the Union University Belgrade Law School. She teaches courses in public international law, international human rights law, and the European Court of Human Rights. She was a Visiting Professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law (2013). She is a former Head of Legal Department of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights. Tatjana received Ron Brown Fellowship and OSI ’s Civil Society Scholar Award. She has published on questions of law of international responsibility, human rights, European Court of Human Rights and domestic reception of international law. Her work has been cited by the UN International Law Commission and the High Court of England and Wales.

Tatjana’s research addresses interactions between international law and domestic politics in post-conflict societies. Specifically, she explores impact of the international dispute settlement mechanisms – both on a dispute as such and on parties in the dispute – by focusing on highly political cases involving the states of the former Yugoslavia. Tatjana is, in particular, interested to see if, how and to what extent these proceedings have affected bilateral relations of the states involved, as well as their internal political dynamics and discourse. This will provide a background against which broader conclusions can be reached on the potential of legal means of settling international disputes in a post-conflict setting.

Louise Southalan is a lawyer working in the area of prison and detention health systems and is currently undertaking a  Churchill Fellowship  examining ways in which national agencies can best support state-based prison and jail mental health services.  As part of this travelling fellowship, she is delighted to be spending September at the University of Michigan Law School as a Michigan Grotius Research Scholar.

Louise works in the  Western Australian Department of Justice  on prison health projects and as a researcher with the  Justice Health Unit in the University of Melbourne’s School of Population and Global Health .  Her current projects with the University of Melbourne include undertaking a review for the  Australian National Mental Health Commission  on justice and health policies and strategies at federal and state levels, to identify ways in which they could better meet the mental health needs of justice-involved people.  Her previous roles include:

Working for  Australian Red Cross  monitoring conditions of detention in immigration detention facilities, 

In the  Western Australian Mental Health Commission , commissioning prison mental health services and developing forensic policy, and

Practicing as a lawyer.

She is very interested in international collaborations involving prison and detention health and would welcome opportunities to collaborate with colleagues from the University of Michigan.  Louise is a steering committee member of  WEPHREN , the Worldwide Prison Health Research and Engagement Network , a non-executive director of  HepatitisWA , and a collaborator on several international justice health projects.  She has a law degree and masters degrees in International Development and in Mental Health Policy and Services and is a graduate of the  Australian Institute of Company Directors .

Piotr Tereszkiewicz is a tenured Associate Professor of Private Law at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and a Senior Research Affiliate at the University of Leuven, Belgium. After obtaining his PhD at Jagiellonian University and a Magister Juris Degree at University of Oxford, Tereszkiewicz spent several years as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Heidelberg, working on comparative contract law, funded by German Research Council. At Jagiellonian University, Tereszkiewicz teaches core private law courses (including contracts, torts, succession) as well as international commercial contracts. His published works deal in particular with contract and commercial law, financial services regulation, mostly from a comparative, international and European perspective. Tereszkiewicz held visiting positions among others in Zurich, Ferrara and Bloomington (Mauer School of Law).

Tereszkiewicz’s research analyzes the practice and theory of commercial cooperation between manufacturers and their suppliers and dealers in the automobile industry in the United States and selected European countries. It explores what legal and non-legal (economic, social, cultural) factors determine the content of long-term cooperation between manufacturers and their suppliers and dealers. The central assumption of the study is that an in-depth examination of network governance within the automotive industry should build upon three major perspectives: the economic approach, the sociological approach and the contract law approach. In particular, a profound comparative study of contract law rules dealing with manufacturer-supplier and manufacturer-dealer relationships is undertaken.

Sina Van den Bogaert, Dr. jur. (2017), Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University (Frankfurt am Main), is a Legal Officer at the European Commission in Brussels, and a voluntary research affiliate at the KU Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies. She is a former Research Fellow of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. Her doctoral dissertation on Segregation of Roma Children in Education (Brill Nijhoff: 2018) was awarded magna cum laude. The dissertation examines how the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (Council of Europe) and the Racial Equality Directive 2000/43/ EC (European Union) have contributed towards desegregation of Roma children in education in Europe. Sina has also published several articles on European Non-discrimination Law. 

Sina has been awarded a post-doc Fulbright and BAEF grant to study how US desegregation injunctions can be of inspiration for European judges when they seek to establish a proportionate, dissuasive and effective sanction mechanism in cases of school segregation. She argues that European judges should impose positive desegregation measures on infringers, if the effectiveness of the Racial Equality Directive is to be ensured. She identifies a recent shift in jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union towards ‘effective judicial protection’ for practicing rights derived from EU law, to the detriment of procedural autonomy of the EU Member States. She will focus on two intertwined developments: tackling domestic obstacles to effective enforcement and the possible creation of remedies otherwise unavailable in domestic law, based on the notion of ‘effectiveness’ and on Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Wang Qi is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Law of Renmin University of China ( RUC ). He studies commercial law as his major and works as a research assistant in the Research Center of Civil and Commercial Jurisprudence of RUC , which is funded by the Ministry of Education of China. Wang Qi received his master’s degree from RUC and bachelor’s degree from Wuhan University both in law. He was awarded the “Outstanding Graduate” by the Beijing Municipal Education Commission in 2017. He has been awarded a scholarship under the China Scholarship Council ( CSC ) to pursue study at the University of Michigan Law School. Wang Qi has participated in several research projects, including “The Theory and Practice of Dual-Class Share Structure”, “The Institutional Structure of the Initial Compensation of Sponsors”, and “The Regulation of Securities Investor Protection”. He has published a number of academic papers in numerous Chinese journals.

Wang’s research focuses on the securities investor protection in China. He chose to study this issue, because minority investors constitute the main body of China’s capital markets; therefore, the protection of their interests is closely related to the effective operation of the stock markets. By comparing the investor protection systems between China and the US , he analyzes the institutional deficiencies of investor protection in China based upon China’s Securities Law Amendment and the reform of the registration-based IPO system at the Shanghai Stock Exchange. He is exploring the approaches to improve the investor protection system in China.

Dr. Tadesse Kassa Woldetsadik is an Associate Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia) and Principal Advisor to the Ethiopian Investment Commission on Investment Policy and Jobs Compact. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Xiangtan University (China), Martin Luther University of Halle Wittenberg (Germany) and Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the UC Berkeley. He has published a book titled International Watercourses Law in the Nile Basin, Three States at a Crossroads (Routledge, Oxfordshire 2013) and co-authored edited books including Ethiopian-African Perspectives on Human Rights and Good Governance ( NWV Pub., Graz, Austria 2014). He is deeply involved in the drafting of national investment, industrial park, CRRF and refugee related laws and policies in Ethiopia, and has extensively published articles, book chapters and policy briefs on refugee law, human rights, labor rights and legal aspects of Ethiopian foreign policy.

Tadesse’s research focuses on the fast-evolving refugee law and policy setting in Ethiopia. It addresses lingering issues relating to legal frameworks, institutional response mechanisms, challenges and opportunities in the implementation of the new refugee policy and the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework in Ethiopia. Specifically, the research analyzes what the new normative and institutional responses on refugees imply in terms of the rights of refugees recognized under international instruments and whether such approaches represent sustainable solutions.

Andrew Woodhouse is a lecturer in law at the University of Liverpool and co-director of the EU Law @ Liverpool research unit. Andrew received his PhD in EU law from the University of Liverpool with no corrections. He has engaged with a number of European universities, co-organizing a transnational PhD colloquium with the Universities of Leiden and Oslo and spending time as a visiting researcher at the University of Antwerp. He has taught and lectured on courses in EU law, UK constitutional law and comparative constitutional law. As part of the EU Law @ Liverpool research unit, Andrew has helped to shape the debate on the UK ’s withdrawal from the European Union. This has included engaging with governmental actors, as well as contributing to the public debate through national ( LBC ) and international media ( Yahoo ). 

Andrew’s research interests lie in the area of constitutional law and theory. His PhD research focused on the role of national parliaments in the European Union assessing the limits of national representative democracy in a multi-level governance framework. His work on the potential for judicial review of national parliamentary action in the EU legislative process was published in the  Common Market Law Review . Andrew will continue to explore the role of national parliaments in the European Union as a Michigan Grotius Scholar, reflecting on the extent to which they are being instrumentalized in the EU . In particular, he will ask whether the symbolism of national parliaments is being used by a range of national and European actors in pursuit of political ends.

Junseok Yoon has been a judge of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Korea for seven years. He has obtained a Master of Laws degree from and has completed Ph.D. coursework in tax law at Seoul National University School of Law. He is also a member of the International Association of Tax Judges and the International Fiscal Association. He has published articles and given presentations on tax issues, such as “Tax Statutory Interpretation in Law and Economic View“, “A Study on Notification on Changes in Amount of Income”, “Requirements of Acquisition Tax Exemption on Real Estate for Religious Organizations”, “Commercial and Tax Accounting in Korea” and “Withholding Tax on Domestic Source Income”. Since he has been interested in and conducted research on other legal issues as well as tax issues, he participated in the WIPO IGC 35th Session and UNCITRAL Working Group 3 ( ISDS Reforms) 37th session as a member of a Korean Delegation.  He is also a member of the Task-Force Team for Judicial Support for the Disabled.    

Junseok’s main research topic is “Prevention of Treaty Abuse and Limitation on Benefits of U.S. Model Income Convention”. He argues that in light of the substantial interaction between Korea and the United States, they might agree to revise the current income tax treaty and align their agreement with contemporary international tax policy on the prevention of treaty abuse. Because there have been few studies on the Korean Supreme Court’s Decision on LOB provision or comprehensive LOB in Korea, his research on the LOB provision will serve as valuable guidance for both judges and researchers.  

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Visiting Research Student in Law

• Graduate research
• LSE Law School
• Application code M3EL
• Starting 2024
• Home full-time: Open
• Overseas full-time: Open
• Location: Houghton Street, London

We welcome research students from other universities to spend from one term up to one academic year at LSE as a Visiting Research Student (VRS).

The VRS scheme allows students who are registered as doctoral researcher at other institutions to participate in research activities in the Law School and LSE, to interact with other research students, and to benefit from the expertise of LSE faculty, the training offered by the  PhD Academy , and LSE Library facilities. Note that Visiting Research Students do not have access to any LSE taught courses. 

We welcome applications that complement the academic interests of faculty members in the Law School and we recommend that you investigate their  research interests  before applying. Once you have found an academic whose research interests are relevant to your own you should contact them directly, outlining your proposed area of research, to see if they will agree, in principle, to act as an advisor during your time at LSE.

As a VRS, you will not be able to take accredited or examined courses or be fully supervised in the same way as an LSE doctoral student. You will be able to participate in doctoral workshops and research seminars, interact with other doctoral students, and discuss your research with your nominated advisor. You are expected to be self-funded. 

Because of its emphasis on independent research, the VRS scheme is better suited to students who are at an advanced stage in their doctoral training and research.

Programme details

Assessing your application

To apply as a visiting research student, you apply in the same way as for our MPhil/PhD programmes, with the same entry criteria. Find the entry criteria for the MPhil/PhD Law . 

We welcome applications for research programmes that complement the academic interests of members of staff at the School, and we recommend that you investigate  staff research interests  before applying.

We carefully consider each application on an individual basis, taking into account all the information presented on your application form, including your:

- academic achievement (including predicted and achieved grades) - academic statement of purpose - references - CV - ouline research proposal - sample of written work

See further information on supporting documents

You may also have to provide evidence of your English proficiency, although you do not need to provide this at the time of your application to LSE.  See our English language requirements .

Competition for places at the School is high. This means that even if you meet our minimum entry requirement, this does not guarantee you an offer of admission.

How to apply

Virtual Graduate Open Day

Register your interest

Related programmes, mphil/phd law.

Code(s) M3ZL

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International Students

Visiting research students

You can apply to spend a period of 3 to 12 months at UCL undertaking research which is complementary to the Doctorate/PhD project at your home university.

How to apply

If you wish to apply independently as a visiting research student, you must check that your chosen department at UCL has a member of staff in the relevant academic field, who is both able and willing to supervise your research.

To apply as an independent visiting research student please apply online and select Visiting Research in the Programme Type drop down menu. Applications must be supported by the following documentation, which you will have the opportunity to upload: 

• Valid email address for two academic referees at your home institution who are familiar with your work
• Academic transcripts for all higher education provided in English and in electronic format
• Personal statement
• Research proposal
• Confirmation from your home institution that your request to study abroad is supported
• Confirmation from your home institution that you are a registered research degree student.

Transcripts and Diploma supplements

Please include digital or scanned copies of official transcripts/diploma supplements in English, containing details of all the subjects or courses studied, the marks that you obtained, and the qualifications awarded for any Undergraduate or Postgraduate study. 

If you hold a General Medical Council/General Dental Council registration, you are not required to send official transcripts. Please provide your registration number instead.

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Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Past Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Below is a listing of the past Visiting Doctoral Researchers from the years 2004 through 2023. Additionally, you may view the biographical information of our current Global Research Fellows and Global Fellows from Practice & Government .

2022-2023 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Olanike Adelakun Visiting Doctoral Researcher Nigeria

Olanike Adelakun is a doctoral candidate at Faculty of Law, University of South Africa under the supervision of Prof. Marlene Wethmar-Lemmer and Prof. Jacqueline Heaton. Her research focuses on comparative investigation of human rights issues in surrogacy practice in India, Nigeria and South Africa.

Olanike holds a Master’s Degree in Law (LL.M) and another Master’s degree in Library and Information Science (MLIS) both from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. she was called to the Nigerian Bar as a Barrister and Solicitor in 2007. She is an alumnus of The Hague Academy of International Law, the Netherlands. Her area of scholarly engagements are human rights, family law, gender studies, reproductive health and rights as well as women and child protection. Olanike has published widely in her areas of engagement.

During her time at NYU, Olanike intends to conduct a comparative study of unregulated surrogacy practice in Nigeria and the United States.

Gaurav Mukherjee Visiting Doctoral Researcher India

Gaurav is an S.J.D. candidate in Comparative Constitutional Law at the Central European University, Vienna (CEU). Gaurav's doctoral project examines the contested role of courts as agents of progressive social transformation. His research explains the increasing role of complex, multi-stage remedies in constitutional litigation, and the ways that it interacts with the separation of powers and principles of democratic legitimacy. At NYU, Gaurav’s research will use a comparative lens to explore how American courts can manage concerns around institutional legitimacy and separation of powers in its role as a defender of democracy by looking at the Global South.

Gaurav has held visiting fellowships at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law, Heidelberg & the University of Melbourne. He is a co-convenor of the International Association of Constitutional Law Research Group on Social Rights and an Assistant Editor for RevDem , a journal of the Democracy Institute at CEU. He has taught courses at the intersection of law & political science at CEU, University of Verona, National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, India, and Asian University for Women, Bangladesh.

His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Economic, Social & Cultural Rights, the International Journal of Constitutional Law, the South African Journal on Human Rights, the Indian Law Review, the University of Oxford Human Rights Hub Journal, Verfassungs und Recht in Übersee, the Oxford Handbook on Comparative Human Rights.

In 2021, Gaurav was a Social Rights Research Fellow as part of the University of Stirling’s Nuffield Foundation funded project on Access to Justice for Social Rights: Addressing the Accountability Gap. In 2018, Gaurav was awarded the Indian Law Review Early Career Prize. He has worked with organizations like the Hungarian Helsinki Committee and the School of Policy & Governance, Azim Premji University, Bangalore.

Andreas Samartzis Visiting Doctoral Researcher Greece

Andreas is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the jurisdictional disputes between the European Court of Justice and peak courts of the Member States of the European Union. In his thesis, he reconstructs the putative grounds for the final authority of each court and assesses them against a theory of moral authority and political community. The objective of his thesis is to develop a procedural theory by which low-instance courts and officials in the Member States can determine which higher court has the strongest moral claim to final authority.

At NYU, he explores what makes a true political community. A true political community is one with respect to which a democratic governing body would have moral authority. In particular, his research project ‘A duty to decide together? The normative conditions of belonging to the same political community and European integration’ examines the role of nationality, pre-existing institutions, socio-economic cooperation, and other criteria of political affiliation for constituting a true political community. It also evaluates the potential of socio-economic integration and federal institutional arrangements for making a true political community stable.

Andreas holds an LLM in public law from University College London and an LLB from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He has published articles in the Human Rights Law Review and the European Constitutional Law Review. He has also served as Editor-in-Chief of the Cambridge Law Review. Before pursuing his PhD, he clerked for Justice Sisi Khampepe at the Constitutional Court of South Africa and worked as a trainee at the European Court of Justice. He has also practiced law in Greece and served in the Hellenic army.

2021-2022 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Jan-Phillip Graf Visiting Doctoral Researcher Germany

Jan-Phillip is a PhD candidate and SYLFF Young Leaders Fellow at the German Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (Ruhr University Bochum). His PhD thesis ‘A Human Right to Asylum for Refugee Children’ focuses on the human rights of refugee children in the special context of international migration. His research objective is a comprehensive analysis of all procedural and substantive rights refugee children enjoy under international law and their domestic implementation. At NYU, Jan-Phillip will complete his analysis of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and begin with a comparative study of the immigration processes child refugees undergo in the U.S. and Europe.

Jan-Phillip holds a master’s degree in international law from the Graduate Institute in Geneva, during which he was an exchange student at Harvard Law School. He has also studied international relations at Dresden University and history at Ruhr-University Bochum. As a research associate at the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict and a former assistant to the UN’s International Law Commission, he regularly comments on current developments in international law on Völkerrechtsblog and Verfassungsblog.

Jan Keesen Visiting Doctoral Researcher Germany

Jan Keesen is a research assistant at EBS Law School at the Chair in Public Law, Empirical Legal Studies and Law & Economics (Prof. Dr. Emanuel V. Towfigh). His research interests include Law of Democracy, Comparative Constitutional Law, Economic Analysis of Public Law, Law & Politics as well as Law and Digitalization. At NYU, he intends to enhance his knowledge in the field of Law of Democracy.

Jan studied law at EBS Law School in Wiesbaden and Queen’s University School of Law in Kingston (Canada) with a major in corporate and restructuring law. He also holds a MA in Business from EBS Business School. He is editor of the JuWiss-Blog, a leading German Public Law Blog, and Co-Founder of the Working Group Young Academia in Law & Politics.

Jan's dissertation deals with intermediary organizations in democracy. He analyzes which functions constitutional law assigns to political parties and interest groups. Looking at the execution of these functions, he reveals that intermediary organizations do not sufficiently fulfill their task of aggregating interests. He seeks to explain this malfunction of the political market by applying law & economics methodology.

2020-2021 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Miriam Arimond Visiting Doctoral Researcher Germany

Miriam Arimond is a research assistant at Freie Universität Berlin at the Chair for Civil Law, Commercial and Corporate Law & Capital Markets Law (Prof. Dr. Andreas Engert, LL.M.), where she also pursues her dissertation. In her research, she focuses on regulatory arbitrage in hedge fund regulation with an emphasis on the comparison between European and U.S. law. Miriam holds a law degree from University of Cologne with a major in capital markets and banking law and worked as a research fellow for Mannheim University. She further participates in the multidisciplinary research center TR224, funded and established by the German Research Foundation. An enthusiastic MUNer throughout her studies, Miriam has participated and chaired in numerous conferences as part of Cologne’s delegation as well as taking part in the European Law Moot Court for her university.

Miriam’s research interests include capital markets law with a focus on financial market regulation in general and regulating asset managers in particular. In her research, she connects theoretical approaches with practical knowledge, gained inter alia through her experiences working in the investment fund industry. For her time at NYU School of Law, she hopes to complete the comparative segment of her dissertation.

Paul Heckler Visiting Doctoral Researcher France

Paul Heckler is a PhD candidate at the Sorbonne Law School, where he has been a Doctoral Fellow for the past four years. His research explores an understudied International Law phenomenon of States delegating or transferring their competence, drawing from a wide range of State practice and legal branches such as tax law, refugee law, international occupation, or international leases, and historical systems such as the Capitulations system in the Ottoman Empire. At NYU, he is further exploring the practical and theoretical consequences of this phenomenon through the lens of Global Administrative Law.

Paul holds a Master of Public International Law ( summa cum laude ) from the Sorbonne Law School. He also studied at the University of Bristol (United Kingdom), where he was an Erasmus student, and at the University of Tours (France). He has served as a research assistant for the Bristol Human Rights Implementation Centre and, more recently, at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg, Germany).

Paul is a former Editor-in-Chief of the Sorbonne Student Law Review and a contributor to the Oxford Reports on International Law in Domestic Courts. He is a member of the French Society for International Law and has taken part in various research groups as a Junior Researcher. Beyond his PhD thesis, Paul has written and spoken on various fields such as EU External Relations, International Organizations, Space Law, Law of the Sea, Fisheries, and International Drug Control. As a Doctoral Fellow, he also taught a variety of courses such as Public International Law, International Relations, or Administrative Law, to both undergraduate and graduate students.

 János Mécs Visiting Doctoral Researcher Hungary

​János Mécs is a doctoral student at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary. His PhD topic covers the constitutional underpinnings of electoral reforms. János graduated from ELTE as a lawyer and holds an LLM degree in comparative constitutional law from Central European University. János also hold a BA degree from political science (ELTE). He has participated in strategic litigation in electoral matters during the recent Hungarian elections (2018 parliamentary, 2019 European Parliament, 2019 local), moreover, he is a professional adviser at the Association of European Election Officials (ACEEEO). He teaches at ELTE, and Bibó István College for Advance Studies.

​János’ PhD topic focuses on electoral system change from a comparative angle, analyzing the reforms taking place in Hungary in 2011 and how the constitutional court reacted compared to the jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. He is also interested generally in the field of law of democracy; before starting the VDR program his side-project was the examination of government speech in electoral campaign. János’ plan is to finish his dissertation by writing the U.S. case-study, and by getting acquittance with the rich U.S. literature on the law of democracy.

2019-2020 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Marion Vironda Dubray Visiting Doctoral Researcher France

​Marion is a French jurist and doctoral researcher from the Law Faculty of the University of Geneva (Switzerland). She is a member of the interdisciplinary research project Right to Truth, Truth(s) through Rights: Mass Crimes Impunity and Transitional Justice, conducted under the supervision of Sévane Garibian and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF Project PP00P1_157406/1). In this context, Marion’s research analyses the concept of mass crimes impunity from an international law perspective. In the first part of her research, she has mapped the dominant vision of the notion of impunity, which understands the latter as a denial of criminal justice. During her fellowship at New York University, she intends to conduct a critical analysis of this comprehension, in light of criminal justice’s lacunae and the recent evolution of the fight against impunity for mass crimes.

​Marion holds a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of Aix-en-Provence (France), and a Master (LLM) in “Globalization and Law”, with a specialization in Human Rights, from Maastricht University (The Netherlands). She later explored her interest in International Law, and International Criminal Law in particular, through the Master of advanced studies in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. As part of her Master, she interned with the Legal Adviser of Pablo de Greiff, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-recurrence, in Geneva (2013). Upon her graduation, she worked as a legal adviser for the French Ministry of Defense in Paris (2013-2016), focusing on human rights, intellectual property and contract law issues. In 2016, Marion Vironda Dubray joined the Right to Truth, Truth(s) through Rights research project, as a doctoral researcher. During the 2018-2019 academic year, she worked as a teaching assistant in the Criminal Law Department of the University of Geneva and assisted Sévane Garibian in her course titled "International Criminal Law, International Crimes and Transitional Justice".

​Among other publications, Marion has contributed to the collective volumes Drone et killers robots, faut-il les interdire? (ed. Ronan Doaré, Presse Universitaires de Rennes, 2015) and Statut de Rome de la Cour pénale internationale: Commentaire article par article (eds. Julian Fernandez and Xavier Pacreau, forthcoming 2019). Her professional page may be accessed at http://www.right-truth-impunity.ch/fr/membres/marion-vironda-dubray.

Jinjin Zhang Visiting Doctoral Researcher China

Jinjin Zhang is a Ph.D. Candidate at Xiamen University in China, under the supervision of Professor Xiuli Han. She is also Professor An Chen’s research assistant, who is a highly renowned international academic lawyer representing East Asia. Jinjin specializes in international investment law, and has published several journal articles in this field, such as “The Anatomy of Systemic Interpretation Approaches to Protect Human Rights of Host State in International Investment Arbitration” in Journal of International Economic Law 3 (2019) and “On the Restrictive Development Trend of MFN Treatment Clauses’ Application to Investment Substantive Treatment” in International Economics and Trade Research 5 (2019). She is a member of research projects funded by The National Social Science Fund of China (NSSFC). Her doctoral thesis focuses on the disciplines on state-owned enterprises under international investment law. At NYU Law School, she hopes to complete her research under the supervision of Professor Benedict Kingsbury.

Jinjin has a LL.B. from Beijing Normal University, a LL.M. from Liaoning University, and a certificate from The Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for the 2014-2015 academic year. Jinjin has participated in numerous activities related to international law, such as the 12th China Round for The Jessup International Law Moot Court (2014), the 12th CIETAC Cup International Commercial Arbitration Moot (2014), the Hague Academy of International Law Summer Program in (2017), and the European Centre for Career Education Summer Law Program with full scholarship (2018). She is an editor for the Journal of International Economic Law since 2016.

2018-2019 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Gerard Kennedy Visiting Doctoral Researcher Canada

​Gerard Kennedy is a Canadian lawyer, law teacher, and legal scholar, whose research concentrates on civil procedure, administrative, and the role of courts in facilitating access to justice. Gerard earned his Bachelor of Arts at the University of Toronto before obtaining a Juris Doctor from Queen's University at Kingston, where he was awarded the Dean's Key as the graduating student who best combined academic achievement and community involvement. He has spent considerable time studying and working in international law outside Canada, receiving a certificate in public international law from the Bader International Study Centre, and interning at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Finally, he earned a Masters of Law at Harvard Law School, as a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow, studying under many of the world's leading scholars and practitioners in the fields of international and procedural law.

​Gerard also has considerable practical experiences in Canada, which led to his current academic endeavours. Building on his clerkship experience at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, in 2012, Gerard began a private practice in litigation at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP in Toronto, where he practised over several years in many different subject matters. His practice included a significant pro bono component, ranging from intervening at the Supreme Court of Canada in constitutional cases to helping challenge the criminalization of sodomy laws in Jamaica and regularly volunteering as duty counsel at the Ontario Superior Court, Civil Practice Court, and Small Claims Court -- which he still does to this day. In recognition of his work in this regard, Gerard won the 2016 Young Advocates' Society Commitment to Pro Bono Award.

​An educator at heart, Gerard has taught law at Osgoode Hall Law School, Queen's University's Faculty of Law, and the University of Toronto's Department of Political Science. He has also published op-eds and professional resources in Canadian publications such as the National Post, Policy Options, and The Walrus.

Maria Antonia Panasci Visiting Doctoral Researcher Italy

Maria Antonia is a PhD candidate at Durham Law School, where she has been the PGR Co-Convenor of the Durham European Law Institute (DELI) for the past two years. Funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), her doctoral project analyses the space of transnational solidarity in the European Union. In particular, her thesis explores the scope and justification for redistribution, with a focus on EU citizenship and distributive justice. During her residency at NYU, she looks at the Eurozone crisis and its implications on EU citizenship as a vehicle of cross-border solidarity.

Maria Antonia holds a master’s degree with distinction from University of Catania (Italy) and a specialised diploma (magna cum laude) from Scuola Superiore di Catania, an interdisciplinary centre for advanced studies. She also studied  at the University of Tübingen (Germany), where she was an Erasmus student, and at the Academy of European Law (EUI, Florence). Before starting her PhD, Maria Antonia clerked in the Court of Appeal and practised as a trainee lawyer in Italy. Her research interests lie in various fields of the law of the European Union, including free movement, economic and monetary union (EMU), welfare systems  and fundamental social rights.

Niki Siampakou Visiting Doctoral Researcher Greece

Niki Siampakou is a PhD Candidate at the Center for International and European Studies and Research (CERIC) of Aix-Marseille University where she also obtained her Master's Degree in Public International Law. Her PhD research concerns the reparation framework for the victims of international crimes and is supervised by professor Ludovic Hennebel.  She is a member of the Aix Global Justice Legal Clinic of CERIC working specifically on human rights cases and on amici curiae. She has done a legal internship at the International Criminal Court at the Victim Participation and Reparations Section in The Hague. As a member of the Athens Bar Association, she worked as a trainee lawyer in Greece. During the academic year 2017-2018, she was a visiting PhD researcher in the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL) of Amsterdam University where she focused her research on the existing victim reparation framework in international criminal law.

2017-2018 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Isabel Lischewski Visiting Doctoral Researcher Germany

​Isabel Lischewski is currently working on her doctoral thesis under the supervision of Niels Petersen at the University of Münster, Germany. Having studied law in Münster and at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russian Federation, and completed several internships inter alia with Eurojust, she obtained her first State Exam in 2016 and is now a research assistant.

​An avid MUNer throughout her studies, Isabel has coached the university’s NMUN delegation as well as its Jessup Moot Court team. She is also active in the Social Democratic Party of Germany and as an equal opportunities commissioner at Münster’s law school.

​Isabel’s main research interests include the law of international organizations, law and gender, and international relations. During her stay at NYU, she hopes to progress on her thesis, an empirical study of Global Administrative Law through the lens of international relations theory.

Ranieri Lima Resende Visiting Doctoral Researcher Brazil

Ranieri Lima Resende is PhD. in Law Candidate at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ, Brazil), under the supervision of Prof. Dr. José Ribas Vieira, and Excellence Fellow of the Rio de Janeiro Research Foundation (FAPERJ, Brazil). His doctoral project is focused on the nature of precedent of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, control of conventionality and harmonization of case law.

During his MSc. in Law studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, Brazil), Ranieri has dedicated to the International Law field and was admitted as Visiting Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (MPIL, Germany). His Master thesis was partially published in the Goettingen Journal of International Law under the title “Normative Heterogeneity and International Responsibility: Another View on the World Trade Organization and its System of Countermeasures” (GoJIL, v. 3, n. 2), and it was included in the Oxford Bibliographies.

Besides this paper, Ranieri has published in many scientific journals, conference proceedings and collective books in Brazil and abroad, especially in the areas of International Protection of Human Rights, International Responsibility, Constitutionalism, Fundamental Rights and Transitional Justice. Some of his works were quoted by the Brazilian Supreme Court in important precedents (e.g.: Asbestos case).

According to his wide academic interests, Ranieri has been participating in several research groups, such as the Study Group on International State Responsibility and Environment of the Latin American Society of International Law (LASIL/SLADI), the Brazilian Justice Observatory Research Group at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (OJB/UFRJ), the Critique & International Law Research Group at the University of Brasília (CDI/UnB), and the Study Group on Internationalization of Law and Transitional Justice (IDEJUST).

2016-2017 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Hannah Birkenkötter Visiting Doctoral Researcher Germany

Hannah Birkenkötter, LL.M., is a research assistant at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin at the Chair for Public Law and Jurisprudence (Prof. Dr. Christoph Möllers, LL.M.), where she also pursues her dissertation in which she focuses on rule of law discourses within the United Nations System and how they connect to ongoing debates on a global rule of law. Hannah holds a double masters in law from the Universities of Cologne (Germany) and Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne (France) as well as a law degree from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She has completed her legal training (Referendariat) in Berlin, including training with the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Hannah has also worked on a research project at Verfassungsblog, a widely read German constitutional law blog, exploring the role of legal blogs as a format of legal research.

Hannah's research interests include public international law with a focus on the United Nations System, questions of international legal theory and interfaces between general international law and comparative constitutional law. In her research, she connects theoretical approaches with practical knowledge, gained inter alia through her positions as a board member of the United Nations Association of Germany and a member of the Board of Trustees at Women in Europe for a Common Future. At NYU Law School, she hopes to complete several parts of her dissertation

Nadiv Mordechay Visiting Doctoral Researcher Israel

Nadiv Mordechay (LL.B, LL.M) is a Ph.D candidate and a Research Fellow at the Hebrew University Faculty of Law and the Federmann center for the Study of Rationality. Prior to joining the faculty, Nadiv clerked for Justice Ayala Procaccia in the Supreme Court of Israel (2008-2009) and for Menachem Mazuz, Israel’s Attorney-General (2007-2008). He worked as a researcher at the  Israel Democracy Institute  (2011-2015), where he had the privilege of leading a research group on legislation that assisted a committee headed by Chief-Justice (retired) Meir Shamgar. He is currently the Secretary-General of ICON-S-IL, the Israeli branch of ICON-S.

He published several articles on normative theory of judicial review in Israel and his co-authored 2014 article, Towards a Cumulative Effect Doctrine: Aggregation in Constitutional Judicial Review was cited in several leading Supreme Court cases . Nadiv's Ph.D thesis explores constitutional change from a more descriptive perspective, trying to understand the dynamics of constitutional change in an era of anti-constitutionalism, focusing on the relationship between law and politics and the Court and the Israeli Executive as a case study. His 2015 master Dissertation, Constitutional Showdowns: the Case of Judicial Review on Social-Economic Rights in Israel’s Supreme Court 2002-2012, analyzed the relationship between the Supreme Court and the Executive in situations of domestic legitimacy crises such as economic crises and social protests. His current research expands this viewpoint and ties domestic constitutional change not only to domestic legitimacy crises but also to the political legitimacy solicitation in the international legal and political sphere.

At NYU, Nadiv plans to further explore the relationship between domestic constitutional change and international legitimacy crises of the executive and to place the Israeli case-study in a wider comparative context, in order to introduce the more general connection between 'Borrowed Legitimacy' and robust Judicial Review of constitutional courts in developed democracies. This will also support a new theoretical perspective on Israeli constitutionalism, using insights from the constitutional law of the 'Global South'.

Giacomo Tagiuri Visiting Doctoral Researcher Italy

​Giacomo Tagiuri is a Ph.D. Candidate in Legal Studies at Bocconi University in Milan, under the supervision of prof. Yane Svetiev. His dissertation investigates the impact of EU Law in specific areas of market regulation that have a cultural (or way of life) dimension. By doing so he seeks to challenge persistent narratives that picture EU integration as purely homogenizing and eroding the diversity of national cultures and identities. Giacomo is broadly interested in EU law, regulation, legal and political theory, and the relationship between law and society. He previously has researched and published in the areas of administrative law (with a particular focus on cultural heritage preservation), comparative public law, as well as international relations and public policy.

​Giacomo holds a Law degree from the University of Bologna and a Master of Arts in European Studies and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC, where he has worked as a research assistant for prof. David Calleo. Giacomo is a research fellow at the Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development (CCSDD) in Bologna, collaborates with the ASK ( Arts, Science and Knowledge) Research Center at Bocconi and assists the editorial team of Aedon , Online Journal for Law and the Arts . At Bocconi, he worked as a teaching assistant for courses in International Law, EU Law and Comparative Public Law.

2015-2016 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Peter Dunne Visiting Doctoral Researcher Ireland

Peter Dunne is a second year PhD student at the school of law, Trinity College Dublin, and a Trinity Ussher Fellow (2014-2017). Peter holds an LL.M degree from Harvard Law School, where he was an Irving R Kaufman Fellow, and an LL.M from the University of Cambridge. He completed his primary legal training at University College Dublin, receiving the inaugural Undergraduate of Ireland Award, and the University of Paris 2 (Pantheon-Assas).

Peter’s scholarship focuses of human rights, family law and public law. He has a particular interest in the relationship between law, sexual orientation and gender identity. Peter has previously written on topics such as civil partnership, LGBT asylum claims and the legal recognition of transgender parenting. His scholarship has been published in journals, such as the European Law Review, Public Law, Medical Law Review and the European Human Rights Law Review. Peter’s doctoral research considers human rights approaches to the legal recognition of preferred gender.

Before commencing his doctoral studies, Peter worked as a Harvard Law Fellow at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) in New York City. In this role, Peter engaged in human rights documentation and sexuality-based advocacy before the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies. In 2013, Peter was selected as an Arthur C Helton Fellow of the American Society of International Law, and worked as a national and international law advisor to Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI). Peter has previously been awarded the Pride Law Fund and Equal Justice America Fellowships to work at the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) in Boston.

Peter has volunteered as a human rights law advisor to Transgender and Intersex Luxembourg, and as a student advocate with the Massachusetts Transgender Legal Advocates (MTLA). In 2015, as a Trinity Equality Fund grantee, he co-organised Ireland’s first ever Trans Youth Forum. From 2012 to 2013, Peter trained at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg. He has also worked at the Financial Services Ombudsman Bureau of Ireland. Peter currently serves as a member of the TENI Board of Directors.

Ahmed Elsayed Visiting Doctoral Researcher Denmark

Ahmed Elsayed is a PhD fellow in Law at the University of Copenhagen, working under the supervision of Professor Antoni Ninet. He read his LL.M. in human rights at SOAS, University of London and holds an LL.B. degree from Cairo University. The title of his Ph.D. research is “Understanding Egyptian Constitutionalism: swinging between absolutism and institutional authoritarianism,” in which he is seeking to historically and ideologically contextualize Egyptian constitutionalism since its emergence and until the 2014 Constitution.

Ahmed’s interests include politics in the Middle East, constitutionalism, judicial politics, Islamic Law and Public International Law. Prior to joining the VDR program, Ahmed taught PIL at University of Copenhagen, received the Chevening award for the academic year 2008-09 and the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship (2012-13). In addition, Ahmed worked as a district attorney at both Egyptian criminal and family prosecutions and currently he is a judge on a leave of absence.

Senthorun Raj Visiting Doctoral Researcher Australia

Senthorun Raj is an academic and advocate with a passion for popular culture, social justice, and law. Sen is completing his PhD and teaches at the Sydney Law School. His doctoral thesis titled “Feeling Law: Intimacy, Violence, and Queer Subjects” examines the way emotion has shaped legal responses that address the discrimination perpetrated against sexual and gender minorities.  He is currently working on completing the final parts of his dissertation as a Visiting Doctoral Researcher at NYU Law School.

Sen is a contributing writer for The Guardian . He has published numerous articles and academic papers on topics ranging from refugee law to social networking.  Sen is also an advisory board member of the sexuality, gender and diversity studies journal Writing from Below and has been a guest editor at the lifestyle website SameSame .

Sen is a former Churchill Fellow who completed a comparative research project on the advocacy and adjudication of sexual orientation and gender identity based asylum claims in USA, UK, and Australia. He previously worked as the Senior Policy Advisor for the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby. In a governance capacity, Sen has also served on the boards of Amnesty International Australia and ACON Health.

2014-2015 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Roxana Banu Visiting Doctoral Researcher Canada

Roxana Banu is an SJD candidate at the University of Toronto. Prior to commencing her SJD, she completed an LL.M. in International Bussiness and Trade Law at Fordham Law School in NY, with magna cum laudae, being awarded the Edward J. and Elizabeth V. Hawk Prize for the highest cumulative grade. Her first law degree was obtained in Germany at the Freie Universitaet Berlin, where she was awarded the DAAD Prize for outstanding results of a foreign student.

Roxana taught a seminar in Private International Law as one of the inaugural teaching fellows at Fordham Law School in 2010 and the Conflict of Laws course at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University (Toronto) as an Adjunct Faculty in 2012.

Her doctoral thesis sets up an analytical framework, which considers the interplay of four policy directions in the various Private International Law theories and methodologies: individualism, state-centrism, universalism and particularism. The aim of the framework is to better understand how different Private International Law theories manage or fail to conceptualize the various facets of inter-human legal relations in a globalized world, by underscoring one or several of the four policy directions. Through an analysis of Private International Law scholarship between the mid 19 th to the mid 20 th century, the thesis uncovers individualistic universalist perspectives which might prove useful when analyzing and attempting to offer solutions for various global governance concerns, including the extraterritorial tortious activities of multinational corporations, or the private and public law components of family relations in an international setting.

Maria Adele Carrai Visiting Doctoral Researcher Hong Kong

Maria Adele Carrai is a Ph.D. Fellow in Law and Swire Scholar at the University of Hong Kong, working under the supervision of Professor Albert Chen Hung-yee.

She holds a MA in Political Science from the University of Bologna, a MA in Asian Languages, Economics and Legal Institutions from Ca’Foscari University of Venice, and a BA in Chinese Language and Culture from the University of Rome La Sapienza.

The topic of her Ph.D. research is “State and Empire: China’s World Views and Discourses of Sovereignty, From the Early Translation of Sovereignty to its Present Status as a Concept,” in which she is studying the genealogy of the concept of sovereignty in China, from its systematic translation in the mid-19 th century to its present problematic use. Her general research interests include Western and Chinese legal and political philosophy, legal history, and international law and relations.

Stef Feyen Visiting Doctoral Researcher Belgium

​Stef Feyen is a research fellow of the Flemish Research Foundation. He is a PhD researcher at with the Institute of Constitutional Law at Leuven University, and affiliated as promovendus with the Ius Commune Research School at Maastricht University. Stef’s research interests include constitutional law, judicial politics and legal theory, all broadly conceived.

Under supervision of André Alen, President of the Belgian Constitutional Court, he is writing a dissertation about interpretation and application of law by several European constitutional courts. More concretely, he is investigating whether, and if so, how and to which extent French, German and Belgian scholars who reflect on interpretation and application of the constitution have faced the challenges posed by “realist” thought.

Stef holds a master’s degree in law, as well as one in political science, both from the University of Leuven (both 2009). Next to that, he obtained an LL.M. degree from Harvard University (2010). He served as a law clerk at the Belgian Constitutional Court, and interned at Stibbe in Brussels. Stef published several articles in both Belgian and international journals, covering a range of topics including federalism, judicial politics and European Union law, some of which won awards. He furthermore published a book in 2013 ( Beyond Federal Dogmatics ) which was conceived as a preliminary study for his dissertation.

Zsuzsanna Gedeon Visiting Doctoral Researcher Hungary

​Zsuzsanna Gedeon is an SJD candidate at Central European University in comparative constitutional law. She is working under the supervision of Professor Renata Uitz. Her main interests include political and legal philosophy, constitutionalism, separation of powers and the relationship between politics and law. Her dissertation is focusing on the limits on the fused executive and legislative powers in the US, France, the UK and Hungary. During her research at NYU she will continue to examine particular cases from the perspectives of the liberal, conservative and republican intellectual traditions.

​Before joining the SJD program, Zsuzsanna graduated from the Faculty of Law at ELTE in Budapest, in 2010. She obtained her LLM degree in Comparative Constitutional Law from Central European University in 2011. The same year she was accepted to the SJD program at CEU. She was a Visiting Researcher at Georgetown University for three months in 2014. Zsuzsanna was awarded the Fulbright scholarship for the 2014/2015 academic year.

Bartosz Krzysztof Marciniak Visiting Doctoral Researcher Poland

Bartosz Krzysztof Marciniak is a Polish Ph.D. candidate at the European University Institute. He is conducting a research project which regards boundaries of legitimate constitutional authority, under the supervision of professors Mattias Kumm and Giovanni Sartor. The project’s starting point is a recent practice of some Supreme and Constitutional Courts; these courts establish the unconstitutionality of constitutional amendments and laws on the grounds of their infringing upon ‘the essence of the liberal democratic state governed by the rule of law’. Courts do so even if the values and principles infringed are not enshrined within a constitution. Ultimately, the aim of the project is to determine whether one can speak of only one source of legitimate law - the so-called ‘core of constitutionalism’, the contents of which are beyond the reach of le pouvoir constituent .

Bartosz received his master’s in Law from University of Warsaw (2010), a master’s degree in Classics from University of Warsaw (2011) and an LLM degree from the European University Institute (2013). During his academic career, before being offered a position of Ph.D. researcher at the EUI, he studied law for one year at Federico II University of Naples, Faculty of Law (2008-09). He was twice a grantee of the Italian Government in 2010 and 2011. In 2010 he conducted research on the Italian constitutional jurisprudence (the position of Constitutional Court within the Italian legal system)  at the University of Catania, Faculty of Law. In 2011 he conducted research on Roman law (the way Roman law was taught in antiquity) at Frederic II University of Naples, Faculty of Law. He worked as a law clerk in the Bureau of the Polish Ombudsman (XII Commission for Constitutional Affairs) and in the Legal Office of the Ministry of Polish Culture and Heritage.

2013-2014 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Emmanuel De Groof Visiting Doctoral Researcher Belgium

Emmanuel De Groof is a Law PhD researcher at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence (Italy), working with Prof. F. Francioni and Prof. N. Bhuta. In his PhD thesis, Emmanuel conducts comparative and international legal research on post-conflict domestic governance structures, e.g. ‘interim authorities’, ‘interim governments’, ‘transitional governments’, installed through non-constitutional processes (coups, military, peace-deals, power-sharing agreements, etc.). Before joining the EUI, Emmanuel worked as a Bernheim grantee for the Permanent Representation of Belgium during its presidency of the Council of the EU; and as a law clerk at the South African Constitutional Court. Emmanuel holds an LLM in Comparative, European and International Laws from the EUI, a Master complémentaire en droit international from the Université libre de Bruxelles, and a Master in Law from the University of Leuven. The title of his research is: 'In bello & post bellum domestic civilian transitional institutions under international law'.

Anne Dienelt Visiting Doctoral Researcher Germany

Anne Dienelt is a doctoral candidate at the University of Goettingen in Germany under the supervision of Professor Andreas L. Paulus, Judge at the German Constitutional Court. Anne’s research interests include various fields of public international law, in particular international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and international environmental law. Her thesis concerns the protection of the environment in times of armed conflict, focusing on the interplay of the different legal regimes providing for a protection of the environment.

Anne studied law at the Universities of Tuebingen and Goettingen, Germany, and Aix-en-Provence, France, where she received the maîtrise en droit . She graduated from Goettingen University Law School in 2009 where she worked for Professor Andreas L. Paulus as a student research assistant and later as a teaching assistant, coaching Goettingen’s Jessup Team among others tasks. She is a founding member and former Editor-in-Chief of the Goettingen Journal of International Law, which she presided from 2007-2009. From 2010 to 2012, she completed a legal traineeship/clerkship and passed the bar exam in 2012. During this two-year traineeship, she worked, inter alia , at the German Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Since 2012, she has been working at the Institute for International Affaires at the University of Hamburg as a research and teaching assistant for Professor Stefan Oeter. In this capacity, she gave lectures in public international law and in German administrative law. She was also assisting Prof. Georg Nolte during the 65th session of the International Law Commission in 2013. Anne has published in the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law.

Michèle Finck Visiting Doctoral Researcher Luxemburg

​Michèle Finck is a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford where she works under the supervision of Prof. Stephen Weatherill and Dr. Liz Fisher. Michèle’s thesis explores United States and European Union law in comparative perspective. In particular, she looks at how these two legal systems, built on the interaction of two levels of public authority only, perceive polycentric regulatory systems in which many levels of public authority interact both vertically and horizontally.

​Before starting her doctoral thesis in Oxford, Michèle studied for the LL.M. at the European University Institute. She also graduated first class honors from King’s College London, with a dual degree in French and English law (organized between King’s and the Sorbonne in Paris).

Isabelle Lassee Visiting Doctoral Researcher France

Isabelle Lassée is a third year doctoral student at Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas, under the supervision of Dr. Martin Bidou. Her research interests include humanitarian law, transitional justice and international criminal law. Her dissertation focuses on the role and contribution of UN mandated commissions of inquiry to peace building, human rights protection and transitional justice. During her research at NYU, Isabelle will examine the internal and external dimensions of coherence in the design and implementation of these commissions’ mandates.

From 2011, Isabelle has been based in Sri Lanka and has worked as a legal consultant on international human rights law for a NGO based in the Maldives. Previously, she has worked at the prosecutor’s office at the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Phnom Penh, and at several UN agencies and NGOs in France and Ghana. She holds a master’s degree in human rights and humanitarian law from Panthéon-Assas, an advanced research diploma from the Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales , and a certificate in criminology from the Institut de Criminologie de Paris.

Azin Tadjdini Visiting Doctoral Researcher Norway

​Azin Tadjdini is a PhD research fellow at the Department of Public and International Law, University of Oslo, where she also teaches courses in constitutional law.

​She is working on a thesis entitled “Constitutional de-secularization in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq- and the impact on selected rights”, which examines how human rights are impacted by the shift from more or less secular constitutions to constitutions that apply religion as a foundation. Her research interests include legal history, human rights law, comparative constitutional law, and the interplay between politics and law. She is a contributor to the blog IntLawGrrls.

​Azin holds a Master Degree in law from the University of Oslo (2009) and an LLM in International Legal Studies from Georgetown University Law Center (2011). Before starting as a PhD fellow she worked at the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration. She has also worked at the Permanent Mission of Norway to the UN and interned at the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs.

Thomas Carter Adams Visiting Doctoral Researcher United Kingdom

Tom Adams is a third year doctoral student at the University of Oxford where he works under the supervision of Professor Leslie Green. Tom’s thesis concerns the relevance of conceptual analysis for legal theory. In particular, it explores the interrelationship between linguistic meaning and social ontology.

In the three years prior to coming to NYU Tom was a Stipendiary Lecturer in Law at St Hilda’s College, Oxford where he taught Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and Jurisprudence.

Ivana Isailovic Visiting Doctoral Researcher Serbia/France

Ivana Isailovic is completing her PhD dissertation at Sciences Po Paris, under the supervision of Professor Horatia Muir Watt. Her doctoral dissertation examines the interplay between legal disciplines - namely private and public international law, and human rights law - central to the construction of global governance patterns, and the processes of identity formation or representation.

Her research interests include critical legal theory, political philosophy, global litigation, gender studies, and law and development.

During the academic year 2011-2012, Ivana was a visiting student at McGill University, and was affiliated with the McGill  Center for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. From 2010 to 2012, Ivana participated in the annual IGLP Workshop organized by the Institute for Global Law&Policy at Harvard Law School.

She taught the course “Introduction to International Economic law” at Sciences Po Paris ( Collège Universitaire) and has been a teaching assistant for courses at Sciences Po Paris and Sorbonne University, including Conflict of Laws and Introduction to Law.

She holds a Master Degree in International Public Law from Sorbonne University( 2007-2008) and a degree in Global Business Law and Governance (2008-2009) - a joint program between Columbia Law School, Sorbonne University,and Sciences Po Paris.  

Ana Mara Machado Visiting Doctoral Researcher Brazil

Ana Mara França Machado is a PhD Candidate at University of São Paulo (USP), Faculty of Law (2011- ) where she also has obtained her Master’s Degree (2010).

Since graduation at Law School she has worked as a researcher and a teacher in institutions such as Getulio Vargas Foundation School of Law (Direito GV), Brazilian Society of Public Law (SBDP) and Paulista University (UNIP) and has experience in the fields of Sociology of Law, International Law and Criminal Law. Recently she has worked as a researcher to the projects ´Transnational and comparative responses to political corruption´ (supported by International Development Research Centre - IDRC) and ´Informal international Law´ (supported by The Hague Institute for the Internationalization of Law - HIIL).

Ana Mara´s research interests include anti-corruption efforts/legislation, money laundry, international cooperation on criminal matters, internationalization of law and the relationship between corruption and development. Her doctoral thesis aims to evaluate the limitations that Brazilian domestic institutions face in transnational political corruption cases, that is, cases whose boundaries have expanded to more than one jurisdiction. One of the central goals of this research is to determine what are the main difficulties faced by authorities in cases of transnational corruption. The methodology of the study focus on case studies that have a transnational component involving the United States, such as an investigation under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) or a civil action before U.S. courts to recover assets located in the U.S.

Boško Tripković Visiting Doctoral Researcher Serbia

Boško Tripković is a Law PhD researcher at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence (Italy), working under the supervision of Professor Dennis Patterson. His research interests include philosophy of law, constitutional theory, and comparative constitutional law. In his PhD thesis, Boško focuses on the meta-ethical foundations of normative arguments in constitutional adjudication.

Before joining the EUI, Boško worked at the Faculty of Law, University of Novi Sad (Serbia) as a lecturer from 2003 to 2009. He also served as an expert in various projects, most recently for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the EUI (RSCAS). Boško holds an LLM in Comparative, European and International Laws from the EUI, MJur degree from the University of Oxford, and MPhil and LLB degrees from the University of Novi Sad. He is the author of one monograph, and a dozen articles in legal journals.

2011-2012 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Gonçalo Coelho Visiting Doctoral Researcher Portugal

Gonçalo Coelho is a third year Law PhD Candidate at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy (EUI) and Assistant at the EU Energy Law & Policy Area of the Florence School of Regulation. Gonçalo’s research interests cover Competition, State aid and Regulatory Law and his doctoral studies focus on access to natural resources in network industries.

Before joining the EUI, Gonçalo worked as a Lawyer at the Lisbon office of Cuatrecasas, Gonçaloves Pereira between 2003 and 2006 and as a Legal Officer at the Portuguese Council of Ministers and Ministry for Public Works and Communications between 2006 and 2007. He has also worked as a Lawyer at the Brussels Office of White & Case (2008/2009).

Gonçalo holds a Law Degree and Post-Graduations in Competition and Regulation Law (2006/2007) and Law Making and Science of the Legislation (2004) from the Lisbon University. He also holds an LLM from the EUI (2009/2010) and an LLM specializing in “European Law and Economic Analysis” from the College of Europe in Bruges, (2007/2008).

Gonçalo’s doctoral research is supervised by Prof. Giorgio Monti at the EUI. He was a Fulbright-Schuman student during his time as a Visiting Doctoral Researcher at NYU.

Xiuyan Fei Visiting Doctoral Researcher China

Xiuyan Fei is a PhD candidate at University College Dublin under the supervision of Professor Joseph McMahon and at Renmin University of China under the supervision of Professor YIN Li. During the academic year of 2009-2010, she was research assistant to Professor YIN Li at the school of law of Renmin University of China.She used to work at DLA Piper UK LLP Beijing Representative Office in the field of venture capital as legal assistant in 2008 and at North China Electric Power University as teaching assistant from 2003 to 2006. She has publications of “Comment on the Case: Salem Steel North America LLC v. Shanghai Shangshang Stainless Pipe Co., Ltd.,” 30(4) International Business Research 4 (2009) (with GONG Bai-hua) and “Comment on the Case: United States - Anti-Dumping Measure on Shrimp from Ecuador,” 17 Law Journal of RUC 123 (2007).

Xiuyan's research interest is in international trade law, especially in WTO law. Her thesis is National Law Interpretation in EU, WTO, and NAFTA.

Lisa Ginsborg Visiting Doctoral Researcher United Kingdom

Lisa Ginsborg is a third year Law PhD candidate at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy, working under the supervision of Prof. Martin Scheinin. Her doctoral thesis focuses on the UN Security Council, counter-terrorism and human rights after 9/11, looking specifically at the implications of the work of the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee and the 1267 Sanctions Committee on international human rights standards.

Before starting her PhD Lisa worked for three years in the legal department of the International Secretariat of Amnesty International (2006-2009). She has also worked at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) (2005-2006). Lisa holds an LLM in Comparative, European and International Laws from the European University Institute (EUI) and an MSc in Political Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her first degree in Philosophy and Sociology was obtained from the University of Sussex, where she was awarded the University Prize in Philosophy.

Krisztina Huszti Orban Visiting Doctoral Researcher Switzerland/Romania

Krisztina Huszti Orban is a PhD candidate in international law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, where she is working on a doctoral thesis entitled ‘The Concept of Armed Conflict in International Humanitarian Law’. During her residency at NYU School of Law, her research will focus on the impact of armed external intervention on the classification of armed conflicts and the law applicable thereto.

Krisztina has earned an LLB from the Babes-Bolyai University (Cluj Napoca, Romania), an LLM in comparative legal and political studies from the Andrassy Gyula German University Budapest and a Master in Advanced Studies (LLM) in international humanitarian law from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.

Her research interests include international humanitarian law, protection of human rights during armed conflict and state of emergency, international law relating to the use of force as well as legal aspects of security sector reform and governance.

Krisztina has previously worked with the United Nations Office of Amnesty International in Geneva, the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF).

She is a member of the Swiss Branch of the International Law Association and an alternate member of the ILA Committee on the Use of Force.

Pedro Caro de Sousa Visiting Doctoral Researcher Portugal

Pedro Caro de Sousa is a DPhil candidate at Lady Margaret Hall at the University of Oxford. His doctoral thesis focuses on the interplay between normative and institutional considerations to be found in judicial decisions concerning economic constitutional provisions in federal, co-federal and transnational settings. In his work, Pedro focuses mainly on free movement provisions in the EU setting to demonstrate the dynamic interaction between purely theoretical considerations and the institutional setting where the relevant adjudicatory bodies operate.

Pedro obtained his law degree at Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 2005. From 2002 to 2004 he worked for the Judge’s Support Cabinet at the Portuguese Constitutional Court. Pedro is also a Portuguese qualified lawyer, and from 2005 to 2008 he worked at Linklaters as an attorney, focusing mainly on EU and Competition law. At Oxford, Pedro has tutored Competition Law to undergraduates in the capacity of a Graduate Teaching Assistant, and tutored EU law at King’s College London in the capacity of Visiting Tutor.

2010-2011 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Sanja Bogojevic Visiting Doctoral Researcher Sweden

​Sanja Bogojevic is a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford. Her doctoral thesis focuses on emissions trading schemes with particular reference to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). In her work, Sanja analyses the interplay between states and markets in emissions trading regimes, and explores the intersections between administrative and environmental law in this regard.

​Sanja's thesis is published in part in the Journal of Environmental Law (2009) and in a collection of essays on environmental discourses (CUP, forthcoming). Further, two pieces analyzing legislative developments of the EU ETS are published in the Environmental Law Review and Carbon and Climate Law Review (both forthcoming), and a chapter on EU law in a Swedish law textbook (Rättskunskap 2005).

​Sanja attained her LLB with German Law from King's College, London and Passau University in 2005, and her LLM from College of Europe, Bruges in 2007. At Oxford, Sanja has tutored EU Law to undergraduates at Balliol and Oriel colleges in the capacity of a GTA, and on her return to Oxford from NYU, she will teach an undergraduate and graduate course in Comparative Environmental Law. Sanja has also been a research visitor at the Max Plank Institute for Collective Goods in Bonn (sponsored by DAAD), and an invited speaker at conferences at for example the Australian National University in Canberra and British Institute of International Comparative Law in London.

​During her research visit to NYU, Sanja was affiliated with the Center for Environmental Law and Land Use Law with Professor Katrina Wyman as her sponsor.

Tanya Josev Visiting Doctoral Researcher Australia

Tanya has degrees in law and arts from the University of Melbourne and is a former editor of the Melbourne University Law Review. After graduating, Tanya worked for several years as a commercial litigation lawyer at Allens Arthur Robinson, and in late 2007 commenced a 16-month period as the associate/clerk of Justice Alan Goldberg AO of the Federal Court of Australia. In 2009, she was awarded an Australian Postgraduate Award to commence cross-disciplinary doctoral studies in law and political history at the University of Melbourne; she was also appointed one of the Law School’s inaugural PhD Teaching Fellows. She currently lectures in Corporations Law and the Law of Obligations in the Law School, and has previously published in related areas.

Tanya’s doctoral studies focus on the history of the public debate on judicial method in Australia, and the migration of legal and constitutional theories from and between the United States and Australia. Tanya’s doctoral research is supervised by Laureate Professors Stuart Macintyre and Cheryl Saunders at the University of Melbourne, and at NYU she was sponsored by Professor Barry Friedman during her time as a Global Fellow.

Machiko Kanetake Visiting Doctoral Researcher Japan

Machiko Kanetake is a PhD candidate at Kyoto University (Japan) where she is a JSPS Research Fellow. Her areas of expertise include United Nations law and international security law. Her doctoral thesis examines the regulation of the UN Security Council’s authority exercised vis-à-vis non-state actors. Having studied international politics as an undergraduate at Aoyama Gakuin University (Japan), she has earned her English law degree (MA in Law) from the University of Sheffield (UK) where she received International Scholarships. She has sharpened her research focus on UN law through her LLM at the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK). She has publications on the use of force to protect nationals abroad, UN peacekeeping and the judicial review of the UN Security Council, including: “Whose Zero Tolerance Counts? Reassessing a Zero Tolerance Policy against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by UN Peacekeepers” (2010) 17 International Peacekeeping 200; and “Enhancing Community Accountability of the Security Council through Pluralistic Structure: The Case of the 1267 Committee” (2008) 12 Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law 113.

Jason Pobjoy Visiting Doctoral Researcher Australia

Jason Pobjoy is currently reading for a PhD at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Dr Guglielmo Verdirame. He is the recipient of a W.M. Tapp Studentship in Law and a Poynton Cambridge Australia Scholarship. Jason’s research explores the relationship between international refugee law and international law on the rights of the child, in the context of children seeking international protection.

Jason is an Australian qualified lawyer, and practised for three years as a litigation solicitor at Mallesons Stephen Jaques. He completed a Masters in Law at the University of Melbourne under the supervision of Professor James C. Hathaway and Dr. Michelle Foster, and the Bachelor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford as a Commonwealth Scholar. In July 2010 Jason will took up a 3-month post as a Research Associate at the Refugee Law Project at Makarere University in Kampala, which will act as a base for fieldwork in refugee camps in Uganda, Kenya and Egypt.

While at NYU Jason worked under the supervision of Professor Philip Alston.

Maria Tzanaou Visiting Doctoral Researcher Greece

Maria Tzanou is a PhD Candidate at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). Her doctoral thesis focuses on EU counter-terrorism measures in the area of Freedom, Security and Justice and their implications on privacy and data protection. She holds a Master degree in Comparative, European and International Law by the EUI, a Master II in “Specialized Public Law” by the Universities of Athens and Bordeaux IV, and an LLM in European Law by the University of Cambridge. Her first law degree was obtained at the Law School of Athens, where she graduated with honors equivalent to Summa Cum Laude (ranked 1st in class and top student in the Law School). She has published articles in the German Law Journal and the Yearbook of European Law, and has written (as a co-author) three reports for the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA). She speaks fluent Greek, English, French, German and Italian.

2009-2010 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Rabeea Assy Visiting Doctoral Researcher Israel

Rabeea studied at the University of Haifa where he read for his LLB and LLM. (He graduated with honors equivalent to Summa Cum Laude, ranked 1st in class). In 2000 Rabeea was called to the Israeli Bar, and in 2003 he was admitted to the Criminal Department in the Attorney General Office (Nazareth District). In 2007 he set out to read for his DPhil in Law at Oxford University under Professor Adrian Zuckerman of University College, Oxford. In Oxford Rabeea was a co-editor and then the editor-in-chief of the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal. In 2004 Rabeea published (as a co-author) two articles at the Hebrew University Law Journal (Jerusalem), leveling criticism of the Israeli case-law for excessive and unjustified reliance on the evidence of facial identification of defendants in criminal proceedings. This criticism has generally been endorsed by the Israeli Supreme Court leading it to revise its previous position and take a more suspicious stance to the facial identification evidence in criminal proceedings. His LLM (2006) thesis explored the nature of heightened standards of proof in civil cases and offered an innovative theoretical model to explain its meaning, combining together different types of approaches and methods of reasoning (mathematical, inductive, and holistic). For his DPhil, Rabeea currently focuses on the theoretical foundations of the right of access to court and their particular implications for self-represented litigants and “vexatious litigants.” Rabeea also has general interest in theology (with particular emphasis on Christianity), Arabic poetry, English literature, and chess.

Yun-I Kim Visiting Doctoral Researcher Germany

Yun-I Kim is a PhD candidate at the University of Potsdam, Faculty of Law under the supervision of Professor Dr. Markus Krajewski. Her doctoral thesis focuses on the area of international investment arbitration, in particular on the conflict arising from coexisting dispute settlement mechanisms in international investment agreements and investment contracts. Ms. Kim graduated from Cologne University Law School in 2006 where she was a scholar of the German National Academic Foundation. She is a case assistant to Professor Dr. Karl-Heinz Böckstiegel and has been designated Secretary to the Tribunal in various international arbitration proceedings. She also works as research assistant in the leading German law firm in the field of international investment arbitration. Prior to that she was a research assistant to Professor Dr. Stephan Hobe at the Institute of Air and Space Law and the Chair for Public International Law, European and International Economic Law, University of Cologne where she also lectured on contracts and constitutional law. Ms. Kim is a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration and has published various articles in the field of air law and investment law. She speaks fluent English, French, Korean, and Spanish. During her stay at NYU she was affiliated with the Institute of International Law and Justice with Professor Benedict Kingsbury as her sponsor.

Nils Christian Langtevdt Visiting Doctoral Researcher Norway

​Mr. Langtvedt is a research fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo (UiO). His PhD-thesis examines the WTO Appellate Body’s method of interpretation and seeks to analyze the relationship between the tribunal’s rhetoric and the impact of the results, supervised by Dr. Marius Emberland. He is also a lecturer in Public international law and International Economic Law.Previously, Mr. Langtvedt worked as an associate lawyer at Selmer Advokatfirma DA, and he wrote his masters’ thesis on bilateral investment treaties while being employed as a research assistant at the Department of Public and International Law, UiO (2007). He was selected as a Fulbright Fellow for the 2009-2010 academic year to stay at NYU. During his residency, Mr. Langtvedt continued the work of his PhD-thesis with a particular focus on the teleology and implicit hermeneutics of the Appellate Body. His sponsor at NYU was Professor Robert Howse.

Lucas Lixinski Visiting Doctoral Researcher Italy

​Lucas Lixinski is currently a PhD Researcher at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy), where he was the Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Legal Studies in 2008. He has completed his Master’s Degree in Human Rights at Central European University (Budapest, Hungary), with a Specialization in European and Global Legal Practice (Total Law Program, NYU/CEU). His first law degree was obtained in Brazil, at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. He has been a visiting researcher at Columbia University School of Law (New York, USA) in the spring of 2007, and participated in an exchange program at the University of Texas School of Law in the spring of 2005. He has clerked at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the fall of 2005 (with a grant from the University of Texas School of Law). His PhD research deals with the legal aspects for the protection of intangible cultural heritage (folklore), and his other research interests include international human rights law, general public international law and the law of regional economic integration. He is a co-editor of a book on the Law of MERCOSUR (Hart Publishing, forthcoming 2009), among other publications.

Miriam Rodgers Visiting Doctoral Researcher United States

Miriam Rodgers is a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Professor John Gardner. Her work on legal philosophy focuses on the forms of justice as they are applied in various areas of law. Ms. Rodgers studied philosophy and economics as an undergraduate at Washington and Lee University (2004) and earned her JD from the University of Texas, Austin (2007). At Oxford, Ms. Rodgers taught undergraduate Land Law as part of the University’s Graduate Teaching Assistantship scheme for 2008-2009. She has also been selected to teach undergraduate Jurisprudence as the University’s GTA upon her return to Oxford in the spring of 2010.

Andrew Woods Visiting Doctoral Researcher United States

​Andrew K. Woods is a PHD candidate at Cambridge University (Politics) where he is a Gates Scholar. His thesis examines the implications of social science experiments about human behavior for the international human rights regime. He is author of “A Behavioral Approach to Human Rights” (Harvard International Law Journal, forthcoming) and co-editor (along with Profs Ryan Goodman and Derek Jinks) of Understanding Social Action, Promoting Human Rights (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was also a Hauser Fellow.

2008-2009 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Vanessa Abballe Visiting Doctoral Researcher France

A graduate of La Sorbonne Law School with a double major in private and public law, Vanessa Abballe specialized both in international private law and European law. Following her law degree, she obtained a Master's in the theory and law of trial under the direction of Loic Cadiet at La Sorbonne Law School. With a strong knowledge of civil procedure, she passed the Paris bar and worked in a French law firm specializing in international law and project finance. In parallel, she completed a Master's in political science from Pantheon-Assas Paris II and worked as a congressional staffer at the French Parliament, during which time she participated in several congressional inquiries concerning legal reforms. Vanessa subsequently attended the University of Michigan where she obtained her LLM degree.

Following her LLM, Vanessa stayed at the University of Michigan as a research scholar and during this period, she was appointed as a Jean Monet Graduate Fellowship on issues of European integration, of the European Union Commission in collaboration with the European center studies of the University of Michigan focusing her research on the federal aspect of the vertical articulation of the interjurisdictional relations from a comparative point of view between the American and European systems.

Vanessa is now working on her PhD in Law under the co-direction of Professor Loic Cadiet from La Sorbonne Law School and Professor Robert Howse from the NYU Law School. Her research focuses on the comparative approaches of European law and American law, particularly concerning interstate private law. She has published several articles on the impact of the globalization of justice.

Her research during her stay at NYU focused on the impact of the expansion of the scope and the function of private international law in an environment of globalized justice and scrutinize the development of international and regional adjudicative authorities and their impact on the interjurisdictional interactions of international and domestic systems, demonstrating how the increasing overlapping of different levels of adjudicatory power requires the establishment of supranational procedural standards in order to maintain legal certainty, particularly considering the decline in influence of nation-states within the international arena.

Nuhaila Carmouche Visiting Doctoral Researcher Scotland

Nuhaila is a Visiting Doctoral Researcher on exchange from the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). Nuhaila is writing a thesis on the "Conceptual Aspects of Global Administrative Law" Prior to beginning her doctoral research at the EUI, Nuhaila completed her LLM at the University of Cambridge. Nuhaila has conducted research for a number of organizations including the Foundation of International and Environmental Law and the British Institute for International and Comparative Law. She also acted as the editorial assistant for the publication: “September 11 2001: A Turning Point for International and Domestic Law.”

Thibaut Fleury Visiting Doctoral Researcher France

​Mr. Fleury is a PhD student at the University of Paris II, Panthéon-Assas, France. He is the recipient of a three-year fellowship from the French Ministry of Education and Research and an assistant professor of Public Law at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin. Mr. Fleury, who has been awarded prices in Constitutional Law (2002) and History of Political Philosophy (2005) during his Public Law studies at University Strasbourg III-Robert Schuman (France), holds a DEA of "Philosophy of Law" from the University Paris II.

​Mr. Fleury's Dissertation for his DEA on the "Law of Nations in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s thought ", was published in 2006 by the Michel Villey from the Institute for Philosophy of Law and Legal Culture. He chose to deepen his research on the development of International Law by writing a thesis on territorial issues in the United States, and their contribution to the development of International Law. Parallel to his thesis work Mr. Fleury is a regular contributer to the Revue Trimestrielle de Droit Européen, a French European Law Review.

​During his stay at NYU, he worked with Prof. Benedict Kingsbury from the Institute for International Law and Justice on the links between territory, federation and International Law and on the legal status of U.S. territories and Indian land.

Bram Goetschalckx Visiting Doctoral Researcher Belgium

Bram Goetschalckx is a philosopher working and living in Antwerp, Belgium. He has spent his young career at the University of Antwerp, where he graduated in philosophy with a study on ‘humanist’ philosophy of mathematics, and was awarded a research scholarship at the law school under the guidance of professor Maurice Adams. He has taught courses on philosophy of law at the department of philosophy of Antwerp and the law school of Tilburg University. With the support of Dr. Nicos Stavropoulos, he was ‘Recognized Student’ at the University of Oxford for the Hilary Term 2008, where he participated in the jurisprudence program.

His doctoral research focuses on the (philosophical) methodology of jurisprudence and argues for a hermeneutical or interpretive account of philosophy of law vis-à-vis positivist and pragmatic conceptions of jurisprudence. His interests are mainly in philosophical method, pragmatism, interpretation and tradition. A future ambition is to include theological scholarship in his study of law and hermeneutics.

Bram is a member of the Legal Theory Research Group of the University of Antwerp. His sponsor at NYU was professor Mattias Kumm.

Devika Hovell Visiting Doctoral Researcher Australia

Ms. Hovell is a DPhil Candidate at the University of Oxford. Her thesis examines whether it is possible to construct a procedural fairness framework applicable to Security Council decision-making on sanctions, considering normative foundations for the framework, institutional limitations, and applicable standards of fair treatment.

Prior to commencing her doctorate, Ms. Hovell was a lecturer in international law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and a director of a 3-year project exploring the relationship between international law and the Australian legal system. Together with her project partners, she produced a book, an edited book and numerous journal articles. Prior to this, she was a judicial clerk to the judges on the International Court of Justice, legal assistant to Professor Pellet at the UN International Law Commission and a judicial clerk to Justice Hayne on the High Court of Australia. Ms. Hovell has a Master of Laws from New York University.

Her visit to NYU was sponsored by Professor Richard Stewart.

Elisa Maria Lotz Visiting Doctoral Researcher Germany

​Ms. Elisa Maria Lotz is fellow of the graduate program “Multilevel Constitutionalism: European Experiences and Global Perspectives” at Humboldt University in Berlin under supervision of Professor Pernice and Professor Nolte. Her PhD thesis deals with “The Judicial Control of UN Security Council Sanctions against Individuals – an Analysis in the Light of the Rule of Law”. In a comparative approach she explores how notions of the Rule of Law prevailing on different legal levels are influenced by sanctions of the Security Council against individuals.

​During her studies of law at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg and Université Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris Ms. Elisa Maria Lotz focussed on Public International Law, but also exploring the field of International Relations during her stay in Paris. She gained internship experience at the German Technical Cooperation in Beijing where she worked in the advisory service to the legal reform in China. At the Permanent Mission of Germany to NATO in Brussels she dealt with NATO aspirants and the implementation of rule of law and democracy standards. Ms. Lotz published on the future role of the EU and NATO in defense and security policy.

Timor Pesso Visiting Doctoral Researcher Israel

Mr. Pesso received his LLB degree, summa cum laude, in 1999 from the Hebrew University, Israel. In 2000 he received his MBA degree, magna cum laude, from the Hebrew University School of Business Administration, and in 2004 he received his LLM degree, magna cum laude, from the Hebrew University. From 2000 to 2006 Mr. Pesso served as an officer (attaining the rank of a Major) in the Military Advocacy of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Mr. Pesso was the recipient of several awards and scholarships, among them a Fulbright Scholarship, the Hebrew University award for outstanding students participating in interdisciplinary programs, the Dean’s award for Outstanding Academic Achievements and the IDF Military Advocate General's Award for Excellence.

Mr. Pesso is currently studying for his PhD at the Hebrew University School of Law, where he is also a research fellow. His research, which is advised by Professor Daphna Lewinsohn-Zamir, is primarily concerned with the dynamics of urban renewal, particularly innovative legal mechanisms to address the difficulties, both social and economic, inherent to this process in order to improve the chances of success. His sponsor at NYU was Professor Katrina Wyman.

Rene Uruena Visiting Doctoral Researcher Spain

​René Uruena is a Research Fellow and doctoral candidate at the Centre of Excellence in Global Governance Research at the University of Helsinki, where he also lectures on international law. He graduated as a lawyer from the Universidad de Los Andes (Colombia), holds an LLM (laudatur) in international law (University of Helsinki), and a postgraduate degree in economics (Universidad de Los Andes – Colombia). His publications include the first textbook of international organizations law written in Latin America, as well as several other articles published in international peer-reviewed journals.

​During his residency, Mr. Uruena’s research will continue to explore how the prominence of trade law affects the parameters of political participation and democratic decision-making. Political man is becoming a ‘market citizen’: a human being that politically exists only inasmuch as he is economically active—to what extent does the international trade regime contribute to the construction of these developments? He worked with Benedict Kingsbury at the Institute for International Law and Justice.

Mila Versteeg Visiting Doctoral Researcher Netherlands

Mila Versteeg is doctoral student in law at the University of Oxford, where she is Gregory Kulkes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, and holds an Arts and Humanities Research Council Award. In 2007 she obtained her LLM- degree from Harvard Law School. She previously worked as an intern at the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute in Turin and at the Southern Africa Litigation Centre in Johannesburg.

Mila’s main research interests are in comparative constitutional law and international human rights law. She also specializes in empirical legal studies. Her research in mainly quantitative and focuses on the origins and effects of both domestic and international rights regimes.

Pauline Abadie Visiting Doctoral Researcher France

Ms. Abadie is a PhD student at University Paris I-La Sorbonne (France) and a research associate at the Center of Environmental, Land Use and Urban Law (CERDEAU)where she is contributing to a research project ordered by the CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research) and the Department of Justice on the globalization of environmental law. As a member of the team, she describes new models of law-making and focuses more specifically on the mechanisms of harmonization in environmental reporting and accounting law. She is also the recipient of a three-year fellowship from the French Ministry of Education and Research and an assistant professor of US constitutional law at the University Paris X-Nanterre. Ms. Abadie holds an LLM in environmental law from Golden Gate University (2003), and a D.E.A in environmental law from the University Paris I-La Sorbonne (2005). While in California, her research and teaching interest was on human rights and the environment. She published an article advocating the use of U.S. domestic law instruments to litigate environmental injustices in developing countries. She joined the team of an environmental public interest law firm where her work focused on human rights violations connected to the US-funded Plan Colombia aerial coca fumigation campaign. In the spring 2004, she was the co-teacher of a seminar on environmental justice at Golden Gate University. During her stay, she worked with Richard Stewart on her research proposal entitled “The Globalization of Environmental Law Through the Mechanisms of Harmonization in Environmental Reporting and Accounting Law.”

Gaspar Atienza Visiting Doctoral Researcher Spain

Mr. Gaspar Atienza graduated with a degree in Law and a diploma in Business Administration from the Universidad Pontificia Comillas (ICADE), in Madrid, Spain, in 1998. In 2000 Mr. Atienza graduated from the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University with a Master's degree in International Relations, while working at the European Delegation at the United Nations. In September 2000 Mr. Atienza joined the Financial Law Department of Spain’s largest Law Firm, Garrigues Abogados, and since then has combined the practice of private financial Law with the study of International Public Law, International Relations and regular academic and journalistic contributions in Spanish universities and media.

Since 2003 Mr. Atienza has been studying at the Fundacion Ortega y Gasset attached to the Universidad Autonoma of Madrid in his PhD on International Public Law and International Relations, and is focusing his doctoral dissertation on the relation of power and law in the international order and the influence of the so called "democratic norm" on non-democratic states.

Conway Blake Visiting Doctoral Researcher Jamaica

​Mr. Blake originally hails from Jamaica, but is currently pursuing his PhDin International Law at the University of Cambridge, England. In 2004, Mr. Blake received his Bachelor's of Law (LLB) with first class honors from the University of the West Indies (Caribbean). He later received a Commonwealth scholarship, and completed his Masters in International Law (LLM) at the University of Cambridge, with first class honors . Mr. Blake has lectured in the areas of human rights and family law at the University level in both the Caribbean and the United Kingdom. In addition, he has been actively involved in human rights NGOs and other advocacy initiatives related to social justice issues. During his year in residency, he will be working on his proposal entitled "Supra-national Adjudication and the Realization of Socioeconomic Rights: Examining the Optional Protocol to the Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights" with his faculty sponsor Philip Alston and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

Sara Dezalay Visiting Doctoral Researcher France

​Of dual nationality heritage, French and Irish, Sara Dezalay has an academic background in both law and political science. She obtained her BA in European and International law at Trinity College Dublin, in Ireland, in 2001, through an ERASMUS exchange and a Master in Public law at the Universite Pantheon Assas (Paris II), in Paris, France, in 2002. She was then awarded a Master in Political Science, with a Major in International Organizations at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Paris, France, in 2004, and a Research Master in International Relations from the same school in 2005. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Law department of the European University Institute, in Florence, Italy, where she obtained a Research Master in 2006. During her fall semester residency, she will be working on research entitled “The Social Construction of International Norms Through the ‘Naming’ and ‘Shaping’ of ‘Internal’ Armed Conflicts by Competing Non-Governmental International Actors.” Her sponsor is Joseph Weiler.

Emily Hartz Visiting Doctoral Researcher Denmark

Ms. Emily Hartz is studying for a PhD in Philosophy at the School of Education, University of Aarhus, Denmark. Her project entitled Necessity after 9/11, A Study of Legal Conceptualisations of Necessity related to the Present 'Global War on Terrorism.' Ms. Hartz was a visiting doctoral researcher at the Hauser Global Law School Program during the fall semester 2006. Before this she studied philosophy and mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin; Freie Universtat, Berlin; Universitat der Kunste, Berlin, as well as Copenhagen University. She received her Master's degree in philosophy from Copenhagen University in Denmark in 2003. After graduating she worked for the Centre for Ethics and Law in Copenhagen and the German Reference Centre for Ethics in the Life Sciences in Bonn. In this capacity she has been assigned to a number of EU-sponsored research projects where she has successfully carried out research in the field of ethics and law. She is currently co-coordinator of an interdisciplinary research network in political theory: The Establishment of Power Law and Order. Ms. Hartz is a student at the University of Copenhagen, where she hopes to earn her PhD through the Center of Ethics and Law. She will be working with Richard Pildes and the Center for Law and Security during her stay.

Andrew Higgins Oxford Exchange Visiting Doctoral Researcher Australia

​Andrew Higgins is a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Professor Adrian Zuckerman. His research is focused on the attorney-client privilege and in particular its use and abuse in corporate and governmental contexts. Andrew undertook the BCL at Oxford in 2004-05 where he received a distinction (first class honors) and was then awarded a Rae & Edith Bennett Travelling Scholarship from the University of Melbourne to pursue a doctorate at Oxford.

​Previously Andrew worked in Australia as a litigation lawyer in mass tort litigation including tobacco, asbestos and environmental litigation. Andrew played a crucial role in uncovering evidence of British American Tobacco’s ‘document retention’ practices, and its policy of systematically destroying sensitive documents for the purposes of preventing their disclosure in court. These revelations led to criminal investigations in Australia (still ongoing), and criminal and civil law reforms in Victoria and New South Wales regarding document management practices and lawyers’ obligations when advising on them. Andrew also briefed the US Department of Justice on the evidence of BAT’s document destruction, which became a central complaint of the US Federal Government in its RICO Anti-Trust litigation against the tobacco industry in the District Court of Columbia. At the time Andrew was only an articled clerk, and was nominated for the Australian Plaintiff Lawyers Association’s ‘Civil Justice’ Award. He has given occasional guest lectures at the University of Melbourne on Civil Procedure.

Jan Komarek Oxford Exchange Visiting Doctoral Researcher Czech Republic

​Jan is currently a D.Phil. candidate at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, where he also teaches EU law as a graduate teaching assistant. He gave invited lectures at Utrecht University, University of Lund and various institutions in the Czech Republic.

​His research focuses on the role of judicial precedent in the context European constitutional pluralism. The question is: “If one of the key elements of constitutional pluralism is its ability to secure deliberation between various constitutional spheres and processes, to what extent can judicial precedent contribute to this deliberation?” At NYU Jan hopes to work on a comparative part of his thesis, dealing with the role of judicial precedent in keeping central court’ authority: the Supreme Court of the U.S. on the one hand, and the European Court of Justice on the other.

​Jan holds LLM from University of Stockholm (2004), Diploma of Academy of European Law (EUI, Florence 2004) and Total Law Course Diploma - (CEU, Budapest 2006). In 2004-2006 Jan worked for the Czech Government Agent before the ECJ.

​Jan’s articles appeared e.g. in Common Market Law Review, European Law Review or Yearbook of European Law. He is currently assistant editor of Civil Justice Quarterly and member of Advisory Board of European Review of Administrative Law.

Isabelle Ley Visiting Doctoral Researcher Germany

​Isabelle Ley is fellow of the graduate program “Multilevel Constitutionalism: European experiences and Global Perspectives” at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. The working title of her PhD thesis (supervised by Prof. Ulrich K. Preuss) is “On Procedural aspects of the legitimacy of international law making.” She investigates whether international law creation reflects the political quality of the law adequately.

​Isabelle Ley studied law, philosophy and political science at the universities of Heidelberg and Hamburg and at Sciences Po, Paris, with a focus on legal philosophy, political theory and international law. She was an intern to the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and EUROJUST at The Hague. In Beriln, Isabelle Ley worked as teaching and research assistant for Prof. Preuss at the Hertie School of Governance.

Danilo Semeghini Visiting Doctoral Researcher Italy

Danilo Semeghini is currently a PhD student in Corporate and Commercial Law at University of Brescia, Italy. He graduated cum laude from the University of Milan Law School in April 2005, with a dissertation on venture capitalism and Italian corporate law reform. After an internship in 2005 at the Listing & Legal Affairs Department of Borsa Italiana s.p.a. (Italian stock exchange), he practiced in a law firm in Milan and served as an assistant professor in the Corporate and Commercial Law Department of the University of Milan, Law School until July 2006. In May 2007 he received an LLM degree, Harlan Fiske Stone Honor, from Columbia Law School. He published an article on liability of directors toward creditors and statute of limitation on an Italian law review.

2006-2007 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Yaron Catane Visiting Doctoral Researcher Israel

Mr. Yaron Catane is currently a doctoral student at the Hebrew University School of Law in Jerusalem, specializing in labor and employment law. His research focuses on theoretical and practical aspects of resolving employment disputes. He is currently a Visiting Doctoral Researcher at the Hauser Global Law School Program and at the Center for Labor and Employment Law, NYU School of Law.

Mr. Catane obtained his Master of Laws degree (LLM) in Labor Law in 2004, and was a lecturer and assistant in Labor and Employment Law and in Jewish Law at the Hebrew University, Haifa University and Kiryat Ono College.

He has worked in various positions in the legal field: as a lawyer and mediator, clerking for the President of the National Labor Court in Israel, and working as the senior legal assistant in the Regional Labor Court in Jerusalem. He participated in the XVII World Congress of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security (ISLLSS), Montevideo, Uruguay, in 2003, by fellowship grant from the ISLLSS, and presented on the topic "Remedies for Wrongful Dismissals." Mr. Catane also participated in the Montana Labor Relations Conference in 2004, and presented on the topic "Remedies for Wrongful Discharge: European and Montana Perspectives."

Mr. Catane obtained ordination as a Rabbi by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, and teaches Jewish Law in various classes. He is married and has five children.

Isabel Feichtner Visiting Doctoral Researcher Germany

Ms. Isabel Feichtner is writing her dissertation on waivers in the WTO. The dissertation shall be a contribution to the broader discussion on the legalization of international relations and the relationship between law and politics on the international level.

Isabel studied law at Freiburg, the Universiteit van Amsterdam and Humboldt University in Berlin and received an LLM from Cardozo Law School. She is admitted to practice law in Germany and is a member of the New York Bar. After her studies at Cardozo Law School she worked for one year as a corporate associate at the New York law firm Cravath, Swaine and Moore. From 2004-2006 she has been a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg.

At NYU she was Professor Weiler's teaching assistant.

Claes Granmar Visiting Doctoral Researcher Sweden

​Mr. Claes Granmar received his Master of Laws in 1996 from the Stockholm University, Sweden, combined with the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and his Master of EC Law from the Stockholm University, Sweden, where he was a member of the winning team in the Case-Study Competition 1997. In addition, Mr. Granmar received his M.BA in Marketing Management from the Graduate School for Marketing and Communication at Stockholm University in 1999, where he won the prize for best result on the test on decoding patterns of abstract relations between objects.

​Mr. Granmar is the author of a Swedish handbook on trademarks and domain names and has recently published the article "Some Reflections upon Branding and Trademarks" in the Nordic legal magazine Nordiskt Immateriellt Rättsskydd (NIR). He is an often-appointed lecturer in trademark law at the Undergraduate Law Program and Master Program in Intellectual Property Law at Stockholm University. Mr. Granmar is a visiting researcher at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. Before taking up his doctoral research, Mr. Granmar has been working as an in-house lawyer at Morningstar Europe AB, as a trademark and domain name consultant at Domain Network AB and as a deputy lawyer at Stockholm County Administrative Board.

​Mr. Granmar's dissertation, "Expanding trademark protection, the market and society," treats the impact a widened scope of trademark protection and trademark centered competition has on the function of markets, on the freedom of expression and on cultures in a U.S. law and EC law context. During the year as a Visiting Doctoral Researcher he reconciles legal aspects and recent findings in sociology in his research interests which include privatization of symbols versus public access to symbols, the spread of global sameness versus cultural diversity, and trademark protection versus freedom of expression.

​Ms. Emily Hartz is studying for the degree of PhD in Philosophy at The Danish University of Education. Her project entitled "Legal Conceptualizations of Necessity related to the Present 'Global War on Terrorism'" is sponsored by the Danish Research Council. The objective of the project is to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing courtroom articulations of the concept of necessity in relation to the present terrorism conflict.

​Ms. Hartz has studied philosophy and mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin; Freie Universtät, Berlin; Universität der Künste, Berlin, as well as Copenhagen University. She received her Master's degree in Philosophy from Copenhagen University in Denmark in 2003.

​After graduating she worked for the Centre for Ethics and Law in Copenhagen and the German Reference Centre for Ethics in the Life Sciences in Bonn. In this connection she has been assigned to a number of EU-sponsored research projects where she has successfully carried out research in the field of ethics and law.

Claire O'Brien Visiting Doctoral Researcher United Kingdom

Niels Petersen Visiting Doctoral Researcher Germany

​Mr. Niels Petersen is PhD candidate at the University of Frankfurt and an associate fellow of the Junior Research Group of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. He is currently writing his dissertation on "The Legitimacy of Governments under International Law."

Mr. Petersen received his law degree in 2003 from the University of Muenster after having studied at the Universities of Muenster and Geneva, and the Geneva Graduate Institute for International Studies (HEI).

From 2004 to 2006, he was research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, working on human rights issues, the theory of international law and German constitutional law. Additionally, he gave lectures on fundamental rights at the University of Frankfurt in 2006.

At the same time, he was legal clerk at the Appellate Court of Frankfurt and passed his bar exam in 2005. In the course of this two-year traineeship, he worked, inter alia , for the German Embassy in Bangkok and for the GTZ Legal Advisory Service in Beijing, a project providing advise in legislative affairs to the Chinese National People's Congress.

2005-2006 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Stephen Humphreys Visiting Doctoral Researcher Ireland

Mr. Stephen Humphreys is studying for the degree of PhD in Law at the University of Cambridge, England. His research, entitled Legal Intervention: the Parameters of Transnational Law Reform , will attempt to capture the range and scope of donor efforts to promote the rule of law around the world, a field of activity which has come to prominence since 1989.

In 1993, Mr. Humphreys received his BA in English, First Class Honours, from Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland. He was awarded the Chevening Scholarship to complete his MA in International and Comparative Law and graduated in 2003, summa cum laude, from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, United Kingdom.

Mr. Humphreys has worked with a number of organizations involved in transnational law reform, particularly in human rights, but also in international environmental law. He has lived in Senegal and Hungary, and speaks French and Hungarian. He travels compulsively, and has been in much of West and East Africa, Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He has experience in journalism, publishing and literary translation, and has taught postcolonial literature and postmodern theory at Eotvos Jozsef Kollegium, ELTE University, Hungary.

Tuula Mouhu-Young Visiting Doctoral Researcher Finland

Tzvika Nissel Visiting Doctoral Researcher United States of America & Belgium

Mr. Tzvika Nissel graduated with a degree in English Literature from Yeshiva University, United States, in 1997. Mr. Nissel then read English Law in Jesus College, Cambridge University, United Kingdom, in 1999. Following his work at Cambridge, he began working as a real estate analyst and then covered emerging market banks from 1999 to 2001. Subsequently, he clerked in the Supreme Court of Israel. Mr. Nissel returned to graduate school in 2002 and earned an LLM. in International Legal Studies from NYU School of Law in May 2003.

In 2004, Mr. Nissel was a founding partner of Dudley Lotus, a U.S. law firm with an international law practice. He is currently writing his doctoral dissertation on International Responsibility for the University of Helsinki, Finland.

2004-2005 Visiting Doctoral Researchers

Natasha Balendra Visiting Doctoral Researcher Sri Lanka

​Natasha Balendra is a Visiting Doctoral Researcher working in both the Hauser Global Law School Program and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Natasha's academic work focuses primarily on international human rights law. She is currently reading for a D.Phil. degree at the University of Oxford where she is a Clarendon Scholar. Her research involves an examination of the extent to which a state's international human rights obligations apply to its extra-territorial activities. Natasha holds an LLB from Kings College London, an M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge and an LLM from Harvard Law School. Natasha has worked as a consultant to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, practiced law both in Sri Lanka and New York and taught at the School of Law at Kings College London.

Gyorgy Lissauer Visiting Doctoral Researcher United Kingdom

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Gyorgy Lissauer was brought up in Budapest and London. He began his undergraduate studies in European Legal Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury, which included a year at the University of Amsterdam. He then moved to Oxford University to read for the one year B.C.L. before beginning research for an M.Phil. on Establishing United Nations Administered Territories: The Case of Kosovo and East Timor . His doctoral research is an expansion of the M.Phil. Thesis, analyzing the constitutional and international law dimensions of transitional administration of territories by the United Nations.

Dayna Nadine Scott Visiting Doctoral Researcher Canada

Dayna Nadine Scott received a B.Sc. from the University of Guelph before heading to York University for the joint M.E.S./LLB degree program in 1997. Her Master's thesis entitled "Carbon Sinks Science and the Kyoto Protocol: Controversy as Opportunity for Paradigmatic Policy Shifts" won the York University Thesis Prize for 2001. After completing a judicial clerkship at the Federal Court of Canada and being called to the Bar of Ontario, Dayna returned to Osgoode Hall Law School to pursue her PhD She holds a SSHRC doctoral fellowship and a Fulbright scholarship.

Dayna was recently awarded a Law Commission of Canada prize for her work on Law & Risk ("Shifting the Burden of Proof: The Precautionary Principle and its Potential for the Democratization of Risk" is forthcoming from UBC Press) and is currently working on another Law Commission of Canada and SSHRC funded study entitled "Sharing Knowledges of Risk: Citizen Engagement with Law, Science and Biotechnology."

Dayna's dissertation, Deconstructing the Precautionary Principle , treats the emerging concept of 'precaution' as a powerful legal and rhetorical instrument in the context of environmental and health risk controversies. Her research interests include: environmental law and policy; risk and regulation; environmental justice; law, science and democracy; food safety; environment, trade and globalization.

Benjamin Straumann Visiting Doctoral Researcher Switzerland

​Benjamin Straumann received his degree from the University of Zurich after studies in history, constitutional law and philosophy in Zurich and as an Erasmus Scholar in Rome. He is spending the year as a Visiting Doctoral Researcher at the Hauser Global Law School Program and the Program in the History and Theory of International Law, completing his dissertation on the classical foundations of Hugo Grotius's De Jure Belli ac Pacis , a project funded by a research fellowship from the University of Zurich ( Forschungskredit der Universität Zürich ).

​For the past two years, Straumann has been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, where he has also taught. Previously he served as a teaching assistant at the University of Zurich and worked for the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations. His research interests include the history of natural and international law, natural rights and social contract theories, as well as the early modern reception of classical antiquity.

Anne Weber Visiting Doctoral Researcher France

​Anne Weber graduated in law from the University of Strasbourg, France, in 1999. She completed a Master's degree in the European Protection of Human Rights in 2000, also from the University of Strasbourg.

​Currently, she is writing a doctoral dissertation in Human Rights Law at the Robert Schuman Law School of Strasbourg and at Geneva Law School, Switzerland. The subject of her thesis is the non-contentious control mechanisms of Human Rights (reporting procedures, institutions of Commissioner, Rapporteurs), which covers both regional and universal systems, as they are developing and with the view to suggest possible ways of redefining their role and functions.

​During the first semester of the academic year 2002-2003, she served as a teaching assistant of the European Master's Program in Human Rights and Democratization, in Venice, Italy. For the past year Anne Weber have been research and teaching assistant at the University of Strasbourg, teaching Constitutional Law and European Comparative Law. She is also working as a volunteer for Amnesty International, representing it to the Council of Europe, and she is a member of the editorial committee of L'Europe des libertés , a law journal.

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Visiting PhD students from abroad

Visiting PhD students are foreign or Italian doctoral students enrolled at foreign universities invited to UniBo departments to carry out a mobility period, outside international cooperation agreements or projects the University of Bologna takes part in. The following information does not apply to PhD students enrolled at the University of Bologna or to mobility students under cotutelle agreements or within international agreements or projects (i.e. Erasmus+).

If your destination is Bologna, contact the International Desk for help with incoming procedures. For other destinations, contact the International Relations Office of the relative  campus :  Cesena ,  Forlì ,  Ravenna ,  Rimini .

Visa issuing procedures take a long time and you should start the procedure well in advance (at least 3 months).

Before arriving in Italy

Eu citizens.

If you are a citizen of one of the European Union countries or of Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and San Marino, you must:

• check that your identity document is valid for the entire duration of your stay in Italy;
• have appropriate health care coverage valid in Italy ( EHIC  card and/or private insurance ).

Non-EU Citizens

You must check if you need a visa on the  Visa for Italy  website by selecting “Study – Exchange and mobility programme” as the reason for your stay.

If you need a visa, you have to:

• pre-enrol online via the  Universitaly portal   (step 6) . In the application you must indicate: - “Specify the reason for the visa application”: I want to spend a mobility period for study/traineeship (e.g. Erasmus); - “Course information”: Institution: Università degli Studi di Bologna, Course type: Corso/i singolo/i – Single course(s), Course name: in the text field you must describe your position at the University of Bologna, e.g.: Visiting PhD (and your contact professor at Unibo).
• apply for a visa . Contact the relevant Italian Embassy well in advance to check the specific documents required for a visa for study purposes. Usually you need to submit: - passport or valid travel document expiring at least three months following the requested visa; - a letter of invitation from the department at the University of Bologna hosting you; - the summary of your Universitaly pre-enrolment application validated by the University of Bologna; - a document demonstrating suitable means of financial support; - demonstration of accommodation (hotel booking, declaration of hosting signed by an EU citizen or non-EU citizen with an Italian residence permit); - if you are not entitled to health care in Italy by virtue of agreements in force with your home country, a health insurance policy for medical care and hospital treatment. Read more on  Medical Assistance for Foreign Students .

Visitors with a D-type study visa may apply for a residence permit. While your residence permit for study purposes is valid, you may work for up to 20 hours a week. These hours are cumulative over fifty-two weeks, with a maximum limit of 1,040 hours (for more information, see art 14 comma 4, DPR n. 394/1999).

After your arrival in Italy

Upon arrival, you will need to check-in at your hosting department. Bring an ID with you: your passport or, only if you are a EU citizen, your Identity Card. Check on the Department website or ask your contact professor for the contact of the competent administrative staff. Your registration will be done through a “Visiting” application.

In order to check-in, your mobility period must already be registered by your academic contact and approved by the Department Director.

At check-in you will get a username and a password to access the online services of the University of Bologna and your Arrival Statement, which you will then use to apply for your residence permit (see below).

If you need a badge, after check-in please inform the Department staff or your contact professor; they will request it following the procedure specified on the intranet.

You will need to provide them with a passport size photo, with a .jpg extension and max size of 300KB; the photo must comply with the same rules that apply to valid ID photos.

Once the request has been approved, you will receive an e-mail with a QR CODE and the instructions to follow to collect your  badge at one of the self-service machines .

Accident insurance

As an exchange student, after check-in, you are insured against accidents that may occur on the university premises or any other place in which studies and research activities authorized by the University are performed.

For more information read about the  insurance service  of the University of Bologna.

Residing in Italy: EU Citizens

You can register in the registry office of the Municipality where you live. Read the instructions on the website of the Municipality.

If you live in the Municipality of Bologna and your stay in Italy is temporary (you are resident abroad), check how to apply for temporary residence at the Municipality of Bologna . Alternatively, check how to apply for residency at the Municipality of Bologna.

Residing in Italy: non-EU Citizens

Declaration of presence

If you intend to stay in Italy for less than 90 days, you do not need to apply for a residence permit, but you must go to the Questura within 8 days for the Declaration of presence (if not exempted). Read the general information on how to make the Declaration of presence for exchange students. Attention: in contrast to what is stated, as a visiting PhD student you check-in at the hosting Department.

Residence permit

If you have a D-type visa for study purposes and intend to stay in Italy for more than 90 days, you must apply for a residence permit within 8 working days of your arrival in Italy. Read the information about how to apply for a  residence permit  for exchange students.

Attention: in contrast to what is stated, as a visiting PhD student you will check-in at your hosting department instead of at the International Relations Office.

For information and to book a free appointment with an immigration support service, you can write to [email protected]. The staff of the immigration support service will provide you with an application kit (including the envelope, required forms and payment slip), and will assist you free of charge in filling out the application for the issue or renewal of the residence permit.

At the end of the mobility period

Before leaving, don’t forget to check out at the same office where you checked in. You will get a Certificate of Departure, confirming the start and end dates of your mobility period at the University of Bologna. Detailed certifications for the activities carried out may be issued by your contact professor.

CONTACTS FOR INTERNATIONAL STAFF, PROFESSORS AND RESEARCHERS

Information for: PhD candidates (with visa or resident permit for research); visiting PhD students; visiting researchers, fellows; visiting professors; visiting scholars

Via Filippo Re 4 - 40126 Bologna (Italy)

Visiting Scholar/Visiting Researcher Program: Cost

5005 Wasserstein Hall (WCC) 1585 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138

Fees and Expenses

The Program and Activity Fees for Visiting Scholars and Visiting Researchers (“Visitors”) for the  2024-2025  academic year* are as follows:

• Visiting Scholars (those who received their highest law degree ten or more years ago):  $7,400
• Visiting Researchers (those who received their highest law degree within the last 10 years, or who are completing a doctorate or other advanced law degree):  $3,900
• Visiting Researchers who graduated from Harvard Law School within the previous 12 months:  $1,900

For the  2024-2025  academic year*, the total cost of housing, food, medical fees, books and supplies, and personal and travel expenses for a single Visitor was at least  $36,896  in living expenses for a 10 month period (not including Program and Activity Fees). In addition, we estimated $194 /month (or $1,940 /two-term appointment) for J-visa compliant health insurance for a single Visitor, though there are many policies available and actual rates depend on the Visitor and the specific terms of each policy. (Visit  http://www.hio.harvard.edu/health-care-scholars  for more information.) For married Visitors, living expenses for a spouse would be a minimum of  $17,777  for a 10-month stay, and an additional  $9,333  for each child, not including dependent health insurance fees.

Please note:   If you are admitted for a two-semester appointment beginning in the spring, please use the following estimates in determining your cost: A single person will expect to incur at least  $44,275  in living expenses for a 12-month period (including the summer months).  In addition, we estimate $194/month (or $2,328/year) for J-visa compliant health insurance for a single Visitor, though there are many policies available and actual rates depend on the Visitor and the specific terms of each policy. (Visit http://www.hio.harvard.edu/health-care-scholars for more information.)  At a minimum an additional  $21,333  would be required for the living expenses of your spouse and an additional  $11,200  per child would also be required, not including dependent health insurance fees.

There is no financial aid available from Harvard Law School for Visiting Scholars or Visiting Researchers.

* Fees are subject to change.

Other Sources of Funds

Applicants seeking financial assistance should investigate funding sources in their home countries well in advance. Examples of such sources include employers, government agencies and foundations. Loans from private lending institutions in the U.S. may also be available to international applicants.

The  United States Embassy  or consulate in an international applicant’s home country may have information on U.S. government grants under the  Fulbright program  and other information on fellowship opportunities. Applicants who are from certain countries or who meet certain specific criteria may be eligible for a number of scholarships administered by Harvard University’s  Committee on General Scholarships . Please note that many of these scholarships have their own application procedures and deadlines, and students must apply for some of these funds by contacting committees or agencies in their home countries.

In some cases it may be possible for Visitors to undertake part-time paid employment on campus, e.g., working in the Law School Library or as research assistants for faculty members. Generally speaking, Visitors can expect to earn up to a total of  $3,500  over the course of the academic year in return for 6–8 hours of work per week. These positions cannot be arranged through the Graduate Program Office. Visitors interested in such employment must seek out such positions after arrival at Harvard Law School. Off-campus employment during the year of study is not permitted for international Visitors.

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Visiting Research Fellow application procedure / information

The Institute of Social Science accepts Visiting Research Fellows (VRF) as part of our efforts to strengthen international academic exchanges. Faculty members, researchers, and doctoral students at a university, research institute, or an equivalent organization outside of Japan are eligible to apply. If you intend to apply for affiliation with ISS in this category, please refer to the “Guide for ISS Visiting Research Fellows” for further instructions.

Please note that only a researcher who is either (1) a researcher at a research institute, university, or an equivalent organization outside of Japan, or (2) a doctoral student or an equivalent status at a university or an equivalent organization outside of Japan, is eligible for application. The condition applies regardless of the applicant's citizenship, including Japanese nationals.

Applicants should first contact a faculty member at ISS (full or associate professor) to request formal sponsorship of their visit. The ISS sponsor will then contact the ISS Director to ascertain the availability of office space and resources during the dates requested. The Director's Office will then contact the applicant with the formal application.

Please note that applicants should submit their full application forms at least three months before the intended start date.

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This page will address basic financial aid questions for SLU LAW students who wish to visit another law school and for other law students who wish to visit SLU LAW.

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SLU LAW Students

Fall/spring enrollment.

SLU LAW students must have permission from the dean of students to visit at another law school during the academic year and obtain approval for the classes that will be taken.

Once approved, you will need to complete the Financial Aid Consortium Request Form . This form lists the University's consortium policy along with information on the host institution. You must submit this form to the Office of Student Financial Services if you wish to receive financial aid during the semester you are visiting at another school. Once submitted, it will be sent to the host institution. This form must be completed every semester that a student is visiting at another institution.

Saint Louis University may enter into Financial Aid Consortium Agreements with other institutions which provide sound and unique educational experiences which are not available at Saint Louis University. These agreements allow Saint Louis University to process certain types of financial aid for a student's use for no more than one year at the other institution. The deans of individual colleges must evaluate and may approve, on a case-by-case basis, the academic merit of the study-away experience/course work and its transferability to the student's University degree program. Such Financial Aid Consortium Agreements will allow students, contingent on aid program regulations, to utilize only the federal Stafford loan, federal Graduate PLUS loan and any state or private (non-University) student aid programs in meeting the costs of attendance at the consortium institution.

Students are not eligible for any Saint Louis University or School of Law funds during the semester(s) they are visiting at another institution. Students must complete their FAFSA and other loan applications with Saint Louis University. As Saint Louis University is the home institution, all aid will be processed through SLU. Funds are disbursed to Saint Louis University based on the start dates of the School of Law — there are no exceptions to this rule. Once funds are disbursed to SLU, they will be refunded to the student who is responsible for paying their host institution. Students are responsible for being in contact with both institutions to ensure that all files are complete for proper disbursement of loan funds along with full payment to the host institution.

Non-SLU LAW Students

Non-SLU LAW students (including the SLU LAW study abroad program in Madrid) who wish to visit at Saint Louis University School of Law and wish to receive financial aid from their home institution will need to complete a financial aid consortium form with their home institution. The financial aid office at your home institution can forward the consortium form to the Office of Student Financial Services at this address:

Saint Louis University School of Law c/o Office of Student Financial Services 100 N. Tucker Blvd., Suite 1008 St. Louis, MO 63101-1930

Students are responsible for maintaining contact with both university financial aid offices to ensure that funds are disbursed and refunded in a timely manner. Visiting students are responsible for making payment arrangements for their Saint Louis University balance by the appropriate payment dates. If disbursement of loan funds from the home institution is delayed, visiting students should obtain documentation as to the date of disbursement and the issuance of refund checks from their home institution. The visiting student should then meet with the Office of Student Financial Services in the School of Law with this information to assist in making payment arrangements.

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Applications from transfer students will be considered from individuals who have successfully completed one year in a full-time or part-time program at another law school approved by the American Bar Association (ABA). Please see the American Bar Association website for a list of ABA-approved law schools. Successful transfer applicants must complete at least half (45) of the 89 credits required for graduation after enrolling at the William S. Richardson School of Law. Applicants may not transfer more than 44 credits from another law school. See Student Handbook , Academic Regulations, Section 1.14.

To receive transfer credit for courses taken at another ABA-approved law school, transfer students or UH law students visiting another ABA-approved law school must first obtain the approval of the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the Law School Registrar. The transfer student must provide a syllabus or an official description of the course in sufficient detail upon request to enable the Associate Dean to determine whether the course is substantially similar to an equivalent course at the Law School.

In all cases in which transfer credits are allowed, the grades earned for those credits are not counted toward the student’s GPA; a grade of “Credit” will be used for all transferred credits. A student must have earned at least a grade of “D” for the credits to be transferred. While attending another law program as a visiting student, students must take all courses for a grade; i.e. they may not enroll in courses graded “Pass/Fail” or “Credit/No Credit” unless that law school confirms that the course is only offered “Pass/Fail” or “Credit/No Credit.” The student’s prior cumulative grade point average may not be used in computing the student’s Law School cumulative GPA for any purpose, including graduation and eligibility to continue to enroll.  See Student Handbook , Academic Regulations, Section 1.14.

Transfer students must complete the Law School pro bono requirement.  Full Time transfer students must complete a total of 10 hours of Pro Bono service for every semester enrolled in the Law School.  Part Time transfer students must complete a total of 10 hours of Pro Bono service for every 15 credits taken at the Law School.  See Student Handbook , Academic Regulations, Section 1.30.

Information for transfer students who want to apply to become student editors for our law journals can be found at the following websites:

• The University of Hawaiʻi Law Review
• Asian-Pacific Law & Policy Journal

VISITING STUDENTS

Students enrolled in another ABA-approved law school may apply to earn credit at the Law School as visiting students. JD degrees will be awarded by their home institutions. Priority in selection is given to those entering the third year of law school.

A student visiting the Law School may not participate in a course lottery for limited enrollment courses but may enroll during open enrollment if space permits.  With prior written approval of the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the Law School Registrar, a visiting student may take Second Year or Law Thesis on a space-available basis. See Student Handbook , Academic Regulations, Section 1.13.

WHO CAN APPLY

Transfer and Visiting students may apply to begin in the fall or spring semester. Applicants must be in good standing at an ABA-accredited law school.

We give preference to applicants who:

• have attained a law school ranking in the upper half of their current class (we invite applicants in the lower half of their current class to offer an explanation);
• are residents of Hawaiʻi;
• have a close relationship to our State;
• have with a strong background and continuing interest in Native Hawaiian Law, Pacific-Asian Legal Studies, or Environmental Law;
• have a compelling personal need to study in Hawaiʻi (e.g., military transfer);
• meet our first-year admissions criteria (LSAT score, GPA).

Follow the steps on how to apply to learn about our requirements and how to submit your application to the William S. Richardson School of Law.

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‘Beyond Barriers’ program helps students with disabilities acclimate to college life

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August 12, 2024 : By Abigail Degnan - Office of Communications & Public Engagement

When Liberty University students arrive on campus for the first time, the first few days are filled with new adjustments. For students with disabilities, this transition period can present additional challenges. That’s why the Office of Disability Accommodation Support (ODAS), under LU ONE , created the Beyond Barriers Summer Transition Program , an immersive 10-day early orientation program.

Fifteen new students arrived on campus on Sunday, Aug. 4, to participate in the Beyond Barriers program. Although residence halls don’t officially open to new students until Aug. 14, the students in the program were able to move in early to their residence halls, eat in the dining hall, and connect with fellow students in a variety of engaging activities. Families were invited to a parent dinner on Sunday night, and during the week, students have been attending workshops, information sessions on key services and departments across the university, interactive training to improve self-regulation and self-determination, and fun group events, including bowling and arts and crafts.

The program helps students through every step, from moving in and touring buildings to familiarizing themselves with LU Transit Services. Volunteers from different departments meet with each student one-to-one to walk them through their daily class route. Students also pick up their textbooks early, learn about some of the software and programs that Liberty uses, and can complete UNIV 101, a 1-credit introduction to college course required for all new Liberty students.

The Beyond Barriers program involves an application process and is open to any student with a documented disability, including autism, ADHD, chronic illness, and more.

“ODAS exists to ensure that all students with disabilities have equal access to the learning environment, so it is free from barriers,” ODAS Senior Executive Director Ester Warren said. “We are very committed to developing and implementing new initiatives and programs to help students in an individualized and student-centered way. My hope is that more students will learn about Beyond Barriers, and as they decide to come to Liberty, if they are diagnosed with a disability they will take advantage of this program.”

Warren created Beyond Barriers after seeing how her son, who was diagnosed with autism at the age of 2, struggled to adjust to college life.

“This program really answers all the questions that I would’ve wanted answered during my son’s transition to Liberty,” Warren said. “They can experience everything that there is to experience before it gets really, really crowded.”

This is the second year of the program, with last year’s students having an 87.7% success rate of completing their first year on campus.

Each student receives a peer mentor that will help walk alongside them as they acclimate to campus life. Joelle Frazee, a sophomore pursuing a B.S. in Psychology , completed the Beyond Barriers program in 2023. The empowerment she felt from the program led her to become a peer mentor herself this year.

“The program really made something possible that once seemed impossible. My peer mentor continued to be a very close friend and amazing mentor throughout the entire year,” Frazee said. “I want to be able to impact people the way I had been impacted, because having somebody that you can lean on going into an experience as unknown as college is huge, especially when you have a disability.”

Frazee went on to become the president of the Autism Advocates Club at Liberty, as well as an honors student. She said she wouldn’t have been so successful if it were not for the faith of her fellow Beyond Barriers students and the ODAS staff.

Angel Andino, an incoming freshman pursuing a B.M. in Commercial Music , said he is very grateful for the early transition program.

“It’s definitely helped me with the moving in aspect that I’m able to slowly move into college life and meet people who have similar interests as me,” he said. “For anyone with a disability, this is a really good program to choose. It’s incredible.”

Fellow freshman Gentry Rose Dowdy, who is pursuing a B.A. in History , said she was pleased to discover what is offered through ODAS.

“A lot of schools, when I looked into them, I didn’t see any program or club for people with disabilities,” Dowdy said. “At Liberty they have ODAS and the Autism Advocates club, and I thought, ‘This is where I want to go,’ because they have stuff for me. For any accommodations I need, they don’t say, ‘No, you can’t have this.’ They say, ‘OK, we will get this to you as soon as possible.’”

Cyndie and Tim Sullivan dropped off their son, Chase, on Aug. 4 and felt immense comfort knowing he was in good hands after meeting Warren and her team on a campus visit last April.

“When we reunited with Dr. Warren and her team on Sunday, we immediately felt at home and had a wonderful feeling of peace about leaving without Chase,” Tim said. “This can be a stressful transition for a young person, and the love and care shown by the Beyond Barriers team, giving each student personal attention, provides a pathway to success.”

Andino said he feels confident starting college because of the early assistance he has received.

“Liberty is different. There’s something special about it,” he said. “I went to different colleges, and they weren’t ‘it.’ Then when I went to Liberty, I just had such a good feeling when I stepped on campus. When I said goodbye to my parents, I felt safe and secure that I had something to stand on going forward. This program has given me everything I’ve needed.”

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College of Behavioral and Community Sciences

Main navigation, mhlp visiting research scholar presents in barcelona.

Gerhardt explores Barcelona.

• August 9, 2024
• College News , Mental Health Law and Policy

Freeman Gerhardt, PhD, a recent graduate of the PhD in Behavioral and Community Sciences program and current visiting research scholar in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy (MHLP), presented his dissertation at the International Academy of Law and Mental Health conference in Barcelona. His presentation was titled, "Cross-system Strategic Planning: An Exploratory Analysis of Sequential Intercept Mapping."

Gerhardt expects his research findings outlined in his dissertation to advance local-level criminal justice deflection and diversion strategies, cross-system collaboration efforts, and inform the development of evidenced-based cross-system strategic planning in the behavioral health services ecosystem.

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The Mission of the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences (CBCS) is to advance knowledge through interdisciplinary teaching, research, and service that improves the capacity of individuals, families, and diverse communities to promote productive, satisfying, healthy, and safe lives across the lifespan. CBCS envisions the college as a globally recognized leader that creates innovative solutions to complex conditions that affect the behavior and well-being of individuals, families, and diverse communities.