phd law human rights

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Area of Interest Human Rights

Through an extensive range of clinical experiences and courses, Harvard Law School students study, research, and practice human rights law, advocating for clients and working with partners and communities in the U.S. and around the world. No other law school provides students with more opportunities to learn about, and help promote and defend, fundamental human rights, both in times of peace and during armed conflict.

From Harvard Law Today

Hls professors, sabrineh ardalan.

Clinical Professor of Law

Elizabeth Bartholet

Morris Wasserstein Public Interest Professor of Law, Emeritus

Gabriella Blum

Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law

Susan H. Farbstein

Tyler giannini, mary ann glendon.

Learned Hand Professor of Law, Emerita

Alan Jenkins

Professor of Practice

Martha L. Minow

300th Anniversary University Professor

Gerald L. Neuman

J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law

Henry J. Steiner

Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law, Emeritus

Kristen A. Stilt

Professor of Law

Laurence H. Tribe

Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Emeritus

Lucie E. White

Louis A. Horvitz Professor of Law

Visiting Professors & Lecturers

Arnulf becker lorca.

Visiting Professor of Law

Rebecca Richman Cohen

Lecturer on Law

Lisa Dicker

Bonnie docherty, jessica fjeld, nancy gertner.

Senior Lecturer on Law

Havva Guney-Ruebenacker

Sue hendrickson, baba jallow, ioannis kalpouzos, mary d. lewis.

Harvard University Affiliated Professor

Beatrice Lindstrom

Victor madrigal-borloz.

Henry J. Steiner Visiting Professor in Human Rights

Aminta Ossom

Hannah perls, philippe sands, nana sarian, matthew smith, michael ashley stein, john willshire, alicia yamin, cyberlaw clinic, government lawyer: semester in washington clinic, housing law clinic, harvard immigration and refugee clinic, international human rights clinic, making rights real: the ghana project clinic, research programs and centers, animal law & policy program, berkman klein center for internet and society, east asian legal studies program, human rights program, institute for global law and policy, julis-rabinowitz program on jewish and israeli law, petrie-flom center: health law, biotech and bioethics, program on international law and armed conflict, program on law and society in the muslim world, harvard law school project on disability, systemic justice project, related courses, modal gallery, gallery block modal gallery.

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About The Program

2023-24 Satter Fellow: Aizhan Tilenbaeva

HRP is delighted to announce the 2023-24 Satter Fellow Aizhan Tilenbaeva LLM ’22. Aizhan is a human rights and international…

2024-2025 Henigson Fellowship Application Now Open

The Human Rights Program is pleased to announce that the application for the 2024-2025 Henigson Fellowship is now open.  The…

PLSMW and HRP Announce Joint Fellowship in Honor of Neelan Tiruchelvam

The Human Rights Program (HRP) and Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World (PLSMW) at Harvard Law School…

View All News .

Publications

Intersectionality and Standing in Climate-Related Human Rights Cases

The European Court of Human Rights’ Gendered Climate Docket: KlimaSeniorinnen and Duarte Agostinho

Based Solely on their Date of Birth? Rethinking Age Discrimination against Children under the Convention on the Rights of the Child

View Publications.

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How to Find a Strong Human Rights Law Program

Target law schools with human rights law clinics and journals, as well as a broad selection of relevant courses.

Find a Strong Human Rights Law Program

Getty Images

An introductory course on human rights law is a start, but a good human rights law program should have a variety of related course offerings.

Key Takeaways:

• Look for more than an introductory course on human rights law.
• Find out what law faculty know and are doing that's relevant.
• Find out what the school's students specializing in human rights law do after graduating.

Clinical opportunities, quality professors and active student organizations are important criteria when choosing a law school with a solid human rights program, experts say, and students should carefully research programs to find their best fit.

The Human Rights Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law "played a major role in my decision of where to attend law school,” says Gita Howard, a human rights attorney who graduated from the Florida law school in 2021.

Howard’s initial interest in pursuing international human rights law was formed during the many summers she spent in India growing up. She says she developed a nuanced understanding of global issues and a drive to create a positive global impact.

“International human rights law seemed like a tangible and meaningful way to pursue my passion for social change.”

Finding a strong human rights law program is important to prepare students for a successful career as a human rights lawyer, experts say. Here are the top features they say students should be looking for in a program.

A Broad Selection of Human Rights Law Courses

An introductory course on human rights law is a start, but a good human rights law program should have a variety of related course offerings, experts say.

Prospective students should research whether the program offers courses “on the full spectrum of international human rights law,” says Diane A. Desierto, professor of law and global affairs at the University of Notre Dame Law School in Indiana, where she also is faculty director of the LL.M. in International Human Rights Law and founding director of the Global Human Rights Clinic.

Such courses should include civil, political, economic, social, cultural, developmental, environmental and labor topics, “as well as the frontier courses on the expanding applications of international human rights law across public law and private law ,” she says.

Desierto says students should also find out whether a program offers legal and interdisciplinary methods, as well as theoretical and experiential opportunities to gain expertise in international human rights law.

Experienced Human Rights Law Faculty

Other features to look for in a program are faculty actively working on human rights law projects, faculty publishing human rights law papers and scholar-practitioners.

Notre Dame's program, for example, enables students “to customize their learning, training, and mentoring according to specific professional objectives across different forms of human rights law practice,” Desierto says. The small class sizes mean students have access to one-on-one mentoring and customized learning from different experts throughout the university and its global campuses abroad.

Students already in law school who want to specialize in human rights "should be researching which faculty are specializing in human rights in their scholarship and courses,” says Anna Ivey, founder of Ivey Consulting, which helps people apply to selective U.S. colleges and law schools.

An Impressive Job Attainment Record

Desierto says it's important to look into whether a program invests in the well-being and success of their students during and after graduation.

“Our program does this extensively during the student's matriculation into the program, as well as in supporting postgraduate clerkships and internships in international, regional and national courts and tribunals and organizations,” Desierto says. The program measures success by how its students "flourish and succeed in their work of striving for human rights outcomes in their respective countries and communities."

It's also important to find out whether alumni are working with major human rights institutions. Ivey recommends students check law schools' social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, "to see what alums work in the field to get a sense of the alumni network for that specialization.”

A Human Rights Clinic or Law Journal

Participating in a human rights law clinic or contributing to human rights law journals is important on the resumes of aspiring human rights lawyers, as positions in the field are competitive, experts say.

“Human rights clinics provide a really critical opportunity for students to develop their knowledge of human rights law, as well as practice the necessary skills to succeed in the field under the guidance of experts,” Howard says.

For example, the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Miami provides students with experiential learning opportunities in U.S. and international human rights litigation and advocacy, allowing students to work with the United Nations and the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights.

“Its inspiring professors and meaningful projects gave me the skills, support and network necessary to pursue a career in human rights law,” Howard says.

Apart from looking at whether a law school offers clinics or journals dedicated to human rights law, Ivey recommends looking at whether such a journal “hosts some kind of annual symposium on the topic.”

Other activities, such as participation in relevant student groups, are important, experts say. For example, Howard served as president and co-founder of the Human Rights Society, an advocacy organization at her school.

Scholarships and Fellowships

Law school can be expensive and human rights law may not pay as well as other law specialties, so scholarship opportunities are an important consideration, experts say.

Experts say a law school’s investment in human rights law can be seen in scholarships offered to students in the discipline. Students can check a school's website for scholarship information. Notre Dame's program typically provides full scholarships for 15 to 20 students, Desierto says.

There are also fellowships available during and after law school. Twice, Howard was a HOPE Fellow, receiving funding to pursue public interest summer jobs while in law school. She spent her first summer interning at the Tibetan Legal Association in Dharamsala, India, and her second summer as an intern for the U.N.'s Office of Legal Affairs in the general legal division.

“After law school, a common way to break into the human rights field is through a fellowship with a human rights organization,” Howard says.

Howard received a Human Rights Program Fellowship from her law school with a placement at Human Rights First, a nonprofit, nonpartisan international human rights organization. After her fellowship, she was brought on as an associate attorney. She notes that fellowship opportunities often require funding from a student's law school, as well.

“It can be helpful for students to research whether fellowship funding is currently or potentially available at a prospective law school,” Howard says.

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Human Rights PhD

Key information.

• 1st   in the world for Development Studies   (QS World University Rankings by Subject 2024)

Our PhD in Human Rights is radically interdisciplinary, spanning the social sciences and humanities. As a doctoral researcher, you’ll have the opportunity to undertake research in human rights beyond a narrow legal approach. You’ll:

• be co-supervised by faculty with expertise in a wide range of areas, from social sciences to humanities and to law
• benefit from our strong international networks for research and collaboration
• be a part of the doctoral and early career researcher community affiliated with the Centre for Rights and Anti-Colonial Justice , and participate in the research-in-progress seminars and other events of the Centre.

Areas of study

Our areas of expertise and supervision include:

• human rights in international politics and global political economy, including foreign policy
• social movements, including labour, religious, indigenous, anti-colonial and rebel politics
• poverty, exploitation and dispossession
• racism, colonialism, anti-colonial mobilisations and anti-racism
• gender and sexuality
• race, indigeneity and ethnicity
• migration, asylum and refugeehood
• historical and contemporary forms of violence, including genocide and ethnic cleansing
• issues of identity and difference
• globalisation, development and climate change
• regional and global governance, as well as international and non-governmental organisations
• theories and philosophies of human rights, including of protection, obligation, responsibility and remedy
• theories and histories of the human and subject of rights
• business and human rights, including corruption and corporate obligations
• transitional and reparative justice
• ethical theories of human rights
• rule of law and post-conflict reconstruction.

We understand that deciding where and what to study is a very important decision. We’ll make all reasonable efforts to provide you with the courses, services and facilities described in this prospectus. However, if we need to make material changes, for example due to government or regulatory requirements, or unanticipated staff changes, we’ll let you know as soon as possible.

Masters and P h D events

Meet us on campus or online

Book your place

Entry requirements

• UK requirements
• International requirements

Please select your country from the list.

Philippines

Saudi arabia, south africa, south korea, switzerland, united arab emirates, my country is not listed.

If your country is not listed, you need to contact us and find out the qualification level you should have for this course. Contact us

English language requirements

Ielts (academic).

High level (6.5 overall, including at least 6.0 in each component).

IELTS scores are valid for two years from the test date. You cannot combine scores from more than one sitting of the test. Your score must be valid when you begin your Sussex course.  Find out more about IELTS

We accept IELTS One Skills Retake.

We do not accept IELTS Online.

Check full details of our English Language requirements and find out more about some of the alternative English language qualifications listed below

Alternative English language qualifications

Proficiency tests, cambridge advanced certificate in english (cae).

169 overall, including at least 162 in each skill.

We would normally expect the CAE test to have been taken within two years before the start of your course.

You cannot combine scores from more than one sitting of the test. Find out more about Cambridge English: Advanced

Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English (CPE)

We would normally expect the CPE test to have been taken within two years before the start of your course.

You cannot combine scores from more than one sitting of the test. Find out more about Cambridge English: Proficiency

LanguageCert International ESOL SELT

High level (International ESOL SELT B2 with a minimum of 39 in each component)

LanguageCert International ESOL scores are valid for two years from the test date. Your score must be valid when you begin your Sussex course. Find out more about LanguageCert SELT

We only accept LanguageCert when taken at SELT Test Centres. We do not accept the online version.

Pearson PTE Academic

High level (62 overall, including at least 59 in all four skills)

PTE (Academic) scores are valid for two years from the test date. You cannot combine scores from more than one sitting of the test. Your score must be valid when you begin your Sussex course. Find out more about Pearson (PTE Academic)

We do not accept the PTE Academic Online test.

TOEFL (iBT)

High level 88 overall, including at least 20 Listening, 19 in Reading, 21 in Speaking, 23 in Writing.

TOEFL (iBT) scores are valid for two years from the test date. You cannot combine scores from more than one sitting of the test. Your score must be valid when you begin your Sussex course. Find out more about TOEFL (iBT)

We do not accept TOEFL (iBT) Home Edition.

The TOEFL Institution Code for the University of Sussex is 9166.

English language qualifications

As/a-level (gce).

Grade C or above in English Language.

Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination (HKALE)/ AS or A Level: grade C or above in Use of English.

GCE O-level

Grade C or above in English.

Brunei/Cambridge GCE O-level in English: grades 1-6.

Singapore/Cambridge GCE O-level in English: grades 1-6.

GCSE or IGCSE

Grade C or above in English as a First Language (Grade 4 or above in GCSE from 2017).

Grade B or above in English as a Second Language.

Ghana Senior Secondary School Certificate

If awarded before 1993: grades 1-6 in English language.

If awarded between 1993 and 2005: grades A-D in English language.

Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE)

 Level 4, including at least 3 in each component in English Language.

Indian School Certificate (Standard XII)

The Indian School Certificate is accepted at the grades below when awarded by the following examination boards:

Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) – English Core only: 70%

Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) - English: 70% 

International Baccalaureate Diploma (IB)

English A or English B at grade 5 or above.

Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education

Grades A - C in English language

Malaysian Certificate of Education (SPM) 1119/GCE O-level

If taken before the end of 2008: grades 1-6 in English Language.

If taken from 2009 onwards: grade C or above in English Language.

The qualification must be jointly awarded by the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES).

West African Senior School Certificate

Grades A1-C6 (1-6) in English language when awarded by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) or the National Examinations Council (NECO).

Country exceptions

Select to see the list of exempt english-speaking countries.

If you are a national of one of the countries below, or if you have recently completed a qualification equivalent to a UK Bachelors degree or higher in one of these countries, you will normally meet our English requirement. Note that qualifications obtained by distance learning or awarded by studying outside these countries cannot be accepted for English language purposes.

You will normally be expected to have completed the qualification within two years before starting your course at Sussex. If the qualification was obtained earlier than this, we would expect you to be able to demonstrate that you have maintained a good level of English, for example by living in an English-speaking country or working in an occupation that required you to use English regularly and to a high level.

Please note that this list is determined by the UK’s Home Office, not by the University of Sussex.

List of exempt countries: 

• Antigua and Barbuda
• New Zealand
• St Kitts and Nevis
• St Vincent and the Grenadines
• The British Overseas Territories
• Trinidad and Tobago
• United Kingdom

** Canada: you must be a national of Canada; other nationals not on this list who have a degree from a Canadian institution will not normally be exempt from needing to provide evidence of English.

English language support

If you don’t meet the English language requirements for your degree, you may be able to take a pre-sessional course

• Visas and immigration

Admissions information for applicants

If your qualifications aren’t listed or you have a question about entry requirements, contact us

• How to apply

If you’d like to join us as a research student, there are two main routes:

• browse funded projects in this subject area
• browse our potential supervisors and propose your own research project.

Find out how to apply for a PhD at Sussex

Full-time and part-time study

Choose to work on your research full time or part time, to fit around your work and personal life. For details about part-time study, contact us at [email protected]

PhD or MPhil?

You can choose to study for a PhD or an MPhil. PhD and MPhil degrees differ in duration and in the extent of your research work.

• For a PhD, your research work makes a substantial original contribution to knowledge or understanding in your chosen field.
• For an MPhil, your work is an independent piece of research but in less depth than for a PhD. You’ll graduate with the degree title Master of Philosophy. You might be able to change to a PhD while you study for an MPhil.

Our supervisors

Our faculty have undertaken research and consultancy in a range of human rights fields and regional contexts.

Your primary supervisor will be located in the School of Global Studies . Your secondary supervisor will be drawn from faculty researching human rights in a range of areas at Sussex.  

Dr Stephanie Berry

Senior Lecturer in International Human Rights Law

[email protected]

View profile of Stephanie Berry

Prof Gurminder Bhambra

Professor of Historical Sociology

[email protected]

View profile of Gurminder Bhambra

Dr Lara Montesinos Coleman

Reader in International Relations, Law and Development

[email protected]

View profile of Lara Montesinos Coleman

Dr Matthew Evans

Senior Lecturer in Law

[email protected]

View profile of Matthew Evans

Prof James Fairhead

Professor of Social Anthropology

[email protected]

View profile of James Fairhead

Prof Nuno Ferreira

Professor of Law

[email protected]

View profile of Nuno Ferreira

Dr David Karp

Senior Lecturer In International Relations

[email protected]

View profile of David Karp

Dr Elizabeth Mills

Senior Lecturer in International Development

[email protected]

View profile of Elizabeth Mills

Dr Agathe Mora

Lecturer in Social Anthropology

[email protected]

View profile of Agathe Mora

Prof Louiza Odysseos

Professor of International Relations

[email protected]

View profile of Louiza Odysseos

Dr Ceri Oeppen

Senior Lecturer in Human Geography

[email protected]

View profile of Ceri Oeppen

Prof Darrow Schecter

Professor of Critical Theory and Modern European History

[email protected]

View profile of Darrow Schecter

Dr Charlotte Skeet

[email protected]

View profile of Charlotte Skeet

Dr Bal Sokhi-Bulley

Senior Lecturer in Law and Critical Theory

[email protected]

View profile of Bal Sokhi-Bulley

Prof Maya Unnithan

Professor 0f Social And Medical Anthropology

[email protected]

View profile of Maya Unnithan

Funding and fees

How can i fund my course, funded projects and scholarships.

Our aim is to ensure that every student who wants to study with us is able to despite financial barriers, so that we continue to attract talented and unique individuals. Don’t miss out on scholarships – check the specific application deadlines for funding opportunities. Note that funded projects aren’t available for all our PhDs.

£3,000 scholarships available to environmental influencers bringing about real-world behaviour change

Find out more

£800 scholarship available to reward talented organ player studying on any course at Sussex.

Scholarships of £800 are available to reward talented musicians studying on any course at Sussex

Cash scholarships available for students who have demonstrated sporting excellence

University of Sussex Stuart Hall Doctoral Scholarship

Applying for USA Federal Student Aid?

If any part of your funding, at any time, is through USA federal Direct Loan funds, you will be registered on a separate version of this degree which does not include the possibility of distance learning which is prohibited under USA federal regulations. Find out more about American Student Loans and Federal Student Aid .

Part-time work

We advertise around 2,500 part-time jobs a year so you can make money and gain work experience. We have a special scheme to employ students on campus, wherever possible.

Find out more about careers and employability

How much does it cost?

Fees for self-funding students.

Home students: £4,786 per year for full-time students

Channel Islands and Isle of Man students: £4,786 per year for full-time students

International students: £21,500 per year for full-time students

Home PhD student fees are set at the level recommended by United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) annually, rising in line with inflation. Overseas fees are subject to an annual increase - see details on our tuition fees page

Additional costs

Note about additional costs.

Please note that all costs are best estimates based on current market values. Activities may be subject to unavoidable change in response to Government advice. We’ll let you know at the earliest opportunity. We review estimates every year and they may vary with inflation. Find out how to budget for student life .

Empirical research costs

On top of your PhD fees and living costs, you may also need to cover some research and training costs, relevant to your research project. These costs will depend on your research topic and training needs, but may include: - travel (to archives, collections or scientific facilities) - a laptop - overseas fieldwork costs (travel and accommodation, and language training) - conference costs (travel, registration fees and accommodation) - laboratory consumables and workshop materials - participant costs - transcription or translation costs - open-access publication costs. If you have a scholarship from one of the UK Research Councils, your scholarship should cover these types of costs. You'll receive details of how to claim this additional funding. If you're self funded, or if your scholarship doesn’t cover these costs, check with the Research and Enterprise Co-ordinator in your School for details of School or Doctoral School funding that may be available.

• Living costs

Find out typical living costs for studying at Sussex

Find out about our terms and conditions

Explore our campus

Experience Sussex life in our virtual tour.

Start your virtual tour

PhD Information Sessions

Visit campus and chat to staff and students. Book your place

Online PhD Sessions

Join a live webchat. Book your place

International

Meet us in your country

Course enquiries

+44 (0)1273 876787

Send us a message

Admissions enquiries

If you haven’t applied yet:

+44 (0)1273 877107 globalresearch@​sussex.ac.uk

Dr Sam Knafo Human Rights PhD Convenor +44 (0)1273  678041 s.knafo@​sussex.ac.uk

Find out about the School of Global Studies

After you’ve applied:

+44 (0)1273 877773 [email protected]

Find out how to apply

Quick links

• Guide to PhD study
• PhD support
• Academic facilities
• Open Days and events
• Accommodation
• International students
• Student life
• Order a printed prospectus

What do you want to do next?

• Courses Browse our courses by subject area
• Sussex Life Find out about life at Sussex
• Visit Come to a PhD Open Evening
• Apply Find out how to apply

Ph.D. Program

The ph.d. in law degree.

The Ph.D. in Law degree program is designed to prepare J.D. graduates for careers as legal scholars and teachers through a doctoral program aimed at the production of a substantial body of academic research and writing under the close supervision of a three-member faculty dissertation committee. Unlike programs designed for students who wish to learn about law from the disciplinary perspectives of the social sciences or the humanities, the Ph.D. in Law is directed at students who wish to pursue advanced studies in law from the perspective of the law. This program offers emerging scholars an opportunity to contribute to the development of law as an academic field, and it provides an alternate pathway into law teaching alongside existing routes such as fellowships, advanced degrees in cognate fields, legal practice, and clerkships.

Because our entering Ph.D. students will have already completed their J.D. degrees, the anticipated course of study toward the Ph.D. in Law degree is three academic years and two summers in residence. In their first two semesters, Ph.D. students will enroll in courses designed to help them acquire the background and research skills needed to complete a dissertation in their field of interest and to prepare them for qualifying examinations that test the depth and breadth of the literacies and skills they have acquired. During their second year, students will prepare a dissertation prospectus and begin work on a dissertation. The dissertation may take the form of either three law review articles or a book-length manuscript and will make up a portfolio of writing that will be essential for success in the job market. Ph.D. students will also gain experience in the classroom, and receive the full support of Yale Law School’s Law Teaching Program , which has had remarkable success in placing graduates in tenure-track positions at leading law schools.

Ph.D. students receive a full-tuition waiver, a health award for health insurance coverage, and a stipend to cover their year-round living expenses, as well as support for participation in national and international conferences.

Applications for admission to the Ph.D. in Law program are available starting on August 15. The deadline for submission of all materials is December 15. Applicants to the Ph.D. in Law program must complete a J.D. degree at a U.S. law school before they matriculate and begin the Ph.D. program. Any questions about the program may be directed to Gordon Silverstein, Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs, at [email protected] .

Watch Gordon Silverstein, Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs, describe the Ph.D. program at Yale Law School.

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Harley F. Etienne MSL

A student perspective on the M.S.L. program and the inspiring community at Yale Law School.

Graduate Student Life

2020 and 2021 Graduate Programs alumni celebrate in the YLS Courtyard with Assistant Dean Gordon Silverstein before their in-person ceremony in May 2022

2022 Graduate Program degree candidates with Dean Heather K. Gerken in April 2022

It’s magical to watch my students direct the full force of their energy and talent into real-world advocacy for their clients. The clinics at Yale are the place where students learn the difference that a committed lawyer can make.

Human Rights

Faculty with experience at the United Nations, The Hague and in conflict zones lead students in the search for new solutions to the human rights crises of our times.

UCLA Law has become a West Coast hub for impactful human rights work, with comprehensive curricular offerings, illustrious faculty members, a stream of expert speakers from around the world, active student organizations and journals, clinical opportunities that open the doors for students to make a difference and connections to UCLA’s many impactful human rights efforts. The Promise Institute for Human Rights is identifying new pathways to human rights accountability, recognition of atrocities and challenges to impunity for human rights abuses. UCLA Law's International and Comparative Law Program offers outstanding programs in a variety of international law disciplines.

The Promise Institute for Human Rights

We are the center of human rights education, research and advocacy at UCLA and around the region. Join us!

International & Comparative Law Program

Situated at a major global crossroads and with an expert faculty, this program rivals any in the nation.

The Promise Institute Europe

Placing UCLA students, faculty and research at the center of the international human rights arena in Europe.

Our Faculty

Khaled m. abou el fadl.

Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Professor of Law

E. Tendayi Achiume

Professor of Law Alicia Miñana Chair in Law

Ahilan Arulanantham

Professor from Practice Faculty Co-Director, Center for Immigration Law & Policy

Joseph Berra

Human Rights in the Americas Project Director

Richard Dicker

Lecturer in Law

Stephen Gardbaum

Stephen Yeazell Endowed Chair in Law

Máximo Langer

David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law Director of the UCLA Transnational Program on Criminal Justice Faculty Director, Promise Institute for Human Rights Faculty Director, Promise Institute Europe

Kal Raustiala

Promise Institute Distinguished Professor of Comparative and International Law Director, UCLA Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations

Richard H. Steinberg

Professor of Law Jonathan D. Varat Endowed Chair in Law Professor of Political Science

Lara Stemple

Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies and International Student Programs

Professor of Law Faculty Co-Director, Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment

Courses and Clinics

Regional human rights protection: the inter-american system, right to food & global food justice, public health, migration, & human rights, indigenous peoples in international law, human rights and the protection of the environment, political asylum and refugee law.

Hannah Garry is elected to the executive council and executive committee of the American Society of International Law

Angela riley appears on the 'justice matters' podcast to talk about indigenous sovereignty and human rights, kate mackintosh appears on cnn international to discuss ecocide and gaza.

Join us for cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and a discussion on the current slate of LGBTQ+ legislation.

Hear exclusive application tips from Assistant Dean Jason Fiske before the final application deadline on June 3, 2024

Georgetown Law

Human rights institute.

The Human Rights Institute is the focal point of human rights at Georgetown Law.

Our mission

"The Institute aims to make Georgetown Law the premier training academy for the next generation of human rights advocates by providing them with the intellectual foundation, the real world experience, and the practical skills necessary to be effective in today’s challenging environment."

Georgetown Law Students Advocate for the Protection of Uyghur Refugees

On April 16th, a group of Georgetown Law students was invited to the United States Capitol for a reception launching a revitalized Congressional Uyghur Caucus. This opportunity to convene with the Co-Chairs of the caucus, other Members of Congress, and the Uyghur activist community came on the heels of months of student advocacy for the protection of Uyghur refugees under the guidance of leaders of the Human Rights Institute.

HRI Hosts Annual Dash Conference with Alfred Brownell as Keynote Speaker

Every day, environmental activists around the world put their lives and safety on the line to protect and promote our universal human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. It is vital and—sadly—dangerous work. Featuring a keynote speech from 2019 Goldman Environmental Prize winner Alfred Brownell, the conference gathered activists and lawyers from around the world to discuss current and emerging threats against defenders, ending corporate attacks, and how to advance laws and policies to protect defenders.

HRI Deputy Director Michelle Liu Gives Keynote Address at 2024 Human Rights Summit

On March 15, 2024, the Human Rights Institute and Hoyas for Human Rights, an undergraduate student club on the Hilltop Campus, co-hosted the 2024 Human Rights Summit. This year's Summit theme was "Working Towards Justice: Human Rights in the 21st Century." Sharing a bit about her personal journey to a human rights career and advice for students in her keynote, Michelle Liu stated that “human rights work is difficult, time-consuming, and prone to set-backs—and that’s in the best of times. Passion is the fuel that keeps you going.”

Katie Shay (L’12) is the Director of the Business and Human Rights Program at Cisco Systems, Inc., a technology company that designs and sells a broad range of technologies that power the Internet across networking, security, collaboration, applications, and the cloud to customers across the globe. Katie leads a team at Cisco that works to embed respect for human rights throughout Cisco’s global operations and manage compliance with human rights-related regulations.

Featured Job Opportunities

• Lead, Government and International Affairs, PEN America
• Freedom Now Summer Legal Intern
• International Criminal Justice Institute Post-Graduate Fellowship
• Human Rights First Human Rights Accountability Legal Intern
• Legal Action Worldwide Legal Fellow (Litigation)
• Legal Assistant, Children’s Legal Services at the International Rescue Committee (IRC)
• Fall 2024 Human Rights Internship at International Rights Advocates
• Legal Officer at International Criminal Court, The Hague
• Clinical Supervising Attorney, Berkeley
• Manager, Climate Migration

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Opening Expert Meeting For 'IHL in Focus' Project

New publication explores the human rights data revolution, join our online executive master in the law of armed conflict and upgrade your legal skills.

Apply for the upcoming academic year

Our Experts and Resources on Israel/Palestine

Our experts and resources on ukraine.

Discover our resources and what our experts say about the situation in Ukraine, with regular updates to include new events, articles and comments!

Geneva Academy

LLM Students Address IHL Issues Arising from the 2008 Armed Conflict in South Ossetia

16 may 2024.

Students from our LLM in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights took part in a pleading exercise on the 2008 South Ossetia armed conflict between Russia and Georgia.

Read more >

ICRC (AI Generated)

New Report on Artificial Intelligence and Related Technologies in Military Decision-Making on the Use of Force in Armed Conflicts

13 may 2024.

This report examines themes that arose during two expert workshops on the role of AI-based decision support systems in decision-making on the use of force in armed conflicts.

Public Presentation of Candidates to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women

21 may 2024, 13:30-15:00.

Organized by the Geneva Human Rights Platform in co-operation with TB-Net, IWRAW Asia Pacific and GQUAL, this online event will provide an opportunity for the nominated candidates to present themselves.

We are a leading education institution in international humanitarian law, human rights and transitional justice.

Our research examines issues that are under-explored, need clarification, or are unconventional, experimental or challenging.

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We provide training and short courses for professionals who want to deepen their expertise in a specific issue.

Our events provide a critical and scholarly forum for experts and practitioners to debate topical humanitarian, human rights and transitional justice issues.

Our Database

The Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts project (RULAC) is a unique online portal that identifies and classifies all situations of armed violence that amount to an armed conflict under international humanitarian law.

Changing the Rules of the (Nuclear) Game: Voices from the Humanitarian, Technological, Strategic and Legal Fields

Special Tribunal for Aggression: Worth the Risk(s)?

Hidden Horrors of Armed Conflicts: Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Migrants

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RICEVI LA MINIGUIDA

Human rights, society, and multi-level governance.

The Ph.D Programme in Human Rights, Society and Multi-level Governance is a three-year, interdisciplinary academic programme offered by the University of Padova (Italy). The administrative structure is the Human Rights Centre “Antonio Papisca” of the University of Padova.

PhD graduates gain a multi/interdisciplinary profile in human rights studies, with a major in politics, law, sociology, psychology, economics or philosophy. The programme includes learning, research and training activities, is open to different approaches and methodologies, and has global geographical scope.

  Find out more

The scientific design of the doctoral programme is characterized by its multi- and inter-disciplinarity. Law, politics, economics and sociology are the main disciplines involved. Both theoretical perspectives and practical analyses will be given relevance in the overall approach.

Research will delve into the areas of human rights concern and will critically assess the effectiveness and consistency of doctrines and practices as well as their impact. Accordingly, the focus is on the global dimension (i.e. the UN and UN family legal frameworks, institutions, policies and practices); the European regional context and its global impact, as well as other regional systems; the national governance structures (possibly with a comparative approach); the local community actors and dynamics (i.e. cities, regions, transboundary territories).

From an psychological and developmental perspective, the research lines, concern how to construct ways to think of the future as life design, decent work, and growth; how contextual barriers, often not very evident, stifle thought, reflection, and future design; attention to approaches and dimensions that shed light on the traps between persons and their rights, to release new energies and promote the construction of inclusive and sustainable projects for the future. Another specific research line will address palliative care and quality of life.

Students will be trained in case-analysis, project setting and problem-solving. They will acquire research skills and analytical competences to address the socio-political challenges posed by the processes of implementation and contextualization of human rights standards and policies.

Doctoral graduates will possess the competence and the skills required for a research and teaching career in Academia, and for research positions in public and private organization. The doctoral degree allows graduates to compete for high-level positions in public and private institutions, including intergovernmental organizations, and to perform operative functions as legal officers, project managers, research and development staff as well as specialized field officers. They will have the skills to advise and assist public and private bodies in implementing complex human rights programmes in areas such as education, communication, cultural mediation, social planning, etc. in the framework of human development, human security and social cohesion strategies

  Curriculum

• Human Rights Protection and Social Justice
• Inclusion and Psychological growth

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  Contacts

University of Padova, Human Rights Centre "Antonio Papisca" Address: via Martiri della libertà 2, 35137 Padova, Italy Telephone: +39 049 8271812 E-mail: [email protected]

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• Human Rights International Law

Human Rights and International Law

Dear Prospective Student, International law is increasingly significant on a global stage and its breaches can be flagrant. Despite dramatic lapses in its observation, international law is invoked on a daily basis by states before international and regional organizations, and in their bilateral and multilateral relations. In short international law is a significant, but not always deciding, factor in international affairs. International law is relevant to all students at the NYU School of Professional Studies Center for Global Affairs (CGA). As part of the MS in Global Affairs, the Human Rights and International Law concentration provides a basic understanding of topics as diverse as state formation, rules on the use of force, transitional justice, laws of war, the "responsibility to protect," peacekeeping operations, protection of the environment, and international organizations. For those interested in focusing on human rights, this concentration explores women's rights, children's rights, the environment and human rights, as well as courses that help the would-be practitioner develop skills in human rights research and advocacy. Other courses cover rules on the use of force at the state level as well as post-9/11 challenges to the enforcement of international law, including detention, "enhanced interrogation," and the ways in which wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been conducted. Field intensives can take students out of the classroom to develop a deeper understanding of war crimes prosecutions, memorialization, and reconciliation in locations as diverse as Bosnia, Serbia, and The Hague, or Rwanda. These topics are particularly relevant for a student who wishes to pursue a career related to international law or human rights within a nongovernmental organization (NGO), a think tank, the United Nations, or in academia, or if a student wishes to explore a possible career as an international lawyer. To learn more, explore our courses in the Human Rights and International Law concentration.

Description

The proliferation of conflict in the post-Cold War era, often accompanied by gross violations of international law and abuses against civilian populations, has focused attention on the need to strengthen international standards of behavior and justice.  International law, transitional justice, international criminal tribunals, human rights, protection of the environment, and international organizations are playing an increasingly important role in the discourse of international affairs. The Human Rights and International Law concentration prepares students for careers with research and advocacy organizations, the media, the United Nations, and other international organizations, as well as the pursuit of a law degree or PhD. Students in the Human Rights and International Law concentration are required to take two courses -- the International Law core course, as well as the basic course in Human Rights.  Students must then select five concentration elective courses (3 credits each) that are offered on a regular basis.

Develop a basic understanding of key areas of International Law (including how international law is created, laws on the use of force and the conduct of war, and the work of international criminal tribunals). Develop familiarity with some of the key areas of international human rights (women's rights, children's rights, the environment and human rights, business and human rights, etc). Master practical tools necessary for effective human rights advocacy. Overall, develop the basic background knowledge in International Law and Human Rights to work proficiently and knowledgeably in these fields.

Prepare yourself for work at a research (think tank), human rights organization, or within the UN system. Or build the basic background knowledge to pursue a PhD or law degree.

Requirements

Concentration: human rights and international law.

The proliferation of conflict in the post-Cold War era, often accompanied by gross violations of law and abuses against civilian populations, has focused attention on the need to strengthen international standards of behavior and justice. International law, transitional justice, human rights, protection of the environment, national reconstruction, and international organizations are playing an increasingly important role in the discourse of international affairs. The Human Rights and International Law concentration prepares students for careers with research and advocacy organizations, the media, the United Nations, and other international organizations, as well as the pursuit of a law degree. Students in the Human Rights and International Law concentration are required to take the first course listed below. Students must then select five concentration elective courses (3 credits each) that are offered on a regular basis.

• GLOB1-GC2240 International Human Rights: Laws, Mechanisms, and Practices 3
• GLOB1-GC2005 Conflict Assessment: Theory and Practice 3
• GLOB1-GC2020 International Negotiation: Cases and Lessons 3
• GLOB1-GC2035 Ethics in International Affairs 3
• GLOB1-GC2060 Democratic Transitions: Setbacks and Successes 3
• GLOB1-GC2115 U.S. Use of Force and the "Global War on Terror" 3
• GLOB1-GC2135 Networks as Capacities for Peace 3
• GLOB1-GC2155 Post-Conflict Policies for Peace Consolidation: A Case Study Approach 3
• GLOB1-GC2165 Build Your Own NGO: Organizational Development for Global Affairs Professionals 3
• GLOB1-GC2190 Global Public Health 3
• GLOB1-GC2215 Transitional Justice in Theory and Practice 3
• GLOB1-GC2255 Human Security: A New Approach to Today's Global Challenges 3
• GLOB1-GC2275 Mediation Skills for Global Affairs 3
• GLOB1-GC2320 Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: Protection and Practice 3
• GLOB1-GC2355 Human Trafficking and People Smuggling 3
• GLOB1-GC2360 Women and Human Rights: International Law and Policy 3
• GLOB1-GC2385 Gender and Development-Policy and Politics 3
• GLOB1-GC2390 Gender, Politics and the State in Development 3
• GLOB1-GC2415 Authoritarianism, Repression, and Corruption 3
• GLOB1-GC2425 Private Sector Partnerships 3
• GLOB1-GC2455 Mediation for Global Affairs Practicum 3
• GLOB1-GC2510 Cyber: Technical, Operational & Strategic Perspectives 3
• GLOB1-GC2514 Big Data, Prediction and Global Affairs: How to Use 21st Century Computing 3
• GLOB1-GC2535 Advanced Colloquium (Human Rights & International Law) 3
• GLOB1-GC2545 Human Rights Research and Advocacy 3
• GLOB1-GC2565 Advanced Research Workshop 3
• GLOB1-GC3045 Children and Youth in Conflict, Peacebuilding, and Development 3
• GLOB1-GC3075 Women, Peacemaking and Peacebuilding 3
• GLOB1-GC2227 International Investigations and Forensic Evidence 3
• GLOB1-GC2362 Business and Human Rights 3
• GLOB1-GC2516 Advanced Data Analysis for Global Affairs 3
• GLOB1-GC2322 Non-Citizenship in the Twenty-First Century: Refugees, Statelessness, and Forced Migration 3
• GLOB1-GC3920 Consulting Practicum 3
• GLOB1-GC2645 The United Nations and 21st Century Challenges 3
• GLOB1-GC2151 Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning for Global Affairs 3
• GLOB1-GC2205 International Justice 3
• GLOB1-GC2345 Introduction to the United Nations 3
• GLOB1-GC2515 Applied Statistics and Data Analysis 3
• GLOB1-GC2540 Climate Change and Human Rights 3
• GLOB1-GC3055 Security Sector Governance and the Rule of Law 3
• GLOB1-GC2386 Gender & Migration 3
• GLOB1-GC1010 Peacemaking & Peacebuilding 3
• GLOB1-GC2340 Gender in International Affairs: Sex, Power, and Politics 3
• GLOB1-GC2590 Mobilizing for Social Change: Organizing Effectively 3
• GLOB1-GC2492 Fighting for the Rainforest: Sustainable Development and Environmental Justice in Amazon 3
• GLOB1-GC2493 Comparative Intelligence Systems 3
• GLOB1-GC2494 Astropolitik: The Politics, Policies, and Technologies of Outer Space 3

Student Experience

Human Rights at Harvard

Centers, programs, and initiatives at harvard.

François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health & Human Rights (FXB Center)

Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI)

Harvard Kennedy School Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (Carr Center)

Harvard Law and International Development Society (LIDS)

International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC)

Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR)

Classes at Harvard

Human Rights courses at Harvard

Funding, Internship, and Research Opportunities at Harvard

Student research and funding opportunities- harvard humanitarian initiative, news from the school.

From public servant to public health student

Exploring the intersection of health, mindfulness, and climate change

Conference aims to help experts foster health equity

Building solidarity to face global injustice

The IIG faculty draw on their passion for teaching and their extensive experience in the public and private sectors providing our students with an outstanding educational experience. The insights gained from their research contribute to a high standard of education to form future international leaders in business and politics.

[email protected]

Italian / New Zealander

Public International Law

Phd in Law, University of Canterbury

Master of Laws, Victoria University of Wellington

Bachelor of Laws, University of Canterbury

Alex Conte is Executive Director at Child Rights Connect, the largest global network of national, regional and international organizations and coalitions working to promote and defend children’s rights. Alex has over 20 years’ experience as a human rights lawyer and advocate. He has worked as a criminal law barrister, with international inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations, and in academia as a professor of international law and human rights.

Foppiani Oreste

[email protected]

Swiss/Italian

International History & Politics

International Organisations

International Security

Ph.D. in International History & Politics, The Graduate Institute of International & Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva, Switzerland. M.A. in Foreign Service and International Careers, Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI), Milan, Italy. B.A. (Hons) in Political Science, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy.  

Visiting Fellow and Associate Professor at the European University Institute’s Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. He taught or researched at Webster University Geneva, New York University’s CEMS, Johns Hopkins University’s SAIS in Washington, D.C., Catholic University’s ASERI in Milan, Aoyama Gakuin University’s SIPEC in Tokyo, as well as at the JMSDF Command & Staff College. He published four monographs and a dozen peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Il Politico , Nuova Rivista Storica , Transatlantic Studies Journal and Relations internationales .

From 2008 through 2016, he was also a permanent correspondent accredited to the UN Office at Geneva.

His most recent publications are listed below.

Peer-reviewed work:

Fatton, L. and Oreste Foppiani O. (2019) Japan’s Awakening: Moving toward an Autonomous Security Policy , Peter Lang, 2019.

Foppiani, O. (2019) ‘An exploratory analysis of cross-country biases in expert wine reviews ,’ Journal of Wine Research  30(17).

Book review:

Foppiani, O. (2018) Mussolini and the Salò Republic, 1943–1945. The failure of a puppet regime : by H. James Burgwyn, London: Palgrave Macmillan/ Italian and Italian American Studies .

Cameron Rebecca

[email protected]

Swiss Australian

International Commercial Law

Barrister and Solicitor admitted to High and Federal Courts of Australia and the Supreme Court of South Australia

Master of Laws in International Business Law, University of London

Graduate Certificate in Legal Practice, University of South Australia

Bachelor of Laws with Honours (LL.B.) and Bachelor of Arts (B.A., Jurisprudence), University of Adelaide

Rebecca is a Swiss Australian dual national with over 20 years of experience as a legal professional working in both private practice and for international organisations.  She is currently responsible for Legal and Compliance at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Swiss foundation engaged in preventing and resolving armed conflicts around the world through mediation and discreet diplomacy.  Rebecca previously practiced in litigation and corporate law specializing in directors’ duties claims.  Subsequent experience includes work in claims and reparations programs at the UNCC and IOM.  Rebecca also held a role as Governance Specialist at UNICEF looking at the structure of the network of not-for-profit entities raising funds for international programmes and providing advice and guidance on best practices for local boards.  Her experience working for Swiss foundations GARDP (Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership) and HD Centre includes general legal counsel advice and development of compliance programmes.

Catenazzo Giuseppe

[email protected]

Italian & Swiss

Consumers & Market Insights

Doctor of Philosophy in Management, Geneva School of Economics and Management – University of Geneva, Switzerland

Master of Philosophy in Management, IAE – University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France

Diploma of Advanced Studies in Business Management , HEC Executive University of Geneva, Switzerland

Master of Science in Management, IAE – University of Savoy Mont-Blanc, Annecy, France

Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Environmental Economics, Imperial College London and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, United Kingdom

Bachelor of Science in Economics and Management, University of Vallée d’Aoste, Aoste-Aosta, Italy

Giuseppe is also a Certified Management & Business Educator (CMBE), a Fellow of the Charted Institute of Marketing (FCIM) and a Certified Member of the Market Research Society (CMRS) in the United Kingdom.

An Italian and Swiss citizen, Dr Catenazzo is also an editor of international research books; his research on quality perceptions, service recovery, and complaining behaviour has been published in Production Planning and Control, International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction & Complaining Behavior , and Anatolia International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research .

Catenazzo G. (2023), Cases on Traveler Preferences, Attitudes, and Behaviors: Impact in the Hospitality , IGI Global.

Catenazzo G. (2022) Challenges and Opportunities for Transportation Services in the Post-COVID-19 Era , IGI Global

Catenazzo G. (2023) “ Travellers’ preferences for high-speed rail services: a kick-off study ,” Anatolia , vol. 34 (4).

Catenazzo , G. and Paulssen , M. (2023) ‘Experiencing defects: the moderating role of severity and warranty coverage on quality perceptions ,’ International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management  40(3).

Catenazzo, G. (2022) ‘Travellers’ preferences for high-speed rail services: a kick-off study ,’ Anatolia  34(4)

Catenazzo G. and Paulssen , M. (2019) ‘Product defects are not created equal: prioritizing production process improvements ,’ Production Planning & Control  31(4).

Book chapters:

Barbieri S., Catenazzo , G. Fragnière , E. (2020) ‘Service Design and Enterprise Risk Management for Knowledge-Based Services: A Practical Approach for Auditors and Consultants .’ In Handbook of Research on Recent Perspectives on Management, International Trade, and Logistics : IGI Global.

Catenazzo G. (2023)  “ Choosing a foreign high-speed train service for a domestic route: Early insights from France ”  Scientific Conference on Economy, Management and Information Technologies, ICEMIT 2023, vol 1 (1).

Iacopo Adda

[email protected]

Geopolitics

Ph.D. in Humanities with a specialization in Russian Studies obtained at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Master Russia - East Central Europe at the Global Studies Institute of the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Master in Modern Languages for Communication and International Cooperation at the University of Bergamo, Italy.

Iacopo is specialized in the history, geopolitics, and development issues of the Russian Far East, as well as in the relations between the Russian Federation and certain Asian countries, such as China and Japan among others. He formerly conducted several field researches in the historical archives of the Russian Federation and in particular of the Russian Far East. He also previously taught at the Global Studies Institute of the University of Geneva, an institution with which he is still collaborating for research and teaching purposes.

Iacoppo Adda has published several contributions in the field of geopolitics and Sino-Russian relations. His most recent publications are listed below.

Articles: Adda, I. and Lin Y.R. (2022) ‘Geopolitics in Glass Cases: Nationalist Narratives on Sino–Russian Relations in Chinese Border Museums’, Europe-Asia Studies , Taylor &Francis74, 6.

Adda, I. (2021) ‘Sino-Russian relations through the lens of Russian border history museums: the Nerchinsk treaty and its problematic representations’ , Eurasian Geography and Economics , Taylor & Francis 62, 5-6.

Parenti F.M., Iacopo Adda, I. (2017) ‘Are we going to live in a post-NATO world? A critical perspective on trends, obstacles and possibilities’ , GeoJournal 82.

Other publications : Adda, I. (2020) ‘Memory Erasure of Trans-Imperial History in the City of Nerchinsk’,   Imperial & Global Forum .

Peufly Philippe

[email protected]

French Financial Management

Master’s degree in finance and Project management, SKEMA Lille, France Bachelor in Statistic Econometry, University of Lille, France

Philippe is a senior finance professional, with more than 13 years in large corporations like P&G. Today he is working for Becton Dickinson medical device, as Senior Finance Lead in Supply Chain. He had led multiple projects in various finance field, like corporate finance, IT, sales, and operation. He is also consulting to SME around business model, financing, and value creation.

Todisco Claudio

[email protected]

Italian International Migration and World Politics

PhD in Anthropology and Sociology of Development, Graduate Institute, Geneva University degree, Sociology, specialization in Anthropology and Development, Unversita degli studi di Milano-Bicocca

Claudio is a long-term scholar of conflict, humanitarian and migration studies with a broad professional experience in the aid sector. He earned his PhD in Anthropology at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. A specialist of South Sudan, he has conducted fieldwork in East-Africa and across different regions of the world, with an interest in transnational mobility and international bureaucracies. Previously, he worked for international organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières and the Global Fund. As a consultant, he has conducted analysis and research on conflict, refugee policies, emergency relief and international development.

Salayme Bilal

[email protected]

Human Rights : from Law to Politics

Master of International Relations, at Middle East Technical University

Bilal Salaymeh is a doctoral researcher at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) and its Center on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP). He is interested in peace and conflict studies with geographical expertise in the Middle East. Bilal’s doctoral research focuses on conflict dynamics and the re-formation of local political order, particularly in Syria and Libya. He is also part of the research team of the project ‘A Child of its Time, the Impact of World Politics on Peacebuilding’, a multi-year research project that investigates how the shifts from unipolarity influence the UN peace missions.

His most recent publications include:

Hellmüller S., Salaymeh B. (2024)  “ Multiparty mediation in a changing world: the emergence and impact of parallel processes to UN peacemaking in Syria and Libya ” International Journal of Conflict Management , 35 (1).

Badache F., Hellmüller S., Salaymeh B. (2022)  “ Conflict management or conflict resolution: how do major powers conceive the role of the United Nations in peacebuilding? ” , Contemporary Security Policy , 43(4).

Baltaian Michael

[email protected]

Data Privacy, Protection and Governance British/Swiss

Masters Degree in Natural Sciences (Physics) from Cambridge University Executive MBA in Management and Corporate Finance from the University of Lausanne CIPP/E, CIPM and CIPT certifications from the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP)

Michael is an expert in data privacy with over 6 years of senior level experience in building and operating a global privacy program for a major multinational. With a background in IT, program/project management and Information Security, Michael held a full-time privacy role to develop a comprehensive global privacy program based on the GDPR and built a global team of 25 dedicated privacy champions to drive adoption of and compliance with the program. The program addressed all aspects of data privacy compliance for a global organisation with particular focus on consumer and HR data.

Baltaian, Michael (2024) "A New Data Protection Law in Switzerland. Still the Weakest Privacy Law in Western Europe?" in the Journal of International Business and Diplomacy, 1 (1).

Jourdan Eva Francesca

[email protected]

French & Italian

Master in Financial Engineering. EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

Bachelor in Business Administration, University of Geneva, Switzerland

Eva-Francesca is an experienced statistician with a strong background in health and social justice. She currently works at HUG in the emergency department, and she previously served as a researcher in the International Labour Organisation (ILO) for four years. At the ILO, her focus revolved around topics such as child labour, modern slavery and discrimination. She holds a Master's Degree in Financial Engineering from EPFL and is a firm believer that data can be used to make a meaningful contribution to the world.

Lenti Paolo

[email protected]

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Italian / Swiss

Doctorate Artificial Intelligence, University of Torino, Italy Bachelor in Computer Science, University of Torino, Italy

Paolo is working for Philip Morris International as Head of IT Supply Chain and Logistics. He started his professional career as Telecomm engineer at Cisco Systems and then he gained more 20 years of IT and Operations corporate management experience in Switzerland, Belgium, The Nederland’s and Nordics countries. Paolo is focused on delivering innovative solutions to enable process digitalization, enhancing data analytics capabilities and adopting stateof- the-art AI/ML technologies.

Cavinato Alessandro

[email protected]

Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence

Master degree in Bioengineering, EPFL, Switzerland

Bachelor in Information Engineering, University of Padova, Italy

Alessandro is working for Procter and Gamble as Advanced Data and Analytics Lead. Entrepreneur and advanced analytics professional he has expertise both in the large corporations and start-ups as well as managing teams and working on large scale projects in the Biomedical, Consumers and Fashion industries.

Lee Juneyoung

[email protected]

International Trade Law

Ph.D. in International Law, Graduate Institute, Switzerland

Masters in International Law, Korea University, Republic of Korea

Masters in International Law and Economics, World Trade Institute, Switzerland

Dr. Lee, from the Republic of Korea, is currently serving the Committee on Trade and Environment at the World Trade Organization. Prior to joining the WTO Secretariat in 2007, she worked at the United Nations Development Programme in Slovakia and Korea International Cooperation Agency, among others. She holds a PhD in international law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Her most recent publication includes "Promoting Good Governance: From Encouraging a Principle to Taking Concrete Action – Example from WTO Accession Protocols and the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement"(Cambridge University Press). She is frequently engaging with students at BA and Master's level as an adjunct professor.

June Lee has been involved since September 2023 in a research project funded by the IIG faculty grant exploring trade and environment and focusing on East Asian WTO Members' performance.She has also authored a book on the relationship between culture and the international Trade Law. Her most recent publications are listed below.

Lee, J. (2023). Culture and International Trade Law , Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill | Nijhoff.

Book chapters : Lee J., Neufeld N. and  Varyanik A. (2017) ‘Promoting Good Governance: From Encouraging a Principle to Taking Concrete Action - Examples from WTO Accession Protocols and the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement.’ In Kireyev A. and Osakwe C. (eds.) Trade Multilateralism in the 21st Century: Building the Upper Floors of the Trading System through WTO Accessions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Juneyoung Lee (2024) "Culture and International Trade Law: from Conflict to Coordination," Journal of International Business and Diplomacy , (1) 1.

Debbich Yazid

[email protected]

Department Head, Management & Marketing Management French / Tunisian    DBA, Audencia and Toulouse Business school Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certified Master in International economics, University Paris X Nanterre and Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Cachan Master in Strategic Intelligence, Institut des Relations Internationales et Stratégiques, Paris Bachelor in Economics, University Paris X Nanterre

Dr. Debbich has worked several years as consultant and project manager before holding global positions in the fields of quality and continuous improvement within FMCG companies such as Nestlé and Givaudan.

Yu Vicente Paolo

[email protected]

International Environmental Law and Policy Filipino/Swiss

LLM in International and Comparative Law, Georgetown University, USA Bachelor of Laws, University of the Philippines, Philippines BA Political Science, University of the Philippines, Philippines

Vicente is currently a Senior Legal Adviser at the Third World Network (Malaysia), a Visiting Fellow at the UN Research Institute for Social Development (Switzerland), and an Associate Fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy (Switzerland). Previously, he served as the Deputy Executive Director of the South Centre, the intergovernmental policy research institution of developing countries based in Geneva. His substantive policy work covers policy and legal advice and capacity building on, inter alia, the right to development, international environmental law, international trade policy, international climate change policy, and South-South cooperation. He has been a technical adviser and negotiator for various developing countries and their groups in the UN climate change negotiations since 2007 to the present. He has taught law at the University of the Philippines, the University of Tulsa College of Law’s Geneva Summer Semester Program and Duke University’s Terry Sanford School of Public Policy’s Geneva Summer Program and lectured on international environmental diplomacy with the School for International Training-Geneva.

Vincente Paolo Yu has authored numerous policy papers in the field of international environmental law, international trade policy, international climate change policy, and South-South cooperation.

Articles :

Yu V.P. (2022) ‘Economic Diversification from Oil Dependency: Practice and Lessons from Persian Gulf Oil-Dependent Developing Countries’ (TWN Climate Change Series No. 6), July 2022

Yu V.P. (2021) Loss and Damage Fight at COP26, (TWN Glasgow Climate News Update, 19 November

Yu V.P. (2021) Rethinking Global Economic Governance: Proposals on Resilience, Rights and Equity for the Global South

Yu V.P. (2021) Green Deals and Implications for the Global South (TWN Environment and Development Series No. 20)

Yu V.P. (2021) Main issues for developing countries in relation to the UNCTAD XV Preparatory Committee Compilation Zero Draft (TWN Briefing Paper)

Yu V.P. (2021) International negotiations by virtual means in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic – update (TWN Briefing Paper)

Liverant Vincent

[email protected]

Project & Operations Management French

Master 2 degree in Economics and International trade (Perpignan University via Domitia, France) Master degree in Economics and management (Nice Sophia Antipolis University, France)

Vincent Liverant is Global Customer Operations and Process excellence leader for Maxeon Sunpower, one of the global leading solar energy solutions provider HQ in Singapore. With 20 years + of experience in sales operations, supply chain and program management, Vincent had the opportunity to lead various regional and global projects related to Sales Operations and Customer services in B2B industries. Attentive to Change management fundamentals with a genuine respect for cultural differences, customer focus is a priority for him.

Kohler Grof Melinda

[email protected]

Marketing and Communications Hungarian

Master’s and bachelor’s degree in Economics, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary  

Currently Project Manager - Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Expressions at WIPO, Melinda has had 14 years of international experience in the industries of FMCG and lifestyle across global, regional and end-market roles. As marketing executive of leading multinational companies (L’Oréal Group, Ralph Lauren, Procter & Gamble) her areas of expertise include product and portfolio management, brand equity & architecture, consumer insight and market research, business intelligence, campaign and content development incl. Comms toolkit, growth strategy and business model innovation.

Saïd Ibrahim

[email protected]

Peace & Conflict Studies

Human Rights: Between Law and Politics

PhD Anthropology  and Sociology of Development,  Graduate Institute, Geneva

M.Sc. Evidence Based Interventions and Policy Evaluations,  University of Oxford 

Ibrahim Saïd is a research associate at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peace building (CCDP) in Geneva and the co-founder of think ahead, a non-profit research organisation that specialises in the analysis of humanitarian and development policies and practices.

Dr Saïd has a diverse professional and research experience in the development and humanitarian fields. He worked with various UN agencies and consulted with several national and international organisations. His research interests span across the fields of legal and political anthropology, anthropology of human rights, anthropology of policy and governance, and colonial governmentality studies, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Peer-reviewed work

Books :

Saïd, I. (2021 ) ‘The Gender Dimensions of Technology in the Context of Migration.’ In McAullfie, M. (eds), Research Handbook of International Migration and Digital Technology , Edward Elgar Publishing.

Article :

Saïd, I. (2020) ‘Some Are More Equal Than Others: Palestinian Citizens in the Settler Colonial Jewish State.’ Settler Colonial Studies Journal . 10:4.

Kaukab Rashid

[email protected]

International Negotiations / International Trade, Environment and Development

Pakistani / Swiss

M.B.A, Yale University, USA

M.A. Economics, Karachi University, Pakistan

B.A. Economics and English Literature, GC / Punjab University, Pakistan

Rashid has over 25 years’ experience of international negotiations: as a negotiator (delegate of Pakistan to the WTO, UNCTAD and WIPO), as a senior level staff of a developing country think tank (South Centre) and an international organization (UNCTAD), and as Geneva head of a global NGO from the South (CUTS International). He has participated and closely followed international negotiations in the WTO, UNCTAD, WIPO, UNFCCC, FAO, as well as some regional trade and investment agreements. He has widely published and also taught at the Grenoble University, France, Trade Policy Training Centre in Africa, Arusha, Tanzania, and GC University, Pakistan.  

Mahfouz Mohamad Ali

[email protected]

International Business Negotiations

Swiss/Lebanese

B.Sc. Computer Science. American University of Beirut, Lebanon

M.Sc. Computer Science. University of Washington, WA, USA

MBA. Management & Corporate Finance, HEC Lausanne, Switzerland

Ali joined Microsoft in 1999 in their Redmond headquarters as a Software Engineer in Microsoft Office product group. Since then, he moved throughout different Microsoft Subsidiaries in different digital leadership roles. He is currently leading Microsoft’s Data & AI business in Microsoft Switzerland, in which he establishes strategic partnerships with leading enterprises, including the negotiation of large cloud platform agreements.

Mesquita Sandro

[email protected]

Marketing, Communication

Swiss/Portuguese

General Management Programme “Orchestrating Winning Performance”, IMD Business School, Lausanne

Leadership Programme “Mobilising People”, IMD Business School, Lausanne

Executive M.Sc. of Science in Communications Management, University of Lugano

Advanced Strategic Management Session, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)

Since 2020, Sandro Mesquita is Chief Executive Officer of the Geneva International Motor Show. Previously, he worked 7 years at Publicis Groupe. First as Managing Director of the branding agency MetaDesign and then as Managing Director of Publicis Communications, following more than 20 years’ executive experience in Telecommunications and Energy sectors. Sandro graduated from the University of Lugano with an Executive Master of Science in Communications Management completed with an advanced management program at UCLA and a leadership program at IMD business school in Lausanne.

Benveniste Francois

[email protected]

Digital Media

Swiss/French

M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering, INSA Lyon

B.Sc. in Philosophy, Université Jean Moulin, Lyon, France

After a career in Retail for international corporations like Dixons and Pixmania, François joined Details.ch a leading creative digital agency where he occupied different positions, such as Project Director, Consultant and Account Director. He is a recognized digital strategist with more than 15 years developing customer experiences.

Pallotta Vincenzo

[email protected]

Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Information Technology

Italian/Swiss

PhD in Computer Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland

MSc in Information Science, University of Pisa, Italy.

PMI-PMP, ITIL v.3 and PRINCE2 certified.

Currently, Professor in Management of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Applied Science University of Canton Vaud (HEIG-VD - HES-SO). Adjoint faculty at the Master of International Business, University “Cattolica” in Milano, Italy. InnoSuisse Expert, Trainer and Coach since 2012.

Founder and former CTO of interAnalytics Sàrl. Visiting scholar at Stanford University and UC Berkeley. 30+ years of professional experience in ICT. Worked in the past as Software Engineer at IBM and Apple Italy and as researcher at EPFL, University of Fribourg and University of Geneva. Author of 100+ publications in international journals and conferences. Member of several advisory boards of Swiss startups. Jury member and mentor in several Swiss startup acceleration programs (e.g. MassChallenge, Seedstars World, Venture, Impact Hub).

Srikanta Patnaik & Vincenzo Pallotta & Kayhan Tajeddini (ed.), 2023. Global Trends in Technology Startup Project Development and Management. Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management, Springer.

Vincenzo Pallota (et al.) "Use cases for blockchain in the energy industry opportunities of emerging business models and related risks" Computers & Industrial Engineering, 2019.

Hernandez Reta Javier

[email protected]

International Marketing

Master of Business Administration in Sales & Marketing, International Institute in Geneva, Switzerland

Bachelor of Business Administration & Management, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico

Javier is currently the President of Duracell Europe & Africa – Berkshire Hathaway Company. Further experience  with Procter & Gamble for over 13 years as marketing director and senior brand manager in the UK & Ireland. Javier has had more than 18 years of international experience in Business Management, Strategy, Marketing, Brand Management, and Market Research as an executive for Procter & Gamble in Mexico, Belgium, Switzerland, and the UK.  He couples his extensive business management acumen with more than 20 years as teacher, lecturer, and recognized top trainer on diverse marketing and organizational topics.

Katchamakov Vesna

[email protected]

General education - French

Masters Degree in Russian (French as a Foreign Language option) from Nancy, and graduate of the Italian Chambre of Commerce for France.

Vesna has been a Teacher of French as a Foreign Language for more than 10 years, and was the Officer in charge of rare languages at an International School in Geneva before taking over Arnie's Language School. She now teaches French in Arnie's adult department, RL Learning.

Dyakonova Daria

[email protected]

Head of Research

Comparative Politics

Russian and Canadian

Ph.D. History, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada

M.A. History, Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris, France

B.A. Linguistics and Cross-cultural Communication, Moscow State Linguistic University, Moscow, Russia

Daria Dyakonova was a visiting fellow at the department of International History of the Graduate History of International and Development Studies, Geneva. She taught contemporary history in Montreal and Geneva and participated in a number of research projects funded by Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She studied transnational social movements and international relations and authored books and articles in the field of transnational networks, foreign policy, global labour politics and social rights as well as gender history. Since February 2024 Daria Dyakonova has been working in collaboration with University of Sapienza and University of Glasgow on a research project exploring radical left-wing feminism from a historical perspective. This project is funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Her most recent publications are listed below.

Books and edited volumes:

Taber, Mike and Daria Dyakonova, eds. (2022) The Communist Women's Movement, 1920-1922. Proceedings, Resolutions, and Reports . Leiden: Brill.

Shelekpayev, N., Dorais, F-O., Dyakonova, D. and Mai, S. eds. (2016) Empires, Nations and Private Lives: Essays on the Social and Cultural History of the Great War , Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 

Dyakonova, D. (2023) “ ‘Through The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat In All Countries, Onward To The Complete Emancipation Of Women!”: The Transnational Networks of Communist Women’s Movement in the Early 1920s” Journal of Women’s History , 35, 1.

Dyakonova, D. (2021) « La morale sexuelle, la famille et les droits reproductifs vus par le réseau transnational des femmes communistes dans les années 1920s » (Sexual Morality, the Family and Reproductive Rights Seen by the Transnational Network of Communist Women in the 1920s), Cahiers d’histoire. Revue d’histoire critique 151. 

Dyakonova, D. (2020) « Le Komintern et les femmes communistes, 1921-1926 » (The Comintern and Communist Women, 1919-1926) in L’Internationale communiste 1919-1943. Approches transnationales , Serge Wolikow [dir.] Territoires Contemporains 13 – nouvelle série [en ligne],  

Dyakonova, D. (2023) “ ‘Approached as a Force for Labour’ ”: Communist Women’s Fight for Women Workers’ Rights in the Comintern, the Profintern, and Eastern Europe in the 1920s.” In Zimmermann, Susan et al., eds. Through the Prism of Gender and Work. Women’s Labour Struggles in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond, 19th and 20th Centuries , Brill: Leiden-Boston.

Dyakonova, D. (2020) “ ‘Young’ and ‘Adult’ Canadian Communists: the Question of Nationhood and Ethnicity in the 1920s.” In Drachewych, O. and McKay I. Left Transnationalism: The Communist International and the National, Colonial, and Racial Questions , McGill-Queen’s University Press. 

Redaelli Chiara

[email protected]

International Law Italian   PhD. International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva MA, BA Law, University of Milan

Chiara is a Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy, where she works for the Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts project (RULAC). In 2019 she was a visiting Research Fellow at Harvard Law School, where she conducted a postdoctoral research on peace in international law. Her areas of expertise include international humanitarian law, the use of force, and international human rights law. She formerly worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Cox’s Bazar (Bangladesh) and Beijing (China). She defended her PhD (summa cum laude avec felicitations du jury) in public international law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in 2018. Her doctoral research investigated how the human rights paradigm has affected the international legal regulation of interventions in non-international armed conflicts.

Chiara Redaelli has published articles and books in the field of human rights and international humanitarian law. Her most recent publications are listed below.

Redaelli C. (2021) Intervention in Civil Wars: Effectiveness, Legitimacy, and Human Rights , Hart Publishing.

Redaelli C. (2023) ‘Targeting Drug Lords: Challenges the IHL between Lege Lata and Lege Ferenda ’ Co-authored with Carlos Arevalo International Review of the Red Cross 923.

Redaelli C. (2022) ‘Military Intervention on Request in Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello and the Question of Recognition of Governments’ , Goettingen Journal of International Law 12 (1).

Mégret, F. and Redaelli, C. (2022) ‘The Crime of Aggression as a Violation of the Rights of One’s Own Population’ Journal on the Use of Force and International Law 9.

Redaelli C. (2022) ‘Revolution’, Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law , Oxford University Press.

Redaelli C. (2020) ‘ The Human Dimension of Peace and Aggression’ 96 International Law Studies 603.

Other publications:

 Redaelli C. (2021)‘Aggregating Intensity in Non-international Armed Conflicts’ ICRC Humanitarian Law and Policy Blog

Redaelli C. (2020)‘The US Elections, Alleged Fraud, and International Law’ Opinio Juris

Redaelli C. (2020)‘Towards the Recognition of a Right to Remedial Rebellion in International Law?’ Dhaka Law Review

Redaelli C. (2019) ‘Venezuela and the Role of Domestic Constitutional Order in International Law’ Opinio Juris

Sokolova Maria V.

[email protected]

International Relations Russian    

PhD in International Economics with a minor in International Law, IHEID, Geneva

MSc in International Strategy and Economics, St Andrews, Scotland

BSc in Mathematics and Economics, Plekhanov Russian Economic Academy, Moscow, Russia

Maria works at the International Trade Center. Her primary research focus is regionalism, international development and trade. She has experience working in both the private sector and academia, and has also held positions at the IMF and the UN Secretariat.

Rekik Yassin Aziz

[email protected]

Information Technology Belgian/Tunisian  

Ph.D. Computer Sciences, Federal Institute of Technologies in Lausanne - EPFL / Switzerland Master in Computer Sciences, École Nationale des Sciences de l’Informatique - ENSI / Tunisia

From 2001 to 2005, Yassin Rekik worked as Senior Researcher at EPFL in the field of eLearning and Online Experimentation. Since 2006, he has been an associate professor in computer sciences at HES-SO. He is a specialist in Software Engineering and IT project management. He has led various research projects in the fields of Human Computer Interaction, Serious Gaming, and AR-VR Technologies.

Alcorta Arianne

[email protected]

Communication Venezuelan/Spanish   M. Sc. Journalism, Columbia University B. Sc. Communication, University of Miami

Arianne is an award-winning multimedia journalist, media trainer and lecturer. She has numerous experiences presenting on live television, writing scripts, producing news, videos and documentaries internationally in English, Spanish and French. Her work has appeared on CNN Money Switzerland, Telemundo and NBC News in the United States.

Ducret Vincent

[email protected]

Information Systems Innovation, Digital Transformation  Swiss

BSc and MSc in Computer Engineering, EPFL, Switzerland

After a career as Software Architect and Project Manager in System Integrators and Hardware/Software companies (incl. Sun Microsystems), Vincent joined Philip Morris International (PMI) in 2005 where he occupied over the past year different positions with growing accountabilities within the Information Services (IS) organization (cumulating to Head of IS Innovation). Since April 2017, Vincent is part of PMI Transformation team acting as Founder and Head of Competency Center for Design Thinking and Lean Enterprise with the mission of deeply and sustainability anchor those new way of working across the company.

Klepova Oksana

[email protected]

Marketing Strategy / International Brand Management / Innovation

Russian   

Professional Diploma in Marketing, Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), UK M.Sc. Education in Social Science and Economy, Moscow Pedagogical State University, Russia B.Sc. Social Science, Moscow Pedagogical State University, Russia

Oksana is a marketing executive with 20 years of experience in portfolio strategy, brand building, consumer insights and product innovation in FMCG multinational companies (Philip Morris International, Nestle). She has been in a global marketing leadership position for the last 10 years. The area of her expertise marries both existing brand portfolio management and new brand creation. She also brings diverse product & packaging development experience and true consumer centricity. In 2019, Mrs. Klepova founded a young company “Grow & Glow Sàrl” specializing in complementary education mainly for children.

Sernova Elena

[email protected]

Finance Russian   PhD in Management, Finance, University of California in Los Angeles, USA Diploma in Banking, London School of Economics, UK BA, MSc in Math with Distinction, PhD in Math (incomplete), Moscow State University, Russia

Elena worked in JPMorgan (UK) fixed income trading desk, was doing portfolio optimization and equity research for asset management funds, and developed online MBA and postgraduate classes in Finance. She teaches multiple courses in Finance, Business Math and Statistics on graduate and undergraduate level, along with preparation for CFA, CIIA, CAIA and FRM certifications. Elena’s research interests include commodity trading, alternative investments and portfolio allocation, and machine learning.

Rehfeld Katharina-Maria

[email protected]

Human Resources Management German    Ph.D. and M.A., University of Heidelberg, Germany. Senior Scientist at EPFL - École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne.

Katharina has over 14 years of professional experience in international corporations as well as academic institutions. She currently holds a research position at EPFL and joined IIG in spring 2018. From 2004 until 2016 Katharina lived in China and worked for organizations such as the German Delegation of Industry & Commerce, Allianz Insurance and Tongji University Shanghai.

She is an accredited Coach (Int. Coaching Federation) and a Hogan Assessment Practitioner.

Rehfeld, K.M., Moser, M., Günther, M. (2023). ‘ Nutzen von People Analytics im Personalmarketing.’ In Lucas, C., Schuster, G. (eds) Innovatives und digitales Marketing in der Praxis . Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler.

Günther, M., Moser, M., Rehfeld, K.M. (2022). ‘ Optimierung des Workforce Managements durch den Einsatz von People Analytics .’ In: Hastenteufel, J., Weber, S., Röhm, T. (eds) Digitale Transformation im Controlling . Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler.

Moser, M. / Rehfeld, K. (2022): ‘ KI im Rekruiting – Breitenbefragung zu Emotionen,  Ansichten und Erwartungen. ’ IU Internationale Hochschule 2022.

Rehfeld. K. (2022) ‘What is new about New Work? ’ IUG Business Review 2022.

[email protected]

Director, Global Partnership Development, Asia Pacific International Business Chinese

M.Sc. in Business Enterprise, Oxford Brookes University, England M.B.A, Oxford Brookes University, England, Executive Master in Global Leadership, World Economic Forum (Switzerland) in collaboration with Columbia University/ INSEAD/Wharton- University of Pennsylvania/London Business School

Jessie is a mission-oriented professional with over 15 years of Fortune 500 and global non-profit experience. She held leadership roles in multi-national businesses and private enterprises, was responsible for Public Private Partnership (C-suite) and government relations; increased thought leadership among partners; and sustainability-focused corporate strategy. She taught and served as a member of the Dean's Advisory Board at Oxford Brookes University, and is the Founder and Managing Director of an educational consulting company.

Tarazi Nawal

[email protected]

Department Head, Bachelor's Programs Finance & Economics Swiss and Jordania n   

Doctor of Business, University of Plymouth (UK) MMB Master of Money & Banking, American University of Beirut (AUB)- Lebanon B.Sc. Economics & Accounting, University of Jordan  

Nawal has over fifteen years’ experience handling senior executive positions at local & international financial institutions; and seven years teaching and training experience in Swiss universities. She is the Founder and Director of NWNT Consulting Sàrl, Geneva.

Her most recent publications include:

Tarazi Nawal (2024) "What Factors Influence the Level of Engagement of Individuals in a Banking Relationship in Jordan?" Journal of International Business and Diplomacy , (1) 1.

Tsourakis Nikos

[email protected]

Information Technology Greek

Ph.D. in Informatics, University of Geneva, Switzerland M.Sc. in Engineering Management, Greece B.Sc. in Electronic and Computer Engineering, Greece

Nikos has more than 20 years of experience in designing, building, and evaluating intelligent systems using speech and language technologies. In the past, he worked as a Software Engineer developing products for major telecommunication vendors. In the context of various projects, he performed user studies for addressing the factors that influence the success and failure of human-machine interfaces. Currently, he is employed as a Research Associate at the University of Geneva, where he co-authored more than 50 research publications. He also served as an Expert Reviewer for the European Commission. At IIG he is involved in teaching activities in the area of Computer Science.

His most recent publications are listed below:

Tsourakis, N. (2022). Machine Learning Techniques for Text: Apply modern techniques with Python for text processing, dimensionality reduction, classification, and evaluation . Packt Publishing.

Tsourakis Nikos (2024) “Setting Educational Objectives for the Book: Machine Learning Techniques for Text” Journal of International Business and Diplomacy , (1) 1.

L. Ormaechea, N. Tsourakis, P. Bouillon, D. Schwab and B. Lecouteux (2023) “Simple, simpler and beyond: A fine-tuning BERT-based approach to enhance sentence complexity assessment for text simplification,” Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Natural Language and Speech Processing (ICNLSP), Trento. Italy.

Ormaechea Grijalba, L., Tsourakis, N. (2023) ‘Extracting sentence simplification pairs from French comparable corpora using a two-step filtering method .’ In: Proceedings of the 8th Swiss Text Analytics Conference 2023 (SwissText). Neuchâtel.

Tsourakis, N., Baur, C., & Rayner, M. (2020). ‘Constructing Knowledge-Based Feedback in the Context of an Interactive Spoken CALL Application .’ International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching  7(3).

Chapters in edited volumes and articles in conference proceedings:

Akhlaghi, E., Auðunardóttir, I. I., Bączkowska, A., Bédi, B., Beedar, ..., Tsourakis, N. & Yao, C. (2022). ‘Using the LARA Little Prince to compare human and TTS audio quality.’ In Proceedings of the 13th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference.

Akhlaghi, E., Bączkowska, A., Berthelsen, H., Bédi, B., Chua, C., Cucchiarini, C., ..., Tsourakis, N. & Yao15, C. (2021). ‘Assessing the quality of TTS audio in the LARA learning-by-reading platform.’ CALL and professionalisation: short papers from EUROCALL 2021.

Bouillon, P., Gerlach, J., Mutal, J., Tsourakis, N., & Spechbach, H. (2021). ‘A speech-enabled fixed-phrase translator for healthcare accessibility. ’ In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on NLP for Positive Impact.

Tsourakis, N., Troqe, R., Gerlach, J., Bouillon, P., & Spechbach, H. (2020). ‘An albanian text-to-speech system for the Babeldr medical speech translator.’ In Digital Personalized Health and Medicine. IOS Press.

Benain Pierre-Yves

[email protected]

Business Policy French

M.Sc. Engineering, National Institute of Applied Sciences, France

E.M.B.A. International Institute in Geneva

Marketing and Strategic Planning with multinationals such as Siemens and SITA

Pierre-Yves holds a master degree in Telecommunications & IT engineering and an Executive MBA from International Institute in Geneva. He worked for international corporations like Siemens, Equant, SITA, SITAONAIR and accumulated over 20 years international experience in air transport IT & Communications in various management position from strategic technical planning, product management, product marketing, business development, program management and innovation.

Aggarwal Surabhi

[email protected]

Academic Dean Social Psychology / Communications Indian

Ph.D. Social Work, University of Delhi, India M.A. Media, Communications and Advertising, University of Leicester, UK M.A. Social Work, University of Delhi, India B.A. Psychology, University of Delhi, India

Surabhi has over 30 years of experience in teaching at Undergraduate, Graduate and Doctoral level in the areas of psychology, gender studies, communication, culture and social research.  She has served in different capacities as a research coordinator at University of Delhi and IIG. She has extensive experience of supervising research at both MPhil and Phd level in diverse fields ranging from health, education, gender empowerment, income generation and poverty alleviation. She has worked as Director of a rural based project initiated by Delhi University on women’s development which aimed at providing preventive health care services, reproductive health care services and services for HIV/AIDS.

Baillat Aline

[email protected]

Department Head, International Relations Programs International Relations French 

Ph.D. Political Science, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva Master in International Relations & Political Science, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva B.A Sciences Po, Lyon, France

Aline held research positions in various institutions such as the Global Policy Forum, New York City; WaterLex, Geneva; IUHEID; Institute Kurt Bösch, Sion, Switzerland. Author in the field of global environmental governance, international water law and policy, hydropolitics, water markets and climate change.

Her most recent publications are listed below:

Peer reviewed work

Baillat, A. (2010). International Trade in Water Rights: The Next Step? IAW Publishing, London.

Baillat, A. (2017). ‘International Investment Agreements and Water Resources Management.’ In J. Chaisse (Ed.),  The Regulation of the Global Water Services Market. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Baillat, A (2013). ‘Le Forum Mondial de l’eau face aux enjeux de la gouvernance mondiale de l’eau.’ Annuaire Français des Relations Internationales , Volume XIV. Centre Thucydide : Paris.  

Baillat, A. (2005). ‘Power Asymmetries Along International Watercourses - Hydropolitics in the Himalayan Kingdoms’ Journal of Political Science , Vol VIII. Prithwi Narayan Campus, Tribhuvan University: Pokhara, Nepal.

Savitch Pavel

[email protected]

Financial and Managerial Accounting, Auditing Russian 

M.Sc. (DES), University of Geneva, Switzerland

B.A. Economics, Higher School of Economics (HSE) - National Research University, Russia

Fellow Chartered Certified Accountant (FCCA) - Association of Chartered Certified Accountants

Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) - Institute of Internal Auditors

Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) - Information Systems Audit and Control Association

Pavel Savitch has over 20 years of professional experience in Finance and Accounting, Audit and Risk Management, IT and Project Management; most of which were gained in the Air Transport Industry (ATI). In his prior academic role as “Accounting, Economics and Finance” Unit Coordinator Mr. Savitch drove the Unit preparation towards ACBSP accreditation, ensured the operational management of the Unit and coordination of the academic programs.

Apostolov Mario

[email protected]

International Relations Bulgarian/Swiss

Ph.D. International Relations, University of Geneva D.E.S. International Relations, University of Geneva M.A. International Relations, Moscow State Institute of International Relations  

Mr. Apostolov works for an International Organization in Geneva.

Guven Dogan

[email protected]

Director of Doctorate Programs Information Technology Turkish

Leadership Executive program, IMD, Switzerland

Ph.D. Computer Science, EGE University, Turkey

M.Sc. Computer Science, EGE University, Turkey

B.Sc. Computer Science and Engineering, Hacettepe University, Turkey

Before joining IIG in 2011, Dogan spent nearly two decades at a major FMCG company where he had progressed through several roles as Head of IT in two markets and Global Head of Enterprise IT Architecture. He developed data strategies, initiated and implemented digital transformations, data driven solutions, and managed IT analysts, programmers, architects, and data engineering teams. He had started his career in academia as an adjunct faculty and research associate at universities in Turkey and USA specialized in databases and object-oriented software engineering platforms. In addition to teaching courses at IIG, he provides mentoring for several startups.

Dogan Guven has recently authored several press publications on the importance of data analysis.  

Guven D. (2022) ‘The new world of work: Rising importance of Data’ International School Parent Magazine , Spring 2022 edition.

Guven D. (2022) ‘Upskilling your career with a professional doctorate degree’ UN Today magazine – September 2022 edition. https://untoday.org/upskilling-your-career-with-a-professional-doctorate-degree/

Guven D. (2022) ‘The new world of work: Rising importance of Data’ DIVA International Diplomat Magazine – 2022 edition.

Cellich Claude

[email protected]

Vice-President for External Relations Chair of Research Negotiation American  

D.B.A. h.c. Davenport University, USA M.A., M.B.A., University of Detroit, USA B.A. Detroit Institute of Technology, USA

Harvard trained negotiator. Former UN senior administrator. Co-author of Global Business Negotiations and International Trade Promotion.

Claude is currently Vice President for external relations at IIG. Over the years, he has lectured at the Institut International d’Administration Publique, Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA), Paris School of Management, the University in Prague and Anahuac University in Mexico and carried out consultancies to trade promotion organisations. He has co-authored textbooks on business negotiations, global tradew, and trade promotion strategies. He holds graduate degrees in economics and business administration from the university of Detroit, recipient of honorary degrees and the 75 th Medal of Excellence from the Helsinki School of Economics.

Dr. Cellich’s most recent publications are listed below:

Cellich, C. (2021) Creative Solutions to Global Business Negotiations , Third Edition , BEP.  

Borgeon, M.  and Cellich, C. (2020) Global Trade Strategies: Interacting with Trade Institutions and Businesses , BEP

International Relations / E-Commerce French 

M.A., Ph.D., University of La Sorbonne, France

Michel Borgeon is a Professor Emeritus at International Institute in Geneva. Prior to joining ITC (International Trade Centre, a UN Trade Promotion Center), he worked as an Advisor in the field of international trade statistics in the French Trade Promotion Center (Trade Promotion Body, Ministry of Finance) for 8 years, then Chief, developing countries trade promotion Section and Professor at the International Relations Institute in Paris. He was a Senior Trade Promotion Officer over three decades, with extensive missions in Africa and Asia. He co-authored two textbooks on Trade Promotion Strategies with Claude Cellich. He also holds a PHD in economics, Paris Pantheon Sorbonne and a Diploma of the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris (Sciences Po).

Catliota Donna

Law American

Juris Doctor in Law (magna cum laude), Cleveland State University Law School LL.M. in International and Comparative Law (with distinction), Georgetown University Law Center B.A. English Literature and Language (cum laude), Barat College

Ms Catliota was engaged in private practice for over 10 years with law firms in the United States, before moving to the public sector, where she has served as legal counsel with the US Department of State (Office of the Legal Advisor); the United Nations Compensation Commission; and the World Health Organization and as General Counsel for the Millennium Foundation.

Santantoniou John

Marketing, Strategy Swiss/Greek 

Senior Executive programs at Stanford, INSEAD, and London Business School DiplM, MCIM, The Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK B.Sc., Economics, Athens University, Greece

John has been for over 20 years in senior Marketing positions with Colgate-Palmolive and Hewlett Packard, for over 10 years the CEO-Europe for Energizer and Invensys Controls, and is currently advising Private Equities and Investment Banks (TowerBrooks Capital).

Director of Professional Doctorates Associate Professor of Service Management, University of Plymouth, UK Singaporean

PhD Business Management, University of Plymouth, UK MBA, University of Leicester, UK BA Economics and Sociology, National University of Singapore EdD, Cambridge University, UK 

As an Associate Professor at the University of Plymouth, Wai Mun lectures in Business Strategy, Research Methods and e-Strategies. While she is widely published, her primary research interests lie in the fields of service quality and technology use/adoption. To keep up with the rapid advancement in the field, she has recently completed a Professional Certificate in Data Science: Data into Insights, awarded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. 

Communications British

B.A. Psychology, University of Nottingham

M.Sc. Psychology, London School of Economics

Ph.D. Psychology, London School of Economics   

Trainer with the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, UK, offering training in all aspects of communication, public affairs and measurement and evaluation in communication practice

Program in Islamic Law

Research Fellows & Editors

Research Affiliate, 2022-Present

Faiz Ahmed (PhD, UC Berkeley; JD, UC College of Law, San Francisco) is currently Joukowsky Family Distinguished Associate Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Brown University. Ahmed’s primary specializations are the late Ottoman Empire, Afghanistan, and the British Empire, as well as diasporic communities tied to the region we today call the Middle East. His core research and teaching engage questions of human mobility, travel, and migration; social histories of Islamic law and learning; and the intersections of constitutionalism, citizenship, and diplomacy.

Ahmed’s first book,  Afghanistan Rising: Islamic Law and Statecraft between the Ottoman and British Empires   (Harvard University Press), was awarded the American Historical Association’s John F. Richards Prize in 2018. His current research explores historical ties and engagements of the Ottoman Empire in the Americas, with a focus on social, economic, and legal connections to the United States and Canada during the long nineteenth century. His published articles have appeared in journals of law, history, and Middle East Studies, including Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East ; Global Jurist ; International History Review ; International Journal of Middle East Studies ; Iranian Studies ; Jadaliyya ; Osmanlı Araştırmaları ( Journal of Ottoman Studies) ; Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association ; and Perspectives on History. Dr. Ahmed is also co-organizer with Brown University colleagues Michael Vorenberg, Emily Owens, and Rebecca Nedostup of the  Brown Legal History Workshop and the Brown Legal Studies collaborative.

Mohammed Allehbi 

Pil-lc research fellow, 2023-2024.

Mohammed Allehbi is the PIL-LC Research Fellow at the Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School and the Library of Congress for the 2023–2024 academic year. He specializes in law and governance in the Islamic Near East and the Mediterranean during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. After earning his master's degree in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Chicago in 2014, he received his doctorate in history from Vanderbilt University in 2021, where he was a senior lecturer in the Department of Classical and Mediterranean Studies. His first article, “It is Permitted for the Amīr but not the Qāḍī’: The Military-Administrative Genealogy of Coercion in Abbasid Criminal Justice,” was published in  Islamic Law and Society  in the fall of 2022. It explores the emergence and rationalization of coercive interrogations in late antique and early medieval Islamic criminal justice. Currently, he is working on his first monograph about the formation of Islamic criminal justice and policing in the Near East and the Mediterranean between the eighth and twelfth centuries.  

Fatma Gül Karagöz

Research fellow, 2023-2024.

Fatma Gül Karagöz is an assistant professor of legal history based at Galatasaray University Faculty of Law. Since working on her MA thesis on the codes of the early modern Ottoman Empire and particularly on the New Code (Kanunname-i Cedid), a compilation of fatwas and codifications on land ownership, Fatma has been interested in land law in the Ottoman Empire. Her works are mostly focused on the property relations on agricultural land and the land usufruct in legal theory and practice. Her current research is based on the application of property law (land law) in the second half of 18th-century Antioch by focusing specifically on the exercise of property rights by women. She received her Ph.D. in Public Law from İstanbul University (2018), MA in Ottoman History from İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University (2010), and BA in Law from Galatarasay University Faculty of Law (2005). 

Bahman Khodadadi

Pil-lc research fellow, 2024-2025.

Dr. Bahman Khodadadi is the the PIL-LC Research Fellow at the Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School and the Library of Congress for the 2024–2025 academic year. He specializes in Islamic law and Middle Eastern Studies, with a particular focus on Shiite Islamic jurisprudence and his current research interests span Iranian studies, sociology of law, Islamic law history, criminal law theory, and the politico-juridical dynamics within Islamic jurisprudence, particularly within the Shi'a tradition. He completed his PhD on “On Theocratic Criminal Law” at the University of Münster, Germany, in 2021, graduating with the highest distinction (summa cum laude). His forthcoming monograph will be published soon by Oxford University Press. Khodadadi’s academic achievements have garnered recognition, including the prestigious “Harry Westermann Award” for the best doctoral dissertation at the University of Münster, along with two DAAD awards in 2016 and 2023. He served as a research associate at the Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization at Yale Law School from 2023 to 2024. From 2015 to 2023, he was actively involved as a member of the Excellence Cluster: Religion and Politics in Germany, collaborating on various projects. He is an author and lecturer, with numerous publications and translated articles, as well as lecture engagements across several European countries, including Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Ireland.

Dilyara Agisheva

Research editor, 2023-2024.

Dilyara Agisheva received an undergraduate degree in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science from UCLA and an M.A. in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies from Columbia University. As a Ph.D. student at Georgetown University, she specialized in Islamic legal studies and Ottoman history. In August 2021, she defended her doctoral thesis entitled “Entangled Legal Formations: Crimea Under Russian Rule in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.” Her doctoral research was supported by scholarships and grants, including the Heath W. Lowry Dissertation Writing Fellowship of Distinction from the Institute of Turkish Studies and the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship.  Dilyara was also the inaugural PIL-LC Research Fellow at the Program in Islamic Law. 

Sultan Mehmood

Research affiliate, 2023-2024.

Sultan Mehmood is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the New Economic School of Moscow and a research affiliate at the Harvard Law School’s Program in Islamic Law. He is also a faculty research fellow at Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP) and Pakistan Institute of Development Studies (PIDE) in Pakistan.

Professor Mehmood is engaged in pioneering research on judicial reforms in the Global South, with a particular focus on his home country, Pakistan. His research methodology involves harnessing large datasets and careful attention to legal theory to provide insights into reforming the judiciary, promoting political rights, with a specific emphasis on studying the prerequisites for establishing the rule of law within societies. His work has been accepted or published in prestigious scientific outlets, including Nature, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, The Economic Journal, and the Journal of Development Economics.

Professor Mehmood will be responsible for assisting in the acquisition and digitization of collections of judgments dating back to the country's independence in 1947. This effort is part of the larger project to create an online Resource Database for judicial decisions in Pakistan, which will also include the development of related AI and training tools and research papers.

Website: sultanmehmood.info

Twitter: @mrsultan713

Ali Rida Rizek

Ali Rida Rizek is a Research Editor at the Program in Islamic Law. He received his PhD, Arabic and Islamic Studies - University of Göttingen, 2021) is a scholar of social and intellectual history of Islam, with special focus on Twelver Shi’ism. His research focuses on the history of Islamic law, Qur’anic studies, Arabic literature, and classical Islamic education and his dissertation (2021) examines the life, work, and impact of two early Imami legal scholars, namely Ibn Abī ʿAqīl al-ʿUmānī and Ibn al-Junayd al-Iskāfī (both flourishing in the 4 th /10 th century). Rizek has taught at the American University of Beirut (AUB), the Lebanese American University (LAU), the University of Leiden, the University of Göttingen, and the University of Bayreuth in Germany and has published studies on hadith, legal history, and the classical Islamic ethical discourse. He received his BA and MA in Arabic Language and Literature from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon. 

Marwa Sharafeldin

Research affiliate, 2022-2024.

Dr. Marwa Sharafeldin is an Egyptian scholar activist. She is currently a Visiting Fellow in the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World at Harvard Law School. She is also the Senior Advisor in Musawah the Global Movement for Equality and Justice in the Muslim Family. Dr. Sharafeldin has a PhD in Socio-Legal Studies from the Law Faculty in the University of Oxford and a Masters in Development Management from the London School of Economics. Her work covers the intersection between Islamic law, international human rights law, and feminist activism. 

Her publications include “Islamic Law Meets Human Rights: Reformulating Qiwama and Wilaya for Personal Status Law Reform Advocacy in Egypt”; “Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law”; “Challenges of Islamic Feminism in Personal Status Law Reform in Egypt”. She co-founded and served on the Executive and Advisory Boards of several international, regional and national feminist organizations such as Musawah, the Global Fund for Women, the Young Arab Feminist Network, and the Network for Women’s Rights Organisations in Egypt. Dr. Sharafeldin is also a technical expert for the publication of several regional and international reports such as the UN's Progress of the World's Women Report and the UN's Gender Justice and Law Arab Region Report. She believes in the power of art for social transformation, and is a story collector,  performer and  writer.

Mariam Sheibani

Research editor, 2020-present.

Mariam Sheibani  is Assistant Professor in History at the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies at The University of Toronto Scarborough. In 2018, she received her PhD in Islamic Thought from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Before joining the University of Toronto, she was a Research Fellow at Harvard Law School and Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School.

Her research interests are in late antique and medieval Islamic intellectual and cultural history, with a focus on the theory and practice of Islamic law and Islamic ethical traditions. Her first book project,  Islamic Legal Philosophy: Ibn  ʿ Abd al-Salām and the Ethical Turn in Medieval Islamic Law,  examines how Muslim jurists from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries addressed salient questions of legal philosophy and ethics, leading them to develop competing legal methodologies and visions of the law. The study centers on a prominent Damascene heir of Khorasani Shāfiʿism, ʿIzz al-Dīn b. ʿAbd al-Salām, a pivotal figure in the development of Islamic legal philosophy, ethics, and legal maxims ( qawā ʿ id fiqhiyya). 

Her other ongoing research projects investigate the construction of late antique Islamic law, judicial practice in medieval Mamluk Cairo, and classical doctrines of Muslim family law. She continues to serve as Lead Blog Editor for the  Islamic Law Blog  based at Harvard Law School. Prior to her doctoral studies, she earned a BA in Public Affairs and Policy Management, an MA in Legal Studies, and a second an MA in Islamic Thought. She has conducted research in Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Spain, the UK, and West Africa.

For more information on her scholarship and research, please visit  https://www.mariamsheibani.com/ .

Omar Abdel-Ghaffar

Research assistant, 2020-present.

Omar Abdel-Ghaffar is a JD-PhD student at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and History Department. His research interests are in late medieval Islamic legal and social history, with a particular interest in courts and conceptions of justice. Before coming to Harvard, he completed his MA at Columbia University and his BA at UCDavis. 

Research Assistant, 2024-Present

Jinge Cao is a Master of Theological Studies candidate focusing on Islamic Studies at Harvard Divinity School.

Worthy is a J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School. She received her B.A. in Economics from Carleton College. Her areas of interests include comparative law, criminal procedure, and data analytics. 

Majid Dohan

Research assistant, 2023-present.

Majid Dohan is a PhD Candidate in the Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Reema Doleh

Reema Doleh is a J.D. Candidate at Harvard Law School. She received her B.B.A from Baruch College in Finance. 

Rimsha Saeed

Rimsha Saeed is a 1L at Harvard Law School. She received her bachelors in Public Affairs from UCLA and is interested in property and family law, as well as legal issues arising at the intersection of American and Islamic law.

Cem Tecimer

Research assistant, 2016-present.

Cem Tecimer is an SJD Candidate at Harvard Law School.

Past Students and Fellows

Sohaira Siddiqui

Research fellow, 2017.

Sohaira Siddiqui was a Policy Fellow for the Spring 2017 semester. She is currently Assistant Professor of Theology and Islamic Studies at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar. 

Her work focuses on the relationship between law, theology and political thought in classical Islam; Islamic law during British colonization; Islamic law in contemporary Muslim societies; and secularism and modernity in relation to Muslims in the West.

Most recently, she is the author of Law and Politics Under the 'Abbasids: An Intellectual Portrait of al-Juwayni  (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and  Locating the Shari'a: Legal Fluidity in Theory, History and Practice  (Brill, 2019). She has also published numerous articles in  Islamic Law and Society, Journal of Islamic Studies, Journal of the American Oriental Society,  and  Middle East Law and Governance.  She serves as one of the series editors for Mohr Siebeck's  Sapientia Islamica: Studies in Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Mysticism.

She received her doctorate in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014.

Mubasher Hussain

Fulbright scholar, 2016-2017.

Professor Mubasher Hussain comes to SHARIAsource as a Fulbright Scholar for the 2016-2017 academic year. Currently, he is Assistant Professor of Islamic Law and head of the Hadith and Sirah Department at the International Islamic University, Pakistan. Hussain also serves as the Secretary of the National Sirah Centre at the International Islamic University, Islamabad.

His current research project engages the neglected life and legacy of Shah Waliullah and his impact on traditional Islamic thought and Islamic law. More information on Professor Hussain’s research .

Hussain has a B.A, M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of the Punjab, Pakistan

Ahmed El Shamsy

Senior fellow, 2017-2018.

Ahmed El Shamsy is a Senior Fellow at the Program in Islamic Law. He is also an Associate Professor of Islamic thought at the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, focusing on the evolution of the classical Islamic disciplines and scholarly culture within their broader historical context. His research addresses themes such
 as orality and literacy, the history of the book, and the theory and practice of Islamic law.

His first book, The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History , traces the transformation of Islamic law from a primarily oral tradition to a systematic written discipline in the eighth and ninth centuries. He is now at work
on his second book, a study of the reinvention of the Islamic scholarly tradition and its textual canon via the printing press in the early twentieth century.

El Shamsy has a PhD from Harvard University.

Ebrahim Afsah

Policy fellow, 2017-2018.

Ebrahim Afsah is Policy Fellow at the Program in Islamic law. He is an Associate Professor of international law at the University of Copenhagen, where he teaches international, European Union, constitutional and Islamic law. Before joining the faculty in Copenhagen, he worked for a decade as a management consultant in the Middle East and Central Asia, primarily on administrative and legal reform, counter-narcotics, prisons and legal training.

His areas of interest are public international law, especially the law of armed conflict; public law, especially administrative and constitutional law in post-conflict settings; and Islamic law, again especially its (underdeveloped) public law. Ebrahim has been a Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, a senior fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study in Oslo.

He has been trained at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, Trinity College Dublin, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg.

Mansurah Izzul Mohamed

Visiting fellow, shariasource, 2017-2018.

Mansurah Izzul Mohamed was a Visiting Fellow at the Program in Islamic Law between 2017-2018. Her role will be to translate relevant documents in Malay and advise on relevant and important sources to be introduced and digitized. She will be in residence at ILSP during the 2017-2018 academic year.

Her research interests include Southeast Asian studies that address the political aspects, as well as the socio-economic implications of Shariah introduction and subsequent legal implementation in a country. Mohamed is also interested in areas where human rights and the different cultural understandings intersect; as well as the use of negotiation studies to further understand crisis management situations, and she has explored these in her Masters and Bachelors dissertations.

Mohamed holds a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) from the Fletcher School, Tufts University (2017) and a Master of Arts in Political Studies from Auckland University (2011), respectively and a Single Honors Bachelor Degree in International Relations from Keele University (2006). 

Rodrigo Adem

Research fellow, 2017-2018.

Rodrigo Adem Alvarez was a Research Fellow at the Program in Islamic Law between 2017-2018. He studies pre-modern Muslim thought as an intellectual and social historian.  He is particularly interested in how scholarly networks mediated social and epistemic authority within the urban and political development of the Near East and Mediterranean over the 8th to 14th century.  He hopes to further current understanding of how paradigmatic scholarly traditions of law, theology, historiography, philosophy, mysticism, and political thought came to be codified during this period, and persist in key facets of Muslim thought to the present day.

Adem has an MA and PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago and a BA in History and German Literature from the University of Wisconson, Madison.

Sheza Alqera

Research assistant, 2019-2020.

Sheza Alqera is a PhD Candidate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Iman Mohamed

Research assistant, 2019.

Iman Mohamed is a JD Candidate at Harvard Law School and PhD Candidate in History at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 

Ari Schriber

Research assistant, 2016-2019.

Ari Schriber is a PhD Candidate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Aaron Spevack

Research fellow, 2018-2019.

Aaron Spevack was a Research Fellow at the Program in Islamic Law between 2018-2019. He specializes in Islamic Intellectual History, with an emphasis on 13th-19th-century law, theology, and Sufism.

He has published two books and a number of articles on Islamic intellectual history. His book The Archetypal Sunni Scholar: Law, Theology, and Mysticism in the Synthesis of al-Bajuri was published by SUNY Press in 2014; through a study of various commentaries written by the 19th-century Egyptian scholar Ibrahim al-Bajuri, he challenges popular theories of intellectual decline and anti-rationalism. One of his more recent works focuses on the coalescence of Northwest African and Persian theological and philosophical thought in 13th-19th century Islamic education, especially its reception in Egypt's al-Azhar University.

He obtained a Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Intellectual History from Boston University and an ALB from Harvard University’s Extension Division. He also studied Jazz performance and composition at the New England Conservatory of Music and has extensive experience performing Jazz, Hip-hop, and Sufi music from Morocco, Turkey, and the Levant.  

Deyaa Alrwishdi

Research assistant, fall 2021.

Deyaa Alrwishdi is a Syrian lawyer and adjunct professor of law at American University Washington College of Law (WCL). He has a decade of project management and legal development experience. Prior to the Syrian conflict, Alrwishdi served as the legal deputy at the Syrian Construction and Establishment Institute, where he provided leadership and direction for staff and ensured compliance with the institution’s policies. Following the Syrian uprising, Alrwishdi worked at the national and international levels to defend victims of human rights violations in Syria, including directly defending activists arrested at protests and documenting atrocities across Syria. Mr. Alrwishdi founded the Free Syrian Lawyers Association and the Center for Rule of Law and Good Governance with the goal of amplifying the voices of Syrian civil society and working towards the transition to justice in post-conflict situations. He received the U.S. Department of State Leader for Democracy Fellowship, the Rubin International Human Rights Award from Stanford Law School, and the Alumni Fund Scholarship from WCL. Alrwishdi holds an LL.B. from Damascus University, an LL.M. from WCL, and an M.P.A. from the AU School of Public Affairs.

Israa Alzamli

Research assistant, 2021-2022.

Israa Alzamli is a JD candidate at Harvard Law School.

Samiha Baseer

Research assistant, 2022.

Samiha  Baseer is a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School. At HDS, her main area of focus is Islamic studies. She is broadly interested in Islamic law and the history of Islam across South Asia. Prior to HDS,  Samiha  received a BA at the University of California Berkeley.

Anissa Abdel-Jelil

Anissa Abdel-Jelil is an MDiv Candidate at Harvard Divinity School.

Research Assistant, Summer 2020

Aaron Dunn is a rising 3L at Harvard Law School.

Jason Golfinos

Research assistant, 2020-2021.

Jason Golfinos is a JD student at Harvard Law School.

Stephanie Gullo

Stephanie Gullo is a rising 2L at Harvard Law School.

Daniel Jacobs

Daniel Jacobs is a PhD Candidate in History at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Tiran Bajgiran

Research assistant, 2022-2023.

Tiran Bajgiran is an SJD candidate and Knox Fellow at Harvard Law School

Saaleh Baseer

Research assistant, 2023.

Saaleh is PhD candidate in the History-CMES joint program and interested in postclassical Ḥanafi legal theory, Mughal political theology, and the development of Ḥanafi substantive law in Mughal India.

He earned his BA at Columbia University, in History. He has also completed a six-year Dars-i Nizami course in South Africa and has spent three years training as a Mufti at Darul Qasim College, writing over two-hundred fatwas in Hanafi doctrine.

Marzieh Tofighi Darian

Program student fellow, 2018-2022.

Marzieh Tofighi Darian is an SJD Candidate at Harvard Law School.

Masooma Haider

Masooma Haider is a 2L at Harvard Law School. As a second-generation Pakistani-American, Masooma is interested in issues of Muslim civil rights, immigration reform, data privacy, and civic engagement, as well as the study and documentation of Shi'i jurisprudence.

Saleh Ismail

Saleh Ismail is a J.D. Candidate at Harvard Law School.

Ariq Hatibie

Research assistant, 2021-2023.

Ariq Hatibie is a 1L at Harvard Law School interested in human rights and international law. He has worked for the European Commission on investor-state arbitration issues, collaborated with the International Crisis Group on a transitional justice project for the Yazidis of Northern Iraq, and conducted research in the fields of public health, nuclear diplomacy, and peacebuilding. At Harvard, he is an articles editor for the Human Rights Journal, and is part of the Advocates for Human Rights.

Ariq holds a BA in Global Affairs from Yale University and an MSc in Global Governance and Diplomacy from the University of Oxford.

Shanzay Javaid

Shanzay Javaid is an LL.M. candidate at Harvard Law School. Her areas of focus include issues in cyberlaw and regulation of tech space, as well as commercial and contract law. She is also interested in research of Islamic law and the digitization of its sources to provide accessibility world-wide. Before coming to Harvard, she worked as a transactional lawyer and served as a legal advisor for a UK-based tech company in Pakistan

Abdelrahman Mahmoud

Research assistant, 2020-2023.

Abdelrahman Mahmoud is a PhD Candidate in the History and Middle East Studies program at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Lily Moens is a JD candidate at Harvard Law School.

Abdul Wahab Niaz

Abdul Wahab Niaz is an LL.M Candidate at Harvard Law School. Prior to attending HLS, he worked as a law clerk to Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial at the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and also rendered services in the dispute resolution and corporate advisory team of a leading Pakistani law firm. His research interests in Islamic law center around studying judicial islamization of laws in Pakistan and exploring Islamic constitutionalism in muslim-majority countries. At PIL, he is interested in working on digitization of Islamic law resources and also exploring the intersection between law and technology in our digitized world.

Niaz holds BA.-LL.B (Honours) from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).

Sohaib Baig

Research fellow, 2020–2021.

Sohaib Baig was a Research Fellow at the Program in Islamic Law between 2020-2021. He is interested broadly in connected intellectual and social histories of Islam across South Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the Middle East in the early modern and modern period.

Sohaib's book project is based on his dissertation, entitled "Indian Hanafis in an Ocean of Hadith: Islamic Legal Authority between South Asia and the Arabian Peninsula, 16th - 20th Centuries." It examines how Indian Hanafis from Sindh and Delhi maneuvered across imperial geographies to pursue hadith scholarship and engage multiple legal schools (madhhabs) in the Indian Ocean. It analyzes how such transregional exchanges produced immense debate on the authority of the Islamic legal school and the usage of hadith as legal evidence, leading to the formation of new Islamic legal institutions in the modern period.

He completed his PhD in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Sohaib has conducted archival research in Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Netherlands, and the UK.

Research Fellow, 2019–2020

Dana Lee is a research fellow at the Program in Islamic Law for the 2019-2020 academic year. She is currently working on her first book project based on her dissertation entitled,  At the Limits of Law: Necessity in Islamic Legal History, Second/Eighth through Tenth/Sixteenth Centuries .  

She received her Ph.D. from the Near Eastern Studies Department at Princeton University in 2019 and previously received a J.D. from UCLA School of Law.

Research Fellow, 2018–2020

Mariam Sheibani is a Research Fellow at Harvard Law School's Program in Islamic Law and Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School.   Her research interests are in Islamic intellectual and social history, with a focus on law, ethics, gender, and contemporary Islamic thought. She serves as Lead Blog Editor for the  Islamic Law Blog  (formerly the SHARIAsourceBLOG) based at Harvard Law School.

Her first book project, Islamic Legal Philosophy: Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām and the Ethical Turn in Medieval Islamic Law , examines how Muslim jurists from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries addressed salient questions of legal philosophy and ethics, leading them to develop competing legal methodologies and visions of the law. In particular, she traces the development of a purposive, analytical, and socially responsive legal discourse that originated among Shāfiʿī jurists in Khorasan and continued to evolve in Ayyubid Damascus and Mamluk Cairo in subsequent centuries. The study centers on a prominent Damascene heir of Khorasani Shāfiʿism, ʿIzz al-Dīn b. ʿAbd al-Salām, a pivotal figure in the development of Islamic legal philosophy, ethics, and legal maxims (qawāʿid fiqhiyya). Learn more about her book project and other current  research projects .

She received her PhD in Islamic Thought from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.Prior to her doctoral studies, she earned a BA in Public Affairs and Policy Management, an MA in Legal Studies, and a second an MA in Islamic Thought. 

R. Salah Muhiddin

Research assistant, spring 2022.

Salah Muhiddin is a JD candidate at Harvard Law School.

Asma Khoshmehr

Asma Khoshmehr is a MFA student at Emerson College.

Salaam Sbini

Salaam Sbini is an MTS student at Harvard Divinity School. 

Hani Ramadan

Hani Ramadan is a PhD candidate in Histories and Cultures of Muslim Societies, in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC), Harvard. His main focus is on Quranic Studies and Sufism. His MA dissertation (American University of Beirut) focused on the methodology of the Sufi interpretation of the Quran.

Faris Rehman

Faris Rehman is a 1L at Harvard Law School hoping to concentrate in the intersection between law and technology. He has his B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Ohio State University, where he specialized in artificial intelligence.

Marta Canneri

Research assistant, 2020.

Marta Canneri is a JD student at Harvard Law School.

Aiyanna Sanders

Research assistant, 2020-2022.

Aiyanna Sanders is a JD student at Harvard Law School.

Rehan Staton

Rehan Staton is a JD student at Harvard Law School.

Hassaan Shahawy

Shariasource student editor, 2020.

Hassaan Shahawy is a student at Harvard Law School. At HLS, he was elected the first Muslim president of the  Harvard Law Review , and also served as the co-president of the Muslim Law Students Association and as a Lead Article Editor with the  Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review . He is interested in legal history, criminal law, environmental law, and property. He also has studied Islamic law traditionally in various countries around the world.

Prior to HLS, he received a BA in History and Near Eastern Studies at Harvard University, then an MA and PhD in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar.  

Saqib Qureshi

Saqib Qureshi is an MTS Candidate at Harvard Divinity School.

Zahra Takhshid

Research affiliate, 2020-2021.

Zahra Takhshid was a Research Affiliate to the Program in Islamic Law and the Reginald Lewis Fellow for Law Teaching at Harvard Law School. She also served as the Islamic Law Fellow at the Institute on Religion, Law, & Lawyer’s Work at Fordham Law School. Zahra is a  Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University  and has been selected as the 2021 Quantum Fellow at the Center for Quantum Networks of University of Arizona in partnership with Yale Law School’s Information Society Project (ISP).

She teaches and writes about torts, contracts, privacy, social media, technology and the law. Part of her scholarship explores how to use tools from torts and contracts in resolving challenges with emerging technological developments. A second strand of her interest is Islamic and comparative law. 

Zahra holds a doctorate (S.J.D.) from Fordham Law School. She earned an LL.M. from the George Washington University Law School where she was the recipient of full tuition Thomas Buergenthal Scholarship. She also has an LL.M. ( Summa Cum Laude ) and an LL.B. ( Magna Cum Laude ) from University of Tehran School of Law and Political Science.

Rabiat Akande

Research affiliate, 2019-2021.

Rabiat Akande was a Research Affiliate at the Program in Islamic Law between 2019-2020 and a Clark Byse Fellow at Harvard Law School. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Law at Osgoode University. 

Her current research explores struggles over religion-state relations in comparative contexts and illuminates law’s centrality to one of modernity’s most contested issues–the relationship between religion, and the state, and society–while also interrogating law’s complex relationship with power, political theology, identity, and socio-political change. These issues are at the forefront of her book project, Constitutional Entanglements: Empire, Law and Religion in Colonial Northern Nigeria (under contract with Cambridge University Press), which traces the emergence of “secularism” as a constitutional idea of ordering religion-state relations in early to mid-twentieth century British Colonial Northern Nigeria, and grapples with the postcolonial legacy of that inheritance.

She received her SJD from Harvard Law School in 2019 and obtained her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Ibadan, graduating with a First Class Honors and at the top of her class and later studied at the Nigerian Law School from which she also graduated with a First Class Honors.

Mary Elston

Mary Elston is a scholar of Islam focusing on the modern and contemporary Middle East. Her research interests are in the anthropology of Islam, religious studies, and Islamic intellectual history, with a focus on education, knowledge, politics, and language.  

Her dissertation, “Reviving  Turāth : Islamic Education in Modern Egypt,” combines ethnography and textual analysis to examine the politics, texts, and practices of a traditionalist education movement at Egypt’s al-Azhar, the preeminent institution of Islamic learning located in Cairo, received the Alwaleed Bin Talal Prize for Best dissertation in Islamic Studies in 2020.  

Her research in Egypt was supported by the Loeb Dissertation Research Fellowship in Religious Studies, the Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, the American Research Center in Egypt, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and Harvard University Center for African Studies. At PLS, Mary plans to turn her dissertation into a book manuscript, tentatively titled “Constructing Tradition: Islamic  Turāth  in the Contemporary Islamic World.” Her book will take a social scientific and humanistic approach to debates about tradition, knowledge, and Islamic education in the modern and contemporary Muslim world.

 In May 2020, Mary received her Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

email:  [email protected]

Karina Halevy

Research assistant, summer 2021.

Karina Halevy is an undergraduate student majoring in Applied Math and Computer Science. She's interested in computational linguistics, data science for social good, education, and tech ethics.

Mohammad Abderrazzaq

Research affiliate, 2020-2022.

Mohammad A. Abderrazzaq is a Research Affiliate at the Program in Islamic Law. He has also been a contributing editor for the Sharia Source Project at Harvard Law School. In addition to his research in Islamic legal theory, Mohammad has taught courses on Islam in America, Islamic intellectual history, Islamic law, Islamic history, and Qur’anic exegesis.

His dissertation was a study of the development of  maqāṣid  juridical theory, which he is preparing for publication under the title  The Higher Objectives of Islamic Law: The Development of Maqāṣid Theory from al-Shāṭibī to Ibn ʿĀshūr and the Contemporary Maqāṣid Movement . Mohammad is also an editor for a book series treating the  maqāṣid  thought of premodern and modern legal figures.

He received his PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  

Yusuf Celik

Data science fellow, 2021-2022.

Yusuf Celik is the lead data scientist for the SHARIAsource Courts and Canons Project, 2020-2021. He  is currently an adjunct lecturer and researcher at the University of Utrecht.

His research is on Philosophical Hermeneutics in the Islamic tradition and Continental philosophy. Yusuf Celik has also been active for years in the field of software engineering. As an independent contractor he has worked for different high profile clients in the capacity of lead developer, consultant, code coach, and Scrum master. He is currently exploring ways to synthesize insights from Philosophical Hermeneutics with new technologies such as Deep Learning.

Celik received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2020 for his dissertation on contemporary Qur’an hermeneutics in Turkey.

MESA Global Academy Fellow, 2020-2022

Dr. Issam Eido is a Global Academy Scholar in partnership with the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). He is also an Assistant Professor of the Practice of Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University Department of Religious Studies. A former visiting scholar of Islamic and Arabic Studies at The University of Chicago-Divinity School (2013-2015). Prior to the Syrian uprising, Eido served as a lecturer in the faculty of Islamic Studies in the Department of Quran and Hadith Studies at the University of Damascus.  

Eido's research focuses on the Qur'an, Hadith Studies, Sufism. His teaching interests focus on Qur’an, Hadith, Early Islamic legal theory, and Arabic Studies.  

Eido received his Ph.D. from the Department of Quran and Hadith Studies at Damascus University in 2010. For more information visit his webpage . 

Hedayat Heikal

Research fellow, 2021-2022.

Hedayat Heikal is a Research Fellow at the Program in Islamic Law and a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. She served as a Research Scholar in Law and the inaugural Islamic Law and Civilization Research Fellow at Yale Law School, a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the American University in Cairo, as well as a Graduate Program Fellow at Harvard Law School. Her academic work focuses on comparative constitutional law, the rise of the administrative state, and Middle Eastern and Islamic law. Between 2009 and 2013, she practiced as a litigation, arbitration, and enforcement attorney at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in New York, representing clients on a wide array of disputes and regulatory matters.

She recently completed a  dissertation titled “Beyond Juristocracy: The Rise and Fall of Judicial Activism on National Identity Questions in the Middle East.”

Hedayat also holds a Doctor of Law (J.D.) magna cum laude  from Harvard Law School and a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.)  summa cum laude from the American University in Cairo. 

Shahrad Shahvand

Shahrad Shahvand is a PhD Candidate in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations program at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Fatima Essop

Research affiliate, 2022-2023.

Fatima Essop is a Fellow at the Program on Law & Society in the Muslim World at Harvard Law School and an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa. She has practiced in the areas of public interest litigation, administrative law, environmental law, torts, and family law, and is an accredited family law mediator with experience in the area of Muslim family law. 

Her current research focuses on the practice of Muslim family law, by the Muslim minority community in South Africa. She has undertaken socio-legal, empirical research in the areas of Islamic divorce and inheritance in order to identify the disparities between the theory of law and the lived reality of the law, as experienced by the Muslim community in South Africa. 

Essop has a PhD from the University of Cape Town (UCT) where her thesis focused on the intersection between the Islamic laws of inheritance and the South African laws of inheritance, and has lectured on the Interpretation of Statutes in UCT’s Law Faculty. She also has a BA degree in Arabic and Islamic law from the International Peace College of South Africa and a Certificate in Islamic Finance from the ETHICA Institute of Islamic Finance based in the United Arab Emirates.

Rami Koujah

Research editor, islamic law blog, 2022-2023.

Rami Koujah is a PhD candidate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. His dissertation is on the concept of personhood in Islamic law and legal theory. Rami earned his JD from Stanford Law School, MSt from Oxford University, and a joint BA/MA from UCLA.

Hadi Qazwini

Hadi Qazwini is an educator and researcher. His scholarly interests are in Islamic intellectual history, with a focus on theology, law, and Imāmī Shīʿīsm. He completed his Ph.D. in Religious and Islamic Studies at the University of Southern California. His dissertation, titled “The Islamic Debate on Juristic In/Fallibility ( al-takhṭi ʾ a wa al-taṣwīb ) and the Construction of Competing Orthodoxies,” explores the intellectual and practical underpinnings of the debate in Islamic legal theory over whether all legal experts are correct ( kullu mujtahid muṣīb ). In addition to pursuing the academic study of Islam, Hadi obtained advanced training in the Shīʿī seminary ( al-ḥawza al-ʿilmiyya ) in Qum, Iran, specializing in the traditional study of Islamic thought and practice. He recently published a peer-reviewed article in   Islamic Studies   entitled “Heir of the Prophets: Veneration of Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī and the Socio-Religious Positioning of Twelver Shiism.” He is in the early stages of writing a book, tentatively titled   Islam and the Problem of Truth: An Intellectual History . In addition to his scholarly work, Hadi serves in several non-profit organizations in the areas of higher education and international development and relief.

Raha Rafii is currently an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, where she was previously a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow on the Law and Learning in Imami Shi‘i Islam ERC project. She received her PhD in 2019 from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania and specializes in medieval Islamic history, jurisprudence, and Arabic and Persian historiography.  As an American Society of Legal History Wallace Johnson First Book Fellow, she is working on turning her dissertation into a book titled  Imagining the Islamic Judge: The  Adab al-qadi  Genre . Focusing on the standard legal genre of  adab al-qāḍī , or judicial protocol, the book project focuses on the impacts and intersections of non-legal literatures on  adab al-qāḍī  works. In addition to her research specialization, she also publishes on digital humanities, museums, and orientalism in both academic and public-facing outlets.

She received her B.S. in International Politics from Georgetown University and masters’ degrees in both Oriental Studies and Jewish Studies from the University of Oxford. She has also held a Fulbright scholarship in Egypt as well as a Legal Theory Fellowship at Cardozo Law School.

Simon Loynes

Research editor, 2020-2022.

Simon is a Research Editor at the Program in Islamic Law. He has previously worked as part of the Knowledge, Information Technology, and the Arabic Book project at the Aga Khan University, London. He is a specialist in the Qur’an and is particularly interested in its literary aspects, its relationship to early Arabic poetry, and its place in Late Antiquity. His research also applies Digital Humanities methodologies to the study of the Qur’an, and he interested, more broadly, in the digitisation of Arabic texts and the challenges presented by building large-scale digital corpora.

His first monograph, "Revelation in the Qur’an," investigates the Qur’anic concept of revelation through the roots n-z-l and w-ḥ-y, was published in early 2021 in Brill’s Texts and Studies on the Qurʾān series (Brill, 2021).

He holds a PhD in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Edinburgh (2019) and a MA in Islamic Societies and Cultures from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (2014). 

Haroun Rahimi

Global mesa fellow, 2022-2023.

Haroun  Rahimi is an Assistant Professor of Law at the American University of Afghanistan and a Visiting Professor of Law at Bocconi University School of Law and is a Global Academy Scholar at MESA.. His research focuses on economic laws, institutional reform, Islamic finance, and divergent conceptions of rule of law in Muslim and modern thoughts, and religious authority, and his research has appeared in reputable local and international journals. Rahimi has also collaborated as an independent consultant with a number of research firms and policy think tanks conducting policy research on institutional development and good governance in the South Asia context. At the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, he has worked on Islamic finance as a poverty alleviation strategy, the legal history of Afghanistan, and the ways that legal transplantation is legitimized in Muslim countries.

Rahimi was a visiting scholar at the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) in Rome. He obtained his B.A. in Law from Herat University, his LLM in Global Business Law, and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington.

Aliya Zuberi

Aliya Zuberi is a 2L at Harvard Law School. She holds a BA in History from Barnard College.

Sithy Ermiza Tegal

Research affiliate, spring 2023.

Ermiza Tegal is a lawyer and activist from Sri Lanka. She has a Master of Laws from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London with a specialization in Law, Governance and Development. Her work encompasses addressing gender-based violence, ensuring civil liberty protections in counter terror responses, ensuring minority rights, defending rights and protection for victims of torture, promoting people-centred land policies and the securing freedom of assembly and expression of non-governmental civil society organizations. Ermiza leads a legal chamber specializing in public law and family law. Her practice litigates on issues of constitutional law and administrative law mainly representating victims of discrimination, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention and domestic violence.

Ermiza is a co-founder of  Muslim Personal Law Reform Action Group  (MPLRAG) which works for Muslim family law reforms. Ermiza currently serves as a legal expert on governmental advisory committees on Muslim law reform and Family law reform in Sri Lanka. Her publications include  “Inside the Quazi Courts of Sri Lanka” , Failing Women Everyday: Legal Protection for Domestic Violence Victims in Sri Lanka”, “ Towards Understanding Female Genital Cutting in Sri Lanka ” , “ Exposed and Alone: Torture Survivors in Sri Lanka bear the burden of their own protection ” and “Prevention of Terrorism Act, Rule of Law and Human Security”.

AbdurRahman Bhatti

Research intern, summer 2023.

AbdurRahman Bhatti is an engineering student at Princeton with an interest in solving major problems using technology and entrepreneurship. In parallel with his studies, AbdurRahman ran a Techstars-backed augmented reality/fitness startup called Ghost Pacer for five years that generated seven figures in annual revenue. During that time, he also managed a 35-person engineering team and filed for 7 patents across various fields.

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International and Comparative Law Research Scholars

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

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

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

Research Scholar Program Privileges 

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

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

Program Participants

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

How to Apply

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

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

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

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

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

Apply Now

International and Comparative Law Research Fellowships 

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

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

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

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

Deadline: January 15 

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

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

Research Scholars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Languages:  Spanish (intermediate); Burmese (basic)

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

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

Languages : French, Spanish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Languages:  Pashto (native), Urdu and English

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

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

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

Languages:  Japanese (native)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Languages : French (native) and Dutch (proficient)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Languages:  Mandarin Chinese (native)

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

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

Languages:  German (native), French (elementary)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Languages: Italian (native)

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

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

Languages : German (native), French, Dutch

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

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

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

Languages:  German, English and French

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

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

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

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

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

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

Languages:  German (native), French (proficient)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Languages:  Chinese (native)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Languages : Italian (native)

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

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

Languages:  Chinese (native) and German (elementary)

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

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

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

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

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

Languages:  Mandarin Chinese (native)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Languages : English, French, German, Spanish

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

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

Research Focus

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

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

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

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

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

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

English, German, Greek

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

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

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

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

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

Spanish (native), Italian (elementary). 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Japanese (native)

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

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

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

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

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

Hindi (native), Spanish (basic/learning)

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

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

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

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

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

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

English (some German and French)

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

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

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

Dutch, French and English

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

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

Mandarin (native) and Cantonese (proficient)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Practicing as a lawyer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evaluating Digital Open Source Imagery: A Guide for Judges and Fact-Finders

20 May Evaluating Digital Open Source Imagery: A Guide for Judges and Fact-Finders

[ Raquel Vazquez Llorente is the Associate Director, Technology Threats and Opportunities, at WITNESS.

Sarah Zarmsky is an Assistant Lecturer and PhD Candidate at the University of Essex Human Rights Centre. In 2023, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. 

Daragh Murray is a Senior Lecturer in International Human Rights Law, and Fellow of the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow.]

Translations of this post are available in Arabic , French , Spanish , and Ukrainian .

This blog post introduces ‘ Evaluating Digital Open Source Imagery: A Guide for Judges and Fact-Finders ’, available in English , French , Spanish , Arabic and Ukrainian . The guide is the result of a collaboration between Queen Mary University of London, Open Society Justice Initiative, the TRUE Project, the University of Essex Human Rights Centre, the Hertie School Centre for Fundamental Rights, Mnemonic, the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Oxford Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, and WITNESS. 

It is widely accepted that digital open source information can play a key role in the investigation and prosecution of human rights, humanitarian law, and international criminal law violations. Content recorded in the context of a protest can, for example, provide insight into the makeup and nature of the crowd, capture police responses, and help to establish a timeline of events. This content can come from sources as diverse as X, Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat, TikTok, or  a Facebook live stream. This open source information can shine a light into the events of a day and provide a variety of perspectives (and viewpoints ) that were simply unimaginable fifteen years ago. But how can Courts or other accountability mechanisms leverage this information for accountability and justice? When these institutions receive open source content from a third party–such as a NGO, academic researcher or investigative journalist–how can they evaluate the merits of their analysis? How should they assess the quality and reliability of an open source submission? It is precisely this problem that ‘ Evaluating Digital Open Source Imagery: A Guide for Judges and Fact-Finders ’ seeks to address.

Over the past years, we have seen investigative bodies and legal professionals grappling with the nuances of digital evidence–its potential and pitfalls. In an era where digital information is abundant and readily accessible, open source information, or information that any member of the public can observe, purchase, or request , has become increasingly used as evidence  in legal proceedings and fact-finding missions. For example, at the International Court of Justice earlier this year, South Africa presented multiple open source videos to demonstrate Israel’s alleged violations of the Genocide Convention. At the International Criminal Court, the arrest warrant for Mahmoud Mustafa Busayf Al-Werfalli was based largely off videos posted to Facebook (although the case has since been closed due to the presumed death of the accused), and a digital platform compiling satellite imagery and open source photos and videos was used as evidence by the Office of the Prosecutor in the Mali cases. Open source materials were also central to the findings of the UN-mandated fact-finding missions on Venezuela and Myanmar , along with the Commission of Inquiry on protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and reports from the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen . From social media posts and satellite imagery to witness videos, this digital content can provide crucial insights into alleged violations of human rights, humanitarian law, and criminal law.

Yet, the relative novelty of this evidence brings forth questions of authenticity, reliability, and probative value. Particularly in judicial proceedings, the increasing reliance on digital open source imagery requires a higher standard of technological literacy amongst those in the courtroom to ensure that principles of integrity and fairness of the proceedings are upheld. We hope this guide, published in May 2024, will emerge as  a valuable companion not only to judges but also to investigations carried out by international accountability bodies such as Commissions of Inquiry, Fact-Finding Missions, United Nations mandates and quasi-judicial institutions. 

Unpacking the Guide: A resource to demystify digital open source evidence

Written by a collective of lawyers, academic experts, human rights advocates, and open source investigators, the guide aims at demystifying the process of evaluating digital open source imagery, providing a roadmap for assessing the credibility, reliability, and probative value of this increasingly crucial form of evidence. Our aim was to create a comprehensive resource to help legal and investigative professionals at international institutions navigate the technicalities of digital open source information when it has been submitted by a party to the proceeding or a third party, or obtained via an external report. The document is not a guide on how to conduct open source investigations, as there are many resources already available and other outlets are better placed to provide that kind of guidance. Instead, this Guide is intended to assist judges, officially appointed fact-finders and other decision-makers in their assessment of open source information, by explaining some of the most common open source investigative techniques and providing insight into how open sources investigations are conducted.

The guide tackles the unique challenges posed by digital open source information, such as the lack of traditional indicia of authenticity, anonymous or unknown sources, the widespread dissemination of content across the internet, and the myriad of ways in which a piece of content may be ‘inauthentic’. We also acknowledge that while online open source imagery may not always be what it is purported to be–for multiple reasons, such as misattribution, editing, modification of metadata, staging of events, and the use of artificial intelligence to create or manipulate content–many of these can be identified using appropriate verification techniques. Moreover, inauthentic digital imagery may still have evidential value. 

This document builds on the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations with a specific focus on supporting judges and other fact-finders. The guide is organized around a number of key issues that a court or fact-finding body may need to address in their evaluation of open source information, including determining the authenticity of a digital image, as well as analyzing relevant metadata, source, location, and time information. For each issue, the guide defines relevant terms and techniques, explaining their shortcomings, and provides examples that can help inform judges and fact-finders’ own evaluative process. In each section, there is a ‘Key Takeaways’ box, which gives a summary of the information for quick reference. There is also a glossary of common terms relevant to the evaluation of digital open source information. 

In the guide we cover pivotal considerations that a judge or investigative body may want to address with the submitting party, including content verification, metadata analysis, and the assessment of source credibility. Most importantly,  we emphasize the importance of corroborative analysis, reinforcing the idea that digital open source information should complement, rather than replace, traditional forms of evidence. We also offer a forward-looking perspective on the role of artificial intelligence and synthetic media in future legal proceedings, indicating how these developments may make their way into investigations for international crimes and human rights violations. As technology continues to evolve, so too will the nature of digital evidence. Our hope is that the guide stands as a critical resource for anyone involved in the evaluation of evidence. 

This document underscores the significance of interdisciplinary approaches in adapting to the digital evolution within legal frameworks, and it can serve as a bridge between the worlds of technology and international investigations. By examining and spelling out  the intricacies of open source imagery, we hope to contribute to ongoing efforts to enhance digital literacy among legal professionals, empowering them to make informed decisions about the admissibility and weight of digital open source evidence. Different jurisdictions will differ in their rules of admissibility, and in whether expert evidence is required, and, if so, what kind of expertise. However, we hope the guide’s impact will extend beyond the courtroom, to enhance the credibility and transparency of human rights investigations, fact-finding missions, and accountability mechanisms worldwide. 

Coming next: Launch events  

Launch events and informational sessions are currently being planned across different countries, please get in touch with Dr. Daragh Murray if you would like to host a launch event or informational session, virtually or in-person at [email protected] .

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Article Contents

I. background, ii. challenges to implementing the human right to science in neuroscience, iii. possible ways forward for human rights and neuroscience, iv. conclusion, implementing the human right to science in neuroscience.

This article was written as a result of Brocher Workshop on the Human Right to Science with a Focus on Health, held in Hermance, Switzerland from November 28 to December 1, 2022 and sponsored by the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator. I am grateful to the organizers for inviting me and all the participants, both for their own informative presentations and for their comments on my presentation, the embryo of this article. I also want to thank my Stanford Law School research assistants, Yotam Berger and Madison Nicole Villareal.

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Henry T Greely, Implementing the human right to science in neuroscience, Journal of Law and the Biosciences , 2024;, lsae011, https://doi.org/10.1093/jlb/lsae011

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This article considers the implications of the international Human Right to Science for advances in neuroscience. First, it provides background information on both the Human Right to Science and on likely challenges arising from neuroscience in five categories: prediction, mind-reading, mind-control, mental enhancement, and “humanness.” Second, it examines the Human Right to Science, analyzing its internal contradictions in general, discussing those contradictions in reference to neuroscience, and then analyzing some practical limitations it would have. Third, it considers how human rights law might better approach neuroscience, first through strengthening the Human Right to Science and then by finding neuroscience-relevant rights in existing or novel Human Rights. The article concludes that the Human Right to Science may play a small part in neuroscience, especially in promoting freedom to do neuroscience research, but that its overall role is likely to be minor.

‘Between the principle and its implementation often lay some anguish.’ Julian Barnes, The   Noise of   Time

The principles behind the Human Right to Science are noble and inarguable; as truths, they are nearly self-evident. But their implementation, in the area of neuroscience and, I suspect, in other fields as well, will, at best, cause some anguish and, at worst, be useless.

This article sets out to explore the difficulties of implementing the Human Right to Science, recognized in several important international conventions, in the area of neuroscience. It starts with some background on both the Human Right to Science and on the possibilities, positive and negative, offered by neuroscience. It continues by analyzing dilemmas with implementing this right in neuroscience both in theory and in the real world and asking whether the Human Right to Science would do anything useful in this context. It ends with a few thoughts on ways to move forward with a human rights framework for governing neuroscience, eventually concluding that the Human Right to Science is not the most promising approach.

This section first sets out the history, contents, and interpretations of the Human Right to Science. It then looks at three different ways in which neuroscience is changing our understanding of human brains, minds, and lives, arguing that each of those changes will have both good and bad consequences.

I.A. The Human Right to Science

The history of the Human Right to Science is set out in detail in William Schabas’s contribution to this issue; I will note only the most important parts. 1 The right was first recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), but only briefly. Article 27 of that Declaration reads, in full,

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts, and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary, or artistic production of which he is the author. 2

Starting from 1945, at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco, the organization wanted a statement of international human rights. Its Economic and Social Council was given that task. In the discussions that led up to the adoption of the Universal Declaration in 1948, the Council decided first to come up with a general statement of human rights and to follow that with a convention that would be legally binding. Agreement on that follow-on convention proved difficult. Even after being split into two proposed conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Cultural, and Social Rights (ICESCR), the Commission was not ready to present drafts of the two covenants to the General Assembly for another 6 years, until 1954. It took another 12 years, until 1966, before the General Assembly adopted them, and yet another decade, until 1976, before both Conventions came into force after having been adopted by the required number of states. 3 Currently, 172 states have ratified the ICESCR, over 50 of them with some declarations or reservations. An additional four states, including the United States, have signed but not ratified it and so are not directly bound by it. 4

Article 15 of the ICESCR spells out three specific human rights: one specifically about cultural life, one specifically about science, and one applying to both, as well as some obligations of the governments that are party to the Covenant. The entire article states

(1) The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone:

(a) To take part in cultural life;

(b) To enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications;

(c) To benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary, or artistic production of which he is the author.

(2) The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include those necessary for the conservation, the development, and the diffusion of science and culture.

(3) The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to respect the freedom indispensable for scientific research and creative activity.

(4) The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the benefits to be derived from the encouragement and development of international contacts and co-operation in the scientific and cultural fields. 5

After the ICESCR was adopted but shortly before its entry into force in January 1976, the General Assembly has adopted two other documents that bear on the right to science. The U.N. Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, adopted in 1974, sets out, in its Article 13, the duty of developed states to provide both access to ‘the achievements of modern science and technology’ and to help build the scientific infrastructures in developing countries. 6

The General Assembly then adopted the Declaration on the Use of Scientific and Technological Progress in the Interest of Peace and for the Benefit of Mankind (‘the Declaration’) in 1975. 7 It has nine sections, which lay out both rights to the benefits of science and prohibitions of its misuse. Section two focuses on prevention of misuse generally.

All States shall take appropriate measures to prevent the use of scientific and technological developments, particularly by the State organs, to limit or interfere with the enjoyment of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the individual as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Human Rights and other relevant international instruments.

Section six covers both bases:

All States shall take measures to extend the benefits of science and technology to all strata of the population and to protect them, both socially and materially, from possible harmful effects of the misuse of scientific and technological developments, including their misuse to infringe upon the rights of the individual or of the group, particularly with regard to respect for privacy and the protection of the human personality and its physical and intellectual integrity.

So, between 1948 and 1975, the United Nations adopted four documents that set out and partially define the Human Right to Science. That right can be summarized as having four parts paraphrased below, the first two in the UDHR, the first three in Article 15 of the ICESCR, and the last from the Declaration.

The right of all persons, including those in developing nations, to enjoy the benefits of science,

The right of all persons to benefit from the ‘moral and material interests’ resulting from their creations,

The obligation of all states to respect the freedom essential for science, and

The obligation of all states to prevent uses of science and technology that limit human rights or harm individual or group interests.

Over the last 48 years, the Human Right to Science has been subject to some interpretation, application, and discussion, but not much. The Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which is charged with overseeing the implementation of ICESCR, has issued ‘General Comments’ on the Convention, which interpret various parts of it. General Comment 17, adopted in 2006, was the first that was importantly relevant to Article XV. It concerns paragraph 1(c) of Article 15 and provides a narrow interpretation of the author’s right to benefit, highlighting the difference between that ‘human right’ and ‘most legal entitlements recognized in intellectual property systems.’ 8

The Committee returned to the Human Right to Science in its General Comment 25, adopted in 2020. 9 The Committee developed that document on the relationship between science and economic, social, and cultural rights because ‘science is one of the areas of the Covenant to which States parties give least attention in their reports and dialogues with the Committee.’ The comment ‘focuses primarily on the Covenant right of everyone to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications (art. 15 (1) (b)), as it is the right most frequently invoked in relation to science.’ Although it also looked at some other aspects of the right, it stresses access to science and the abolition of discrimination around science. The Comment also notes an important role for the precautionary principle, although more in the uses of sciences than in scientific research itself.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has also weighed in on this right. Its 2005 ‘Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights’ speaks to some issues relevant to the right to science, especially with regard to human research. 10 Then, in 2017, UNESCO revised a 1974 document and renamed it a ‘Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers.’ 11 This interprets the UDHR’s right to science and focuses on protecting scientific researchers and the pursuit of science.

Many other actions by United Nations bodies deal with some aspects of the Human Right to Science. So do some regional declarations and charters, including those for the Americas, the African Union, the European Union, the Arab world, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Fewer than a handful of specific cases seem to have interpreted the right, including only one before the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. 12 Yotova and Knoppers, in 2020, could find only two other cases where any courts had addressed this right 13 : one before the Inter-American Court for Human Rights involving Costa Rica’s ban on in vitro fertilization; 14 and one before the Supreme Court of Venezuela concerning access to HIV drugs. 15 (In both cases the courts did hold for the claimants.). Some academics have discussed the Human Right to Science—but not very many. It appears that about a dozen scholars, many of them present at the meeting that gave rise to this article, have published on topics around that right in the last several years. 16 The American Association for Advancement of Science has shown a strong interest in the topic, and has a large database on it. 17

What does all this add up to? As someone who has worked in law and the biosciences for nearly 35 years but did not know of this human right’s existence until preparation for the meeting that led to this article, I think it is fair to say there has been scanty knowledge of the right, infrequent discussion of it, and almost no action in response to it.

I.B. The Neuroscience Issues

Our knowledge of the human brain has exploded in the last several decades and although it has left us far short of full, or even very useful, understanding in most areas, it has at least pointed the way to possible applications of neuroscience that could constitute either benefits or threats to people. 18 These fall into at least five categories, each of which offers the prospect of both help and harm: prediction, mind-reading, mind control, mental enhancement, and pushing the borders of ‘humanness.’ 19 This section will deal with each one in turn.

1. Prediction

A better understanding of the brain through neuroscience should improve our ability to predict people’s future neurological disease, mental illness, and behavior. The disease-related predictions can be beneficial if they lead to interventions that prevent, treat, or even cure the predicted condition. They can be harmful if they are used by others to discriminate against people predicted to develop these diseases. And they may have either good or bad consequences for individuals and their families who receive such predictions: benefits from an improved ability plan for one’s future life might be offset by psychological or other harms.

Similarly, predictions of future potentially harmful behaviors, from criminal activity to personality traits, can help the person involved—and third parties—to avoid, counteract, or mitigate them. At the extreme, this might provoke dystopian fears of preventive detention or, as in Philip K. Dick’s 1956 novella, The Minority Report , arrests, convictions, and punishments before a crime is committed. 20 Predictions of possible helpful behaviors can help the person involved, or others, take better advantage of them in, for example, career planning or social life.

And, of course, not all predictions will be perfect; a prediction of a future diagnosis of Huntington’s disease would be quite strong, a prediction of future criminal behavior might be quite weak. Highly accurate neuroscientific predictions about people have the potential to lead to action to help them, although accurate predictions could also lead to interventions that harm their subjects. Incorrect predictions, however, would seem to have no, or almost no, benefits and only harms. The less accurate the predictions, the more people may be harmed by them.

Currently, neuroscience (understood broadly to include, among other things, neurogenetics) can predict some things, mainly a few generally rare diseases, extremely well. Others, particularly those linked to criminal behaviors, are being investigated but remain very uncertain. We can safely foresee that a wide range of brain-related conditions and behaviors will become more predictable in the future; we just do not know which ones, and how well.

2. Mind-reading

We all read minds; we need to in order to interact well with our fellow humans (or even our pets). We read them from observing and analyzing the behaviors of others, consciously or subconsciously, from words to facial expressions to ‘body language.’ And we know, from sometimes bitter experience, that often we do not read minds well. Neuroscience is already allowing some rough mind-reading that might bypass our traditional approaches. Electroencephalograms (EEGs) can determine whether you are awake or asleep, alert, or drowsy. 21 Functional magnetic resonance imaging has been used to determine what a research subject is seeing and, to some extent, what such a person is thinking about. Scores of peer reviewed publications have claimed that these tools may help determine whether someone is lying or telling the truth, or is feeling or not feeling pain.

Such advances offer benefits, particularly to those who, from age or illness, are unable to communicate directly. The use of brain–computer interfaces to allow quadriplegic or ‘locked in’ research subjects to send email messages by using only their brains could be hugely life enhancing. 22 Knowing whether a criminal defendant is or is not telling the truth may improve criminal justice systems and ultimately reduce crime. 23 Knowing whether someone is or is not truly feeling pain might improve both civil justice and various disability programs. 24 Knowing whether a truck driver is having trouble staying awake behind the wheel might be very useful. (Farahany discusses the employment-based scenarios in extensive and disconcerting detail.) 25

But the other side of the coin is the potential use of such devices to strip individuals of the privacy of their thoughts. Involuntary uses of lie detection could be quite unwelcome and not just in the context of criminal investigations—would all guests want dinner party hosts to know whether their statement that ‘the meal was delicious’ was honest? And between freely undertaken and frankly coerced use fall ambiguous situations. Truck drivers may not be forced to wear an alertness monitoring EEG cap but might find themselves unemployed if they refused.

And, again, different kinds of mind-reading will vary in how accurate they are, both in producing true positives and avoiding false negatives. The weaknesses of the polygraph at both goals, for example, have led to it being generally inadmissible in court. Accuracy will thus affect the benefits and costs of the techniques.

3. Mind control

‘Mind control’ through various brain interventions is a frightening term, the subject of fears from demonic possession through hypnosis to the Imperius curse in Harry Potter’s world. And it is not uncommon for some mentally ill people to believe that their brains are being controlled, by someone, through implanted devices, microwave transmissions, or other hidden tools. Yet mind control of a different sort is the goal of things like deep brain stimulation for patients with Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders. This technique, first approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration in 1997, uses implanted electrodes to improve brain functioning in ways that allow the patient better to control bodily movements. Treatments for mental illness, whether drugs, devices, or effective forms of ‘talk therapy’ like cognitive behavioral therapy, also aim at improving control of a patient’s brain, by the patient or by others.

These kinds of interventions are not new; beta blockers, drugs used in medicine primarily to manage dangerous heartbeat rhythms, have been used to avoid stage fright or unintended body motions for decades. But neuroscience is increasing both the kinds and the effectiveness of control. In general, if done with the consent of the person involved, this would seem to be a benefit. But what if it is done involuntarily, perhaps to a patient too mentally ill to give meaningful consent? Or consider a convicted criminal who is sentenced to a brain intervention that will prevent, or substantially diminish the likelihood, of repeated crimes. And what would we say to a criminal who is given a choice between a long prison sentence and a ‘proven safe and effective’ brain surgery? (A similar choice is poised in the 1962 novella, and 1971 movie, A Clockwork   Orange , concerning a fictional aversive therapy to ‘cure’ the protagonist of violent impulses.) 26 And, of course, just how ‘safe’ and ‘effective’ any such interventions are will make a difference in the weighing of their benefits and harms.

4. Mental enhancements

One particular version of ‘mind control’ that deserves special attention is the possible use of interventions to enhance a person’s mental powers. The use of performance enhancing drugs in sports has long been a great concern to many people; the possibility of drugs or other interventions that enhance brain performance has been an increasing worry.

On the one hand, it offers potential benefits; much good could come, for individuals and for society, from the improvement of some mental capabilities. And, to some extent, that is what we have used calculators, computers, and the Internet to do. But to many it seems quite different when it is not an external tool but something that directly affects our brains.

As ethicists have long pointed out, the line between ‘treatment’ and ‘enhancement’ is often hard to draw. 27 A drug that relieves a bad headache will also enhance the drug taker’s ability to concentrate. Ritalin or Adderall, used by people diagnosed with attention deficit or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder will improve their abilities to focus and hence their ability, for example, to perform well in school. If the same drugs are used to try to enhance the ability of students without those conditions to concentrate and perform well in school, we worry about this ‘unfair’ mental enhancement. (It is important to note that the evidence for such an effect in people without those conditions is weak, 28 while most of us believe that we get at least some short-term mental benefits from the caffeine in a cup of coffee or tea.) People worry about whether the interventions are safe, are coerced (explicitly or implicitly), are fair (on both individual and broader social levels), are at some deep level ‘cheating’, or are likely to lead us to act worse toward the ‘unenhanced.’

5. ‘Humanness’

Finally, modern neuroscience is producing a different kind of concern, with different kinds of potential benefits and risks: research that blurs the line between human and non-human. The most accurate way to study how the human brain works is to look at living human brains in living human beings, but, happily, ethical and legal constraints limit how far that this can go. We cannot, for example, give living humans a drug with potential brain effects and then kill the research participant in order to remove the person’s brain and examine closely the effects of the drug on neurons and their networks. So, we create models that we hope can teach us something about humans—we do research on non-human animals or on human brain cells in laboratory cell cultures. Mouse brains are not the same as human brains and neither are human brain cells in a dish, but, as statistician George Box said, ‘all models are wrong but some are useful.’

This leads to a constant effort to make better models, models that are likely to reflect more accurately what goes on in a living human brain. But these better models can lead to a dilemma: researchers, having gone to models to avoid ethical problems of direct research on people, may find they have backed into the problems with models that are ‘too human.’ 29 Two such models in widespread use now are human neural organoids and human/non-human brain chimeras.

The first comprises human brain cells grown in a three-dimensional matrix. These can include several million human brain cells, which continue to develop and differentiate over time. Although individual organoids are now limited in size, largely because of the lack of a blood supply, several organoids can be combined into ‘assembloids’ (and researchers are working on creating vascularized organoids). 30 Similarly, human brain cells or tissues can be transplanted into the skulls of non-human animals, where they can grow, using the animal’s blood system, and integrate with the animal’s brain. 31 Or the two methods can be combined as a recent, remarkable paper from Sergiu Pasca showed. His laboratory transplanted human neural organoids into the brains of newborn rats and watched them integrate into the rats’ blood system, make connections with the rats’ brains, grow in size, respond to physical stimulation of the rats’ whiskers, and, when stimulated, induce a behavior (drinking) in the rats. 32

This research causes uneasiness in many people. Some of that is related to the possible suffering of the non-human animals but the deep concerns involve the possible ‘enhancement’ of the non-human animals: are they being ‘humanized’? In 2021, a committee of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine discussed these research methods and the concerns they raised. It concluded there was neither a realistic possibility of some kind of ‘consciousness’ or ‘sentience’ in the organoids nor a plausible way in which human brain tissue or organoid transplants would make the animals more human. Yet. But it did counsel that research is moving quickly and further attention was crucial—and specific regulation might be necessary in the future.

Similar concerns about humanness could arise from non-biological models. As often discussed in the science fiction of robots or androids, if one were able to simulate with great accuracy the workings of a human brain in a computer, would that computer be ‘human’? Or be a ‘person’ entitled to some rights? And, as research on brain–computer interfaces for the people with serious disabilities continues, would people connected intimately with computers through brain–computer interfaces still be totally human or would they be cyborgs, part human, and part machine—and, if so, would they be more cyborg than those of us living with implanted pacemakers or artificial joints?

The potential benefits to research that seeks to understand better how the brain works, with the goal of preventing or treating human suffering, seem obvious. Both the plausibility and the harms of blurring distinctions between humans and non-human animals or between humans and computers are less clear. Some might view these as affronts to the controversial concept ‘human dignity,’ not to the dignity of individual human persons but to the ‘dignity’ of humanity as a whole, or as a species.

Taken seriously, the Human Right to Science is difficult to implement in any context because of its many internal contradictions. These contradictions are certainly clear in applying the Right to neuroscience. And the Human Right to Science faces that additional difficulty that it may not be taken very seriously. This section discusses those three points: the general internal contradictions of the Right; the specific difficulties in neuroscience contexts; and the Realpolitik of legal, diplomatic, and political problems that are inherent to its implementation.

II.A. The Internal Contradictions of the Human Right to Science in General

In the second paragraph of his essay, The Crack-Up , F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote ‘the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.’ By those standards, the Human Right to Science may demand intelligences beyond first rate, as it contains not two opposed ideas but four requirements that are, if not completely opposed, at the very least in substantial tension with each other.

The Human Right to Science could be phrased as representing two rights and two obligations, which could be paired into two sets. First, the right of all persons to enjoy the benefits of science, and its twin—the right of inventors to benefit from their creations. Second, the obligations of states to respect the freedoms needed to do science, and its parallel—the obligation to prevent uses of science that limit human rights or harm individuals or groups. These rights and obligations are all, to some extent, in substantial tension.

Perhaps the most important conflicts are between the fourth point, the obligation of states to prevent harmful uses of science, and both the first and the third points, the rights of people to enjoy the benefits of science and the obligation of governments to respect scientific freedom. Access to some existing uses of science may benefit individuals but at the same time limit some human rights or harm individual or group interests. Similarly, scientific research may threaten to create technologies that, in the future, would limit human rights or cause harms.

Another tension involves the right to enjoy the benefits of science with the right of inventors to benefit from the ‘moral and material interests’ from their creations. To the extent that inventors have a right to benefit from their creations, this will tend to reduce the public’s access to the benefits of science, notably through increasing its price or decreasing its availability. The conflict seems clear on its face. In 2006, however, the Committee on Economic, Cultural, and Scientific Rights issued General Comment 17, ‘The Right to Benefit from the Protection of the Moral and Material Interests Resulting from any Scientific, Literary or Artistic Production of Which He or She is the Author.’ This interpretation would defuse the conflict by applying a weak interpretation to these ‘moral and material interests.’ As Mueller notes, ‘this provision aims to ensure that authors enjoy an adequate standard of living and are recognised as the creators of their production (paras.12-16), but does not offer the extensive legal protection offered e.g. by current IP law (para.10).’ 33 Whether this interpretation would be broadly accepted, especially by countries committed to strong intellectual property protections, is questionable.

These contradictions are not hard to see. Other authors, including Boggio, Donders, Porsdam, and Yotova, have recognized at least some of them and suggested some ways to try to reconcile them. But they do complicate the implementation of the Human Right to Science by forcing careful weighing of the conflicting rights it embodies and, ultimately, trade-offs among them.

II.B. These Tensions as Applied to Neuroscience

The broad and deep implications of neuroscience, for good and for ill, make the tensions within the Human Right to Science especially hard to resolve. This can be seen for each of the five areas of neuroscience discussed above.

Using neuroscience to predict future brain-related conditions of behavior may well benefit individuals, who are entitled to enjoy those benefits. But the ability to, for example, predict who will develop a neurological disorder and thus help the at-risk individuals prevent or adjust to the approaching challenges could be used by others to harm them, either by discriminating against them or in other ways. Similarly, the public might benefit from better prevention of crime by prediction of future criminals, but those identified by such predictions may well lose important rights. To the extent that these methods predict particularly high rates of negative conditions or behaviors in people from certain groups, they may both allow group benefits and cause group harms.

The neurological condition Tay-Sachs disease is found at unusually high rates in some populations, including Ashkenazi Jews and American Cajuns. Predicting which embryos would become babies with this uniformly fatal disorder, or which couples are at risk for having such babies, could provide benefits by allowing prospective parents to take measure to avoid the births of such children. It could also be used to limit the rights of such prospective parents from those groups to have children with the partners they want or for couples either to have children who were not tested for the disease as embryos or fetuses—or to have children at all. And it could be used to stigmatize or discriminate against the entire group.

Similarly, mind-reading or mind control could benefit some people, or groups, but the same techniques could be used to infringe the rights of, or to harm, others. The mentally ill might be helped by some brain control techniques that, if applied to, say political dissidents to ‘change their minds,’ would be terrible abuses.

Similarly, brain enhancing technologies might benefit those enhanced, but might harm those who were not enhanced, either by lack of access or by their own choice. One could argue that the first right, of all to benefit from scientific progress, could be used to guarantee everyone access to brain enhancing technologies, but even then, those who chose not to use it could claim that they were being harmed by the unfair competition of the enhanced. And from some perspectives, even ‘safe and successful’ enhancement might be seen as harming the enhanced individuals themselves, at least in the long run.

In all these cases, the possible restriction of the uses of technologies because of limitations they could bring to human rights or harms they could cause individuals or groups could also conflict with the scientific freedom and the consequent rights of researchers to broad and free inquiry. If, for example, a state banned neuroscience-based lie detection, would researchers interested in the topic be directly banned from pursuing those inquiries—or merely foreclosed from doing so as a practical matter by the likely lack of funding for such work in light of a prohibition on its uses?

This is a particularly difficult issue for researchers whose work could have both good and bad consequences, consequences that cannot be separated at the research stage. For example, someone may work on interventions to control delusions in the mentally ill in order to benefit them. But that very work might, by illuminating the sources of delusions, allow others to create delusions in targeted people. The underlying basic neuroscience research cannot be separated into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ research; the normative consequences stem from how it is used and the benefits often may be unobtainable without opening the possibilities for its application to harm.

One area where this conflict may be particularly pressing is the issue of ‘humanness.’ Banning, say, the creation of human/non-human brain chimeras in order to avoid threatening human dignity might not only foreclose future useful medical advances but would, by forbidding certain approaches to research, directly interfere with the freedom to do science.

The conflicts between the inventors’ rights to benefit from their moral and material interests and other parts of the Human Right to Science also exist. The inventors, for example, of a drug to prevent or cure Alzheimer’s disease could well seek to benefit financially in ways that would limit access to the drug. This would be even more true in the case of a cure for a rare disease, where, unlike with the growing plague of Alzheimer disease, inventors (and the firms that turn inventions into products) could not count on a large volume of sales even at a lower price to satisfy their material interests. Similarly, actions by states to fulfill their obligation to protect people from harms caused by science would often undercut the returns inventors might otherwise expect to receive from their creations.

The fact that these contradictions will exist, for the Human Right to Science in general and its implementation in regard to neuroscience in particular, is not surprising. Few, if any, human endeavors are of unalloyed good or evil. Appropriate action will almost always require weighing the competing interests, ethical and practical, and trading off their full recognition. One can read this criticism of the Human Right to Science as saying that instances of its applications to neuroscience will need to be carefully thought through in light of different important factors. That seems banal; the need for such analysis is both true and ubiquitous in making laws or policies.

It does, however, raise the question whether the Human Right to Science is helpful in making those tradeoffs. Can a question about a particular kind of neuroscience research be resolved by invoking this Right? If a research opponent plays card of prevention of harm and the research lays down the obligation of states to respect the freedoms science needs, has the Human Right to Science helped decide anything?

One might argue that it helps identify the interests at stake, but it is unlikely that access to potential benefits, inventors’ rights, the freedom of scientific inquiry, and potential harms from the technology including violations of human rights would not be taken into account whether or not a Human Right to Science existed. So, what good does it do? The best case I can make for it is in the context of relatively basic research. In those contexts, when opponents to the research invoke the precaution principle or other concerns, advocates could counter with not only consequentialist arguments about the potential value of the research but with state obligations contained in section three of the Human Right to Science. Whether that argument would be important might be questioned.

II.C. Real World Concerns

The question of the value of the Human Right to Science is exacerbated by the limited power of international human rights in general, and especially with regard to superpowers, such as the United States, which has never ratified the ICESCR, and China. Like many American lawyers, I am skeptical about the strength of international law, including international human rights law, because of its limited enforcement methods. From the UDHR on, international pronouncements on human rights have affirmed wonderful things, but with no strong enforcement mechanisms. Although the initial plan at the time of the founding of the United Nations had been for a firm and legally binding statement of human rights, the process produced the UDHR in 1948 as a set of aspirations with the legally binding ICCPR and ICESCR following (much) later. Drafts of those two conventions were presented to the United Nations General Assembly in 1954 and adopted by it in 1966. They both went into effect in 1976 when ratified by the required number of members states, 28 years after the adoption of the UDHR.

These conventions are binding international law, at least on the 174 states, including the United States, that ratified the ICCPR and the 172, not including the United States, that ratified the ICESCR. Unfortunately, like most international law, these conventions do not have strong procedures for enforcing their mandates. The ICCPR benefits from a very public Human Rights Committee made up of 18 independent experts in human rights who are elected for 4-year terms. This Committee holds 3-week meetings three times a year. Countries that have ratified the Convention must report to the Committee every 4 years; the Committee asks several countries to present their reports in open public sessions at their regular meetings. The Committee analyzes the reports and provides ‘concluding observations’ about its concerns about, and recommendations to, the reporting states. The countries’ reports and the Committee’s observations attract attention, in part through the frequently lively participation of non-governmental organizations. That Convention may lack strong enforcement powers, but it has at least some soft power.

The ICESCR has its own Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which, like the Human Rights Committee, is made up of 18 experts elected to 4-year terms. It meets twice a year and requires reports from members countries every 5 years. In 2008, the General Assembly adopted an optional protocol to the ICESCR that allows the Committee to consider complaints from individuals. It received enough ratifications to enter into force in 2013 and currently has 45 members.

Only one complaint seems to have brought to the Committee on Economic, Cultural, and Social Rights, alleging a violation of the Human Right to Science. 34 In 2017 an Italian couple, through legal counsel, made a ‘communication’ to the Committee complaining that their human rights had been violated by Italian laws involving in vitro fertilization. They alleged that Italian laws had required the transfer into the uterus of one of them of an embryo they had chosen not to transfer. They further complained that the Italian government had subsequently prohibited them from donating their remaining frozen embryos for research. These actions, they argued, violated their Human Right to Science with regard to their rights ‘to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications’ and violated Italy’s obligations to take steps ‘necessary for the conservation, the development and the diffusion of science and culture’ and ‘to respect the freedom indispensable for scientific research and creative activity.’

The Committee held ‘the communication inadmissible in relation to the claim that the prohibition on donating the embryos violated the rights of the authors under article 15 of the Covenant,’ ruling that the complainants, in American terms, lacked standing to make the Human Right to Science claims. It did grant them relief on the embryo transfer claim but under Article 12 of the Covenant, the Human Right to Health, not the Human Right to Science. For that claim, it required the Italian government to ‘submit to the Committee, within a period of six months, a written response, including information on measures taken in follow-up to the Views and recommendations of the Committee.’

Three things are noteworthy from this case. First, the Committee applied a limited view of the scope of the Human Right to Science, finding that the complainants did not have the right to bring their claim to the Committee in spite of their expressed desire to donate their embryos to science, their wish to ‘participate’ in science, and the possible benefits to their families from research on a disease involving those embryos. Second, even where the Committee ‘recommended’ various remedial steps to the Italian government, its order was limited to seeking a report on actions take. And, third, and most important, although the Optional Protocol allowing for complaints to the Committee on Economic, Cultural, and Social Rights has been available since 2013, this appears to the only time the Human Right to Science has been raised before it. My search of the relevant database showed the Committee had issued 107 decisions, procedural or on the merits, through July 2, 2023. 35

Although the two Conventions and their Committees are parallel, the ICESCR and its Committee get less attention, and have less influence than the ICCPR and its Committee. And the Human Right to Science seem to get the least attention of the right catalogued in the ICESCR. As William Schabas wrote in 2007, ‘if economic, social, and cultural rights lie at the vanishing point of international human rights law, then the question of the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific and technological progress and its application lies at the vanishing point of economic, social, and cultural rights.’ 36 Although there have been developments in the Human Right to Science since then, and efforts by a few commentators, including several present at the meeting that gave rise to this article, to strengthen the Human Right to Science or to apply it in particular contexts, the general conclusion appears to remain accurate. In sum, the Human Right to Science seems to have had little traction in the real world.

Neuroscience already raises important questions at the intersection of science and the interests and rights of individuals and societies. Those questions are only going to become more pressing as the desire to reduce human suffering by learning more about the brain continues to drive innovative research in human neuroscience. What might be done? I am not an expert on the Human Right to Science or on international human rights law in general, but I do feel able to offer, humbly, a few thoughts, first within the framework of the Human Right to Science and then through other human rights.

III.A. Strengthening the Human Right to Science

Even apart from its lack of enforcement or public recognition, the most important problem with applying the Human Right to Science helpfully to neuroscience is the need for subtle and nuanced trade-offs between the four concepts encompassed by that right. The text of the founding documents of this right provides no algorithm on how to weigh its almost self-evidently good concepts when they inevitably collide. But, to be fair, it is hard to imagine that any general statement of such a right could usefully provide enough details to guide the necessary compromises and trade-offs.

But perhaps one could take a step back and suggest procedures for making those assessments, through interpretative or implementing documents, whether binding or merely recommending. For example, the Committee on Economic, Cultural, and Scientific Rights could recommend to states regulatory approaches to applying the Human Right to Science to particular areas, such as neuroscience. It might set out some questions that states should determine at a high level, by legislation or its equivalent, while suggesting that others could be handled by regulatory or advisory bodies. It could suggest the topics that need to be weighed and some possible strategies for assessing them. It might recommend expert panels, public engagement, ‘Human Right to Science impact statements,’ or other methods by which states could flesh out the issues involved in applying the Human Right to Science. These statements could either be about scientific progress in general or might be specific to particular (and particularly important) scientific fields, such as, for example, neuroscience, human genetics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, robots, geoengineering, or nuclear technologies.

Alternatively, and with appeal to a law professor from a Common Law tradition, more litigation about the Human Right to Science could be encouraged. General Comment 25 from the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights was intended to add clarity and value to the Human Right to Science, but it contains few useful specifics. Case law might provide more insights into how that right can and should be applied. Cases could come from ‘communications’ to the Committee or from litigation of various sorts brought in the courts or agencies of countries that have ratified the Covenant. Those interested in expanding the application of the Human Right to Science could make public more information about how to litigate the right, or, in some cases, could even bring or finance such litigation. The International Society for Stem Cell Research and some of its researcher members, for example, might bring or support a case before the Committee on whether various national limits on stem cell research violate sections two or three of Article 15, which obligated party states both to support the development of science and to protect the freedom to do research.

III.B. Other Sources for Human Rights about Neuroscience

Another approach, specific to neuroscience, would be to argue for the importance of other human rights, existing or novel, dealing directly with brain technologies. These arguments sometimes use the term ‘cognitive liberty.’ The phrase was apparently coined in Wrye Sententia and Richard Boire, who founded a Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics in either January 2000 37 or in 1999. 38 In 2013, Jan-Christoph Bublitz published a book chapter usefully exploring that term and its meaning. 39 In recent years, the term has been championed by Professor Nita Farahany, most notably in her book, The Battle for Your Brain . 40 Farahany argues for an overall set of rights revolving around neuroscience, our brains, and our minds, to include rights to mental privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination. But she believes the bases for such international human rights already exist. 41

The UDHRs, as noted earlier, asserts the existence of a right to ‘share in scientific advancement and its benefits’ and for authors’ rights to the protection of their moral and material interests in their work in Article 27. But Farahany points out that Article 12, which provides that ‘No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation,’ can be a source for a right to mental privacy.

In addition, Article 18 states that

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Almost identical language appears in Article 18, section 1 of the ICCPR. It seems likely from the timing, the language, and context of these Articles that its drafters were largely concerned with religious liberty. As she points out, human rights are generally expected to evolve and to change (the narrow originalist interpretative method espoused by some justices of the U.S. Supreme Court has had little weight there). She notes a 2021 report from Dr Ahmed Shaheed, a special rapporteur for freedom of religion and belief, appointed by the United Nations, which urges a broader view of the right to encompass ‘a person’s inner sanctum (mind) where mental faculties are developed, exercised, and defined.’ 42

Another possible source for a broad protection for at least some aspects of freedom of thought, with no direct religious connection, is found in the ICCPR. It contains, in section 1 of its Article 19, a right not paralleled in the UDHR: ‘Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.’

Finally, Farahany finds the basis of a human right to self-determination in various parts of the UDHR. This, she argues, could also provide a protection for cognitive liberty.

Farahany recognizes that these international human rights need further development to protect cognitive liberty. She also accepts that national or regional legislation to implement these rights and notes the protections for freedom of thought in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. And she cites two United States Supreme Court decisions with language that could encompass a constitutional right to freedom of thought or mental privacy. 43 More directly, Chile had passed a constitutional amendment and legislation aimed at protecting ‘neurorights’ although the 2022 rejection of a proposed new Chilean constitution seems to have kept those from coming into force. (The Chilean effort did spark academic responses, some quite critical. 44 )

Other groups have made similar proposals for creating new neuroscience rights or even bills of rights. Two academics working in Europe, Marcello Ienca and Roberto Adorno, wrote an article in 2017 arguing that advances in neuroscience demanded new human rights. 45 Their clear and useful paper proposes four distinct neuroscience-related human rights: the right to cognitive liberty, the right to mental privacy, the right to mental integrity, and the right to psychological continuity. They do not propose a particular path for the adoption of these rights and, although they note that some aspects of them may be found in existing human rights documents, they acknowledge that new rights may be needed.

In 2021, Columbia University neuroscientist Rafael Yuste led an effort by the 23 member ‘Morningside Group’ to propose specific brain-focused humans rights. 46 The first of 10 recommendations of their lengthy article is ‘Building on existing human rights frameworks, establish “Neurorights” (e.g., mental liberty, mental privacy and mental integrity).’ Their last is ‘Create a broad international commission designed to meet regularly and assess neurotechnology developments with the aim of providing ethical guidance and shared commitments to responsible innovation.’ The eight recommendations in between make substantive recommendations for specific ‘neurorights.’ Yuste has created the Neurorights Foundation to promote these conclusions; 47 it advised the Chilean effort.

The problem with creating new rights for specific areas of science is that it requires creating new rights, not an easy task. Efforts to do so generally require international treaties and lengthy (and often unsuccessful) discussions. It is in many ways easier to interpret an existing legal obligation than to create a new one, particularly one that requires broad agreement by the world’s roughly 200 sovereign states. Farahany’s proposals are particularly attractive to the extent they build on the ICCPR. This Covenant has not been overlooked and its Human Rights Committee has been quite active. It might well prove an effective steward of rights to cognitive liberty.

Whether by building from existing human rights other than the Human Right to Science or creating new human rights, these approaches have an important advantage over trying to use the Human Right to Science to deal with threats from neuroscience. They can tailor their recommendations to the concerns raised by a given technology. The Human Right to Science should remain an at least potentially useful tool for researchers seeking for freedom to do their work, but without a framework for weighing that right against the areas where protection will be sought against neuroscience—a framework neuroscience-specific rights should provide—it seems likely to be of little value.

And, with neuroscience, focusing on a specific technology rather than “Science” as a whole has the further advantage of choosing a topic that is already the subject of substantial public controversy and interest, which may make extension of adoption of such rights more likely. We have already seen evidence of how strong public reactions to biological research can affect law, both international and domestic. Examples include the actions taken as part of the Council of Europe’s Oviedo Convention (formally ‘The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine’) and especially its protocols on human cloning (which it bans), organ transplantation, and genetic testing for health purposes. The ban on human cloning, adopted very shortly after the announcement of the birth of Dolly, the cloned sheep, is a good example of riding a wave of public interest to further the creation of new legal duties. Similarly, about the same time, in 1997, UNESCO adopted its Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights.

The question will still remain whether either approach—suggesting procedural approaches to implementing the Human Right to Science or creating novel human brain-based rights—is worth the effort. And, if so, worth the effort for whom . But these seem to me to possible ways forward and, in all likelihood, more promising ones than the route through the Human Right to Science.

This article opened with a quotation from The Noise of Time , a novel based on the life of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. In it, the composer comments on the difficulties of implementing principles. The principle he was referring to was ‘free love,’ which he found compelling as an idea but painful to implement. How similar the Human Right to Science is, as a principle, to ‘free love’ may be unclear, but both present attractively phrased concepts that are hard to put into practice. I want to end with some lines from T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men .

‘Between the idea.

And the reality…

Falls the Shadow.’ 48

Implementing attractive concepts is hard. And yet grounding, or justifying, useful policies in attractive general concepts may prove a useful way to proceed. An approach based in human rights to dealing with the problems raised by neuroscience at least deserves attention.

Johannes Morsink also wrote a useful history of the UDHR that contains a little relevant discussion of the right to science. Johannes Morsink, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent (1999).

Article 27, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217 (III) A, U.N. Doc. A/RES/217(III) (Dec. 10, 1948).

The ICESCR took effect in January 1976; the ICCPR had to wait until March.

https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=IND&mtdsg_no=IV-3&chapter=4&clang=_en (Last accessed April 20, 2024). The ICCPR has 174 members including the United States. https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV-4&chapter=4&clang=_en (Last accessed April 20, 2024).

International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Article XV, https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-economic-social-and-cultural-rights (Last accessed April 20, 2024).

UN General Assembly, Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States: Resolution / Adopted by the General Assembly , 17 December 1984, A/RES/39/163, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/190150?ln=en .

Unesco, The Right to Enjoy the Benefits of Scientific Progress and its Applications (2009).

Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No. 17, The Right of Everyone to Benefit from the Protection of the Moral and Material Interests Resulting from any Scientific, Literary or Artistic Production of which He or She is the Author (Article 15, Paragraph 1 (c), of the Covenant) (2005), http://docstore.ohchr.org/SelfServices/FilesHandler.ashx?enc=4slQ6QSmlBEDzFEovLCuW1a0Szab0oXTdImnsJZZVQcMZjyZlUmZS43h49u0CNAuJIjwgfzCL8JQ1SHYTZH6jsZteqZOpBtECZh96hyNh%2F%2FHW6g3fYyiDXsSgaAmIP%2BP (Last accessed April 20, 2024).

Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No. 25 (2020) on science and economic, social and cultural rights (article 15 (1) (b), (2), (3) and (4) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G20/108/12/PDF/G2010812.pdf?OpenElement (2020). (Last accessed April 20, 2024).

Unesco, Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (2005), https://www.unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/universal-declaration-bioethics-and-human-rights?hub=66535 (Last accessed April 20, 2024).

Unesco, Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers (revised) (2017), = https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000260889.page=116 (Last accessed April 20, 2024).

In re S.C. and G.P ., E/C. 12/65/D/22/2017 (2019), https://juris.ohchr.org/casedetails/2522/en-US (Last accessed April 20, 2024).

These include Rumiana Yotova & Bartha M. Knoppers, Genomic Data Sharing , 31 EUR. J. INT. LAW. 665–691 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chaa028 .

IACtHR, Artavia Murillo v. Costa Rica , Judgment (Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations, and Costs), 28 November 2012, at 159, para. 150.

Supreme Court of Venezuela, López, Glenda y otros c. Instituto Venezolano de los Seguros Sociales , Sentencia No. 487 (2001).

These include, at least, Andrea Boggio, Audrey Chapman, Yvonne Donders, Edward S. Dove, Bartha Knoppers, Porsdam Mann, Amrei Müller, Aurora Plomer, H. Porsdam, William Schabas, Haochen Sun, and Rumiana Yotova. Earlier relevant discussions of the right appear in Johannes Morsink’s 1999 work on the history of the UDHR

American Association for the Advancement of Science, Right to Science: Resources, https://www.aaas.org/resources/article-15 (2024). (Last accessed April 20, 2024).

Much background information about neuroscience and its relevance at least to law will be found in Henry T. Greely and Nita A. Farahany, Reference Guide on Neuroscience , in Reference   Manual on   Scientific   Evidence : Fourth   Edition (Federal Judicial Center and National Academies Press, forthcoming 2024). Until that chapter is available, the equivalent chapter from the prior edition would also be useful: Henry T. Greely and Anthony D. Wagner, Reference Guide on Neuroscience , in Reference   Manual on   Scientific   Evidence : Third   Edition 747–812 (Federal Judicial Center and National Academies Press 2011).

This is a slight modification for a framework I set out nearly 15 years ago in Henry T. Greely, Law and the Revolution in Neuroscience: An Early Look at the Field , 42 Akron L. Rev . 687–715 (2009). ‘Humanness’ has been added, largely as a result of advances in cell and tissue science, and ‘responsibility’ has been omitted, as having limited relevance to the Human Right to Science.

Those interested in responsibility and, especially, its relationship to criminal law can get some background from the relevant pages of about three-quarters of the way through the Greely and Farahany chapter in the forthcoming Fourth Edition of the Reference   Manual on   Scientific   Evidence or pages 799–801 of Greely & Wagner’s chapter in the third edition. Although philosphers and some neuroscientists believe neuroscience might, by undermining the concept of free will, demolish criminal liability, see, e.g., Robert Sapolsky , Determined (2023), legal scholars generally see far more limited applications.

Philip K. Dick, The Minority Report in The   Minority   Report and   Other   Classic   Stories (2002).

See Nita A. Farahany , The   Battle for   Your   Brain (2023).

Id . At least one report showed that a paralyzed person could ‘type’ 90 characters a minute of email (about 13 words) through a brain–computer interface (‘BCI’) that ‘read’ the participant’s intentions for hand movements. F. R. Willett et al . , High-Performance Brain-to-Text Communication Via Handwriting , 593 NATURE, 249–254 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03506-2 More recently, the same team showed that it could use BCI to decode attempted speech at a rate of just over 60 words a minute, more than three times faster than previous efforts and about 40 percent of the speed of normal conversation. (The method, however, did select the wrong word about 20 percent of the time.) F. R. Willett et al., A High-Performance Speech Neuroprosthesis , 620 Nature , 1031–1036 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06377-x .

See Greely & Farahany, supra n. 17, at x-y.

See Henry T. Greely, Neuroscience, Mindreading, and the Courts: The Example of Pain , 18 J. Health   Care L. Pol . 171–205 (2015).

See Farahany, The Battle for Your Brain, Chapter 3 (2023).

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (Random House 1962) and Stanley Kubrick, A Clockwork Orange (Warner Brothers 1971).

See Eric Juengst, Human Enhancement, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2019 revision), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enhancement/ .

See, e.g., I. Ilieva, J. Boland J, M. J. Farah, Objective and Subjective Cognitive Enhancing Effects of Mixed Amphetamine Salts in Healthy People , 64 Neuropharmacology 496-505 (2013), doi: 10.1016/j.neuropharm.2012.07.021 ; C. A. Roberts, et al., How Effective are Pharmaceuticals for Cognitive Enhancement in Healthy Adults?   Eur . Neuropsychopharmacol . (2020), doi: 10.1016/j.euroneuro.2020.07.002 . l

See Henry T. Greely, Human Brain Surrogates Research: The Onrushing Ethical Dilemma , 21 Am . J. of   Bioethics 34–45 (2021), DOI: 10.1080/15265161.2020.1845853 .

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Ethical, Legal and Regulatory Issues Associated with Neural Chimeras and Organoids, The   Emerging   Field of   Human   Neural   Organoids , Transplants , and   Chimeras 29–39 (2021).

Id . at 39–51.

O. Revah et al., Maturation and Circuit Integration of Transplanted Human Cortical Organoids. 610 Nature 319 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05277-w .

Amrei Mueller, Sketching the Multi-Level Institutional Framework for Securing the Right to be Protected from Adverse Effects of Science and Technology (2023).

I searched on https://juris.ohchr.org/BasicSearch from January 1, 2013 through ‘today’, sorted the results by committee, and counted the results.

William Schabas, Report of the Experts’ Meeting on the Right to Enjoy the Benefits of Scientific Progress and its Applications, UNESCO, slide presentation (June 7, 8, 2007), https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/SRHRL/PDF/IHRDArticle15/UNESCO_Experts%27%20Mtg_2007_Schabas%20presentation.pdf (Last accessed April 20, 2024).

Center for Cognitive Liberty [old website] http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/ccle1/funding/achievements.html (Last accessed April 20, 2024).

Center for Cognitive Liberty [new website], https://www.cognitiveliberty.org .

Jan-Christoph Bublitz, My Mind is Mine!? Cognitive Liberty as a Legal Concept , in Cognitive Enhancement. An Interdisciplinary Perspective 233–264 (E. Hildt & A. G. Franke eds.,2013).

Nita Farahany, supra n., pp. 35–39, 211–213.

Susie Alegre took a similar position in her 2022, Freedom to Think: Protecting a Fundamental Human Right in the Digital Age (2022). Alegre’s argument from existing human rights documents was less worked out than Farahany’s. Further, Alegre’s focus is more on the power of social media, technology companies, and Artificial Intelligence to ‘read our minds’ than through neuroscience itself, but she includes both.

Interim report of the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Ahmed Shaheed, Freedom of thought (October 2021). https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a76380-interim-reportspecial-rapporteur-freedomreligion-or-belief (last accessed April 20, 2024).

Farahany at 69, 84, referring to Jones v. City of Opelika, 316 U.S. 584 (1942, and Stanley v. Georgia. 394 U.S. 557, 1969

Joseph J. Fins, The Unintended Consequences of Chile’s Neurorights Constitutional Reform: Moving beyond Negative Rights to Capabilities , 15 Neuroethics . 26 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-022-09504-z .

Marcello Ienca & Roberto Adorno, Towards New Human Rights in the Age of Neuroscience and Neurotechnology , 13 Life Sci. Soc. Pol. (2017).

Sara Goering et al., Recommendations for Responsible Development and Application of Neurotechnologies , 14 Neuroethics 365–86 at 377, 380 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-021-09468-6 .

https://neurorightsfoundation.org .

T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men (1925).

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Student Fellowship

Providing training and funding so students can contribute their expertise to support human rights worldwide, building tomorrow’s leaders.

The student fellowship program is the longest legacy of the Human Rights Center. Our fellowships provide opportunities for students to pursue meaningful human rights work domestically and internationally. Students from UC Berkeley, partner campuses UC Merced, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, and the Cal Graduate Theological Union are eligible to participate in this program. Selected fellows will carry out clearly defined fieldwork with organizations working on human rights issues related to a student’s area of interest. Applicants must plan to spend at least 8 weeks full time or its equivalent part-time working with a partner organization to qualify for the fellowship. 

The purpose of the fellowship is to provide students with an opportunity to contribute to an organization’s work while also gaining practical experience that may influence their area of research, academic focus, or career trajectory. Partnerships with both non-governmental and governmental organizations are acceptable. Multi-disciplinary approaches to human rights fieldwork are welcomed. 

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Anthony Ghaly, 2022

Anthony joined WITNESS a legal intern for the Technology, Threats, and Opportunities team. The team addresses new issues facing human rights documentation and advocacy related to the proliferation of digital technologies. Anthony worked under team leader Raquel Vazquez Llorente to provide legal support on matters related to international human rights law and international criminal justice. This included the harms of sexual and gender-based violence in the metaverse.

Malak Afaneh, 2022

Malak worked as a global legal intern with the International Legal Foundation’s West Bank Team to provide free holistic legal aid for children held in pre-trial detention. She conducted legal research on measures of juvenile justice globally, the utilization of holistic aid and trauma informed strategies in the field of juvenile justice, and analyzed litigation strategies aligned with both customary international law and systems of justice in the MENA region.

Bhavya Joshi, 2022

Bhavya worked with Roda and other partners to study refugee accommodations in Croatia and understand the unmet reproductive health needs of Ukrainian women refugees arriving in Croatia since February 2022. She also worked on a submission to the United Nations Special Procedures on the case of a Croatian woman pregnant with a terminally ill fetus who was denied access to legal abortion in Croatia. Bhavya aims to advocate for reproductive rights in times of compounded crisis using international women’s human rights mechanisms.

Eunchong Cho, 2022

Eunchong studied human rights-centered approaches to youth housing rights in South Korea. He worked with Minsnail Union, a housing rights organization that advocates for young people’s housing rights by addressing structural problems in Korean society. These include unfair laws against tenants, generational economic inequality, and discrimination against young people, women, LGBTQ people, and other minorities. Eunchong’s activities for Minsnail Union included interviewing people experiencing housing difficulties, writing articles for press releases, organizing public discussions, analyzing data, and taking part in collective actions.

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Can university protest camps be removed? What does the law say?

Associate Professor of Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University

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Students have been protesting on university campuses across Australia for several weeks now, calling on their institutions to cut ties with weapons manufacturers supplying arms to Israel. Some have noted their intention to stay for months if necessary.

So far, these protests have been largely peaceful . But there have been concerns about student safety. And universities have become increasingly concerned about some of the terms used by some protesters.

Last week, some university leaders sought advice from Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus about whether they should act to remove protesters (Dreyfus replied that he did not provide legal advice).

Police in Victoria have also expressed concerns about the camps escalating into violence.

This raises important legal questions: what does the law say about protests at universities and at what point could either the police or university authorities remove protesters from their campuses?

Freedom of speech and the right to protest

The right to protest – made up of the freedom of speech and assembly – is a central component of a functioning democracy .

Australian universities are a part of this structure as they are established to facilitate learning, knowledge and debate. Additionally, many universities recognise they should promote critical and free enquiry, informed intellectual discourse and public debate.

Most universities in Australia are public institutions and campuses are open to the public. So students and non-students are permitted on university land to protest.

However, the right to protest is also subject to limitations in human rights law. First, the right to protest is limited to peaceful assemblies .

The United Nations has clarified that the right of peaceful assembly cannot be exercised using violence. This includes acts such as physical force against others that is likely to result in injury or death or serious damage to property.

What about hate speech?

But what about the use of hate speech on campuses? Would this be grounds for closing down the protests? There has been concern about the use of terms such as “intifada” during the protests and phrases such as “from the river to the sea”.

In my view, it would be unlawful under human rights law to close down an entire protest simply on the basis that some protesters are using that language.

Human rights law requires limitations on protests to be reasonable and proportionate . Removing entire encampments could be considered a disproportionate response in this case.

How could individuals respond?

Some Jewish students say they do not feel safe on campuses where these protests are happening.

Individuals can lodge complaints to federal and state human rights commissions about the use of hate speech.

For example, section 18C of the federal Racial Discrimination Act makes it unlawful as a civil matter to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” a person in public on grounds of their race, colour, national origin or ethnicity.

Individuals can make a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission, which will investigate the allegation and conduct a conciliation process .

But it does not constitute a criminal offence, which would be grounds to remove the entire protest.

How could police respond?

The powers of police to deal with protests is governed by different state and territory laws. But, generally, police have powers to deal with breaches of the peace and other public disorders.

For instance, in New South Wales, police have special powers to respond to “a riot or other civil disturbance that gives rise to a serious risk to public safety”. Criminal offences such as property damage, assault and physical violence would also allow the police to intervene. So, police could intervene in the protests when criminal acts are taking place.

However, the police would still be expected to react with a proportionate response, and criminal offences by a few protesters would not warrant the removal of the entire encampment.

On top of this, police in the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and Queensland would be required to consider the human rights charters that exist in those jurisdictions.

At what point could universities limit the protests?

The power of universities to intervene is more complicated. This is because Australian public universities are established under federal and state legislation and so they are not wholly private institutions. This means they are not free to stop people coming onto their property in the same way that a private company is.

But as a place of work, they also have legal obligations to ensure the safety of all people who work and study at their campuses.

In addition, most have academic freedom policies where they commit to allowing freedom of speech on campuses, as well as codes of conduct governing appropriate behaviour, which would apply to staff and students participating in the protests.

So, university heads would need to consider the complexities of all of these laws and policies in planning any intervention.

Essentially, the power of universities to intervene would depend on the nature of the protests.

For example, if the protests are disrupting classes or exams, this would not be grounds to remove the entire encampment, but may empower the university to ask the protesters to move to an area that is less disruptive. Importantly, universities in the ACT, Victoria and Queensland would be obliged to act in accordance with their human rights charters and not act disproportionately when dealing with protesters.

On a practical level, given the numbers of protesters involved, universities would probably need police to help disperse them. They do have university security, but not at the levels required to move protesters safely.

So, if there is going to be any limitation or removal of the protests in a lawful manner, it needs to happen only where necessary, reasonable and proportionate to do so.

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2 Funded PhD Studentships in Law and Human Rights

Funded PhD Studentship: Respecting Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Cyberspace

The Law: Funded PhD Studentship: Respecting Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Cyberspace is a research scholarship that focuses on how the nature and extent of criminal activity in cyberspace and the low levels of successful criminal prosecutions pose stark questions for respect for the rule of law in this new frontier as well as the human rights of victims. This project further explores the nature of human rights challenges in terms of the obligations of the state to respect human rights online. The objective is to come up with a conceptual framework and policy that can help in the endeavor of addressing the issues that are frequently encountered in this respect.

In order to be eligible for this scholarship students must have or must expect to obtain a first class honours degree or its equivalent in a Master’s in Law. There must also be a proven interest in the advancement and application of human rights law. Because of funding restrictions, this scholarship is only open to residents of the United Kingdom and Europe. This scholarship covers the cost of any tuition fees for three years up to 14,553 pounds. It also comes with a stipend for that three years as well as travel and accommodation assistance worth 500 pounds.

Applying is simple. Like other scholarships, to apply for the Law: Funded PhD Studentship: Respecting Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Cyberspace, send in your CV. You also need to include information about your motivation and suitability for this project along with what challenges you feel the government’s monitoring and tracking of social media present.

Fully-funded four-year Ph.D. in Law

This fully funded, four-year Ph.D. in Law is offered at the European University Institute Florence located in Florence, Italy. With this scholarship, students will be studying the obstacles that private, international and European law faces. You will explore the worldwide dimensions, allowing you to research in a way that transcends the national boundaries; collaborate and learn from academics, practitioners and experts that perform research for the department; develop yourself and understand how to write a top-notch thesis.

You also get the chance to create strong intellectual links between the faculty and other researchers at the school. Seminars, close supervision and active working groups offer a great exchange of ideas and knowledge in order to help build your intellectual autonomy and shape your research into something that is completely new and completely your own.

There are approximately 150 of these scholarships handed out during a year, and these scholarships cover a monthly grant as well as tuition fees. This fully funded, four-year Ph.D. in Law is available to students who currently live in the United Kingdom and a few select European countries as well. In most cases, all EU nationals will have a chance to be selected. Full funding may not be available to all applicants; therefore, it is important to read the fully detailed program guide in order to be sure.

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About the author, human rights careers.

Human Rights Careers (HRC) provides information about online courses, jobs, paid internships, masters degrees, scholarships and other opportunities in the human rights sector and related areas.