Below is a listing of the past Visiting Doctoral Researchers from the years 2004 through 2024. Additionally, you may view the biographical information of our current Global Research Fellows and Global Fellows from Practice & Government.
2023-2024 Visiting Doctoral Researchers
Lorenza Giordani
Visiting Doctoral Researcher
Italy
Lorenza is a PhD candidate in legal studies at Bocconi University in Milan, under the supervision of Prof. M. Lillà Montagnani.
Her academic interests cover Intellectual Property Law, with a specific focus on copyright law and visual arts. In particular, Lorenza’s PhD research project focuses on copyright and moral rights issues related to the destruction of artworks, from a comparative perspective.
At NYU, she explores several topics, ranging from the interplay between artists’ moral rights and public interest, to the impact-assessment of the US Visual Artists’ Right Act, and to the legal foundations of the conflict between artists and artwork owners.
Lorenza holds a master’s degree from the University of Trento (Italy) where she graduated summa cum laude in 2018. She also studied at Yeditepe University (Turkey), where she was an Erasmus student, and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel).
Before pursuing her PhD, she practiced law as a trainee and later as a lawyer (Milan Bar) and interned at the European Commission in Brussels.
Anika Kabani
Visiting Doctoral Researcher
USA
Anika Kabani is a DPhil candidate in Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Her doctoral research seeks to explore the experiences of asylum seekers of Muslim heritage in the United States. She investigates the creation of an ideal Muslim citizenship as a negotiated and contested process between Muslim immigrants, legal advocates, and the state through the humanitarian immigration regime. She further seeks to explore the impact, outside of formal legal settings, of state-sanctioned interpretations of Islam on practices of everyday religiosity and theological understandings amongst Muslim asylum seekers. Her research is funded by the Farhad Daftary Doctoral Scholarship from the Institute of Ismaili Studies.
Anika holds an MSc in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, an MA in Islamic Studies and Humanities from SOAS, and BAs in Anthropology and International Studies from Washington University in St. Louis.
Claudia McHardy
Visiting Doctoral Researcher
New Zealand
Claudia McHardy is a doctoral candidate and Clarendon Scholar at the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Professors Mary Bosworth and Lucia Zedner. Claudia’s research concerns a monitoring and supervision regime for New Zealand nationals returned following an overseas criminal sentence. Ostensibly modelled on domestic parole arrangements, in practice the regime for overseas offenders entails a greater level of restriction while offering fewer legal protections. During her time at NYU, Claudia will publish critical commentary on the legislation, with the aim of informing future legal challenges.
Claudia holds a Master’s in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Oxford and a Bachelor’s in Social Policy and Criminology from the London School of Economics. Her academic interests include colonial and penal history, the boundaries of punishment,and the relationship between penal power, sovereignty, and citizenship. Claudia's work has been published in Punishment & Society and cited by the High Court of New Zealand. She is the Book Review Editor for Border Criminologies.
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 19th to the mid 20th 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-19th 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.
Visiting Doctoral Researchers
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.
Emily Hartz
Visiting Doctoral Researcher
Denmark
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.