Transnational Law Summer Institute
Fellows Book 2016
Moustafa Ahmad [email protected]
Judge, State Council, Arab Republic of Egypt. Part-time Lecturer in Law,
Faculty of Law, Alexandria University, Arab Republic of Egypt.
A Comparative Study of Basic Public Liberties, Freedoms and Human Rights in
Recent Constitutions of the Arab Spring countries
“This paper aims to examine the real impact of the Arab spring revolution on
the range and extent of public rights, liberties and freedoms, whether as to
the constitutional reformation i.e. the formulation of constitutional provisions
to provide integrated protection to the public freedoms and human rights or
as to the real impact of the constitutional reforms in real life i.e. the
incorporation of constitutional protections into legislations, the
governmental/security forces practices and the judicial practices in the
interpretation and application of the provided protections and guarantees”.
Olabisi Akinkugbe [email protected]
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, University of New Brunswick, Canada;
Doctoral Candidate, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Canada
African Regional Trade Agreements: The Shifting Role of Law as a Tool for
Economic Development in the Economic Community of West African States
“I ask to what extent, if any, did changing conceptions about law and its role
in economic development projects influence the design and
implementation of the ECOWAS Treaties of 1975 and 1993.”
Joao Araujo Monteiro Neto [email protected]
PhD student at University of Kent-UK; Senior Reader in Law at University of
Fortaleza-BRA and Associate Lawyer at Melo & Monteiro Associate
Lawyers (Brazil)
Internet Governance, Multistakeholderism and Law
“The Legal Normalisation of Global Internet Governance. The main focus
of my research is to study the legalisation process of multistakeholderism
on Internet Governance and its contribution to the development of the
global governance project.”
Siddharth Arcot Ananth [email protected]
Lawyer, and Research Associate, The Sarai Programme, Center for the Study of
Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi www.sarai.net
Forensics of the Network: Social Media, Law and Violence in Contemporary
India
“My project attempts to construct a forensics of the network, by mapping
various actors, institutions and questions that have emerged to deal with the
relationship between new media technologies, (specifically social media) and
communal, ethnic and gender based violence. The implementation of legal
standards in this field is increasingly subject to negotiations between Internet
intermediaries and governments, police and civil society, underlining the
complicated and shifting nature of sovereignty that the era of the internet has
inaugurated.”
Paulo Bacca Benavides [email protected]
PhD Candidate and Research Fellow, Centre for Critical International Law
CeCIL, Kent Law School
Indigenizing International Law: Inverse Legal Anthropology and Indigenous
Jurisprudence in the Age of Recognition
“Paulo’s research explores the nature, promises and limits of indigenous rights
in our multicultural age. His objective is to reveal key lines of continuity and
discontinuity between the colonial project and the contemporary
international recognition of culturally and ethnically diverse groups.”
Aua Balde [email protected]
PhD Student, Catolica Global School of Law
The implementation of the principle of complementarity and its effects on
justice and accountability of international crimes
“The project proposes to make an inquiry into the effectiveness of the
principle of complementarity in bringing to justice the perpetrators of
international crimes. It proposes to discuss the extent to which the framing of
the principle of complementarity in the Rome Statute impacts the
effectiveness and goals of the International Criminal Court.”
Arpan Banerjee [email protected]
Assistant Professor, Assistant Dean and Executive Director, Centre for IP &
Technology Law, Jindal Global Law School
Film Censorship in India: The Law and Beyond
“It has recently been argued that the Law and Film movement should move
beyond the “literariness” of the Law and Humanities tradition and devote more
attention to real-world concerns. I am currently conducting research on film
censorship in India, exploring its legal, aesthetic and social dimensions. As a part
of my research, I have filed freedom of information applications and obtained a
large number of documents.”
Emily Barritt [email protected]
The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London & Centre for
Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance, University of
Cambridge
A Conservation Agenda for Marine Biodiversity in Areas Beyond National
Jurisdiction
“At present I am working on a collaborative project for the United Nations
Environment Programme establishing a progressive international agenda for the
conservation of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
Alongside this I am developing my PhD research on environmental democracy.”
Marija Bartl [email protected]
Assistant Professor, University of Amsterdam, http://www.uva.nl/en/about-
the-uva/organisation/staff-members/content/b/a/m.bartl/m.bartl.html
Bringing Democracy Back to Markets: TTIP and The Politics of Knowledge
Beyond the State
“My book project investigates the question of what kind of market are we
trying to create through the TTIP and how do we intend to bring this market
about. In my understanding, the questions ‘what kind of market’ and ‘by
what means’ are intimately connected, or coproduced. I explore then the
making of the TTIP in three moves: through dis-embedding its governance institutions, by means of (new)
technologies of government and finally by empowering certain groups to act as agents of selective market re-
embedding beyond the state. Ultimately I ask if there is a way to counter the selective re-embedding of
markets beyond the state through alternative institutional designs that places the democratization of
knowledge production in its center.”
Sumit Baudh [email protected]
Fellow 2015, Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies, Columbia Law
School; University of California Human Rights Center Fellow 2014; Michael D. Palm
Fellow 2013 The Williams Institute http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/sumit-
baudh-palm-fellow/
Law at the Intersection of Caste, Gender and Sexuality: Silences and Invisibility of
'Other' Dalits in India
“The 2011 census of India counted a population ‘other’ than male or female.
Sumit Baudh takes a cue from the census and traces the legal invisibility of
‘other’ Dalits. Formerly considered ‘untouchable’ and subordinate in the caste
system in India, Dalits are also known as Scheduled Castes in legal parlance. This
invisibility of ‘other’ Dalits is located in a puzzling legal moment in which
transgender status is protected and sexual orientation is proscribed; and although transgender persons are
compared with ‘untouchable’ Dalits, there is no legal understanding of persons who are both transgender and Dalit.”
Leila Braennstroem [email protected]
Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Lund, Sweden
Race and Ethnicity in Swedish and European Non-Discrimination Law
“The project maps and analyses the ways in which 'race' and 'ethnicity' have
been understood/constructed in the context of bans on ethnoracial
discrimination. Swedish law is at the centre of the study, but it is approached as a
transnational phenomenon since the Swedish law on ethnoracial discrimination
has emerged as a result of Processes of transplantation and translation and is
applied against the background of EU-law and international human rights law.”
Carlos Bravo Ramirez [email protected]
National Autonomous University of Mexico UNAM
https://mx.linkedin.com/in/carlosbravor
Transparency and Corporate Responsibility Impact on Global Governance and
Development Agenda
“I am interested in the evolution of the law due to the globalization process and
the shifting role of private sector in the development agenda, particularly
regarding the law enforcement and regulation of human rights responsibility,
environment and labour standards in the global value chains.”
Lina Buchely [email protected]
Full time professor- Icesi Law School. Universidad Icesi. Cali- Colombia.
https://www.icesi.edu.co/profesores/cv/lina--buchely
Bureaucratic Activism - The Daily Construction of the Rule of Law: Case study
of the community mothers as street-level bureaucrats and the childcare
programme in community welfare homes
“The project analyses the case of community mothers as a street- level
bureaucrats who produces the Rule of law in their local spaces, within an
institutional or democratic context. The Community Mothers case study,
shows how street-level bureaucrats use the Rule of law as an empowerment
mechanism. The Community Mothers display an undocumented agency
that develops a feminist agenda of helping fellow women, contrary to the
government agenda that promotes childcare and early childhood program policies. This paradox shows how
the Rule of Law works in the Global South.”
Sameena Dalwai [email protected]
Associate Professor and Assistant Director, Centre for Women, Law and
Social Change O.P.Jindal Global Unviersity, Sonipath, Delhi NCR- 131001
(http://www.jgls.edu.in/content/sameena-dalwai)
Performing Caste: Ban on Dancing in Mumbai/ Caste & Gender in Legal
Education
"My Phd thesis being turned into monograph views the ban on dancing in
the dance bars of Mumbai and Maharashtra in 2006 through the lens of
gender and caste. It is a legal ethnography of the ban that explores varied
sites of the ‘dance bar issue’ within the fieldwork of 8 months – consisting of
participant observation and interviews with bar dancers, customers, political
actors, journalists and lawyers. “Teaching Caste and gender in Law schools”- inspired by the experience of
teaching this subject as an elective, this paper makes a case for inculcating caste and gender into legal
education in India. The paper explores the reasons why currently law schools miss out on this and offers
anecdotes from the classes conducted. “Caste in law schools”- an empirical work based on student survey of 3
law schools in Delhi NCR and interviews with faculty of law- exploring the quantity and quality of engagement
with the concept of caste within legal education.”
Marjorie Espinoza [email protected]
Ph.D. student at Los Andes University in Colombia. LLM student at Yale University.
What is the Impact of Transnational Law in the way National Elites and Ordinary
People Talk, Practice and Theorize about Rights?
“The discourse of rights has been transplanted, vernacularized but also rejected
in the recipient communities. The object of my project is to understand and
describe: 1) how judges, lawyers and activists translate the global discourse of
right to local communities; 2) the way ordinary people parse, utilize or reject this
language and use other normative frameworks available in their culture.”
Marisa Fassi [email protected]
Socio-legal researcher, Sexual and Reproductive Rights Program, National
University of Córdoba, Argentina.
Translocal Law: Transnational Encounters in Sex work and Waste Pickers’
Claims for Labour Recognition
“My current research explores the transnational dynamics that influence,
shape or challenge local struggles for labour recognition. Empirically, it
focusses on sex work and waste pickers’ claims for labour recognition in the
city of Córdoba-Argentina.”
Carolina Furusho [email protected]
Erasmus Mundus Fellow and Joint Doctoral Candidate on Cultural and
Global Criminology at University of Kent and University of Hamburg
http://www.dcgc.eu/candi date-life-alumni/phd-projects/carolina-yoko-
furusho/
Vulnerability and Human Rights Courts
“My research focuses on how vulnerability is adopted by human rights courts
and the relationship between vulnerability and victimization under socio-
legal feminist approaches.”
Florence Gakungi [email protected]
Lecturer, Riara Law School, Riara University
http://www.riarauniversity.ac.ke/florence-shako/
Mediation in the Courts’ Embrace: Introduction of Court-annexed Mediation
into the Justice System in Kenya
“My current research project is focused on the analysis of court-annexed
mediation and the factors that ought to be taken into account by the
Judiciary when implementing the Court Mediation Pilot Program in Kenya.
For a long time, the courts in Kenya have been marred by delays and
backlogs of cases and this has slowed down the wheels of justice leading to
public outcry to find possible solutions for a more effective justice system.”
Katerina Galai [email protected]
PhD Candidate University of Sussex (School of Law, Politics and Sociology)
The Use and Regulation of Private Military Companies
“My research draws upon legal theory and historical sociology to examine
the regulation of PMCs under international law. It develops an account of
the changing nature of war and military power in modernity in order to
critique existing attempts by international law to regulate mercenaries and
PMCs. I aim to propose implementable solutions to drive regulatory change
across the security sector and ensure appropriate classification of military
actors.”
Jing Geng [email protected]
PhD Candidate, Católica Global School of law, Universidade Católica
Portuguesa
The Search for the “Perfect Victim”: Impact on Efforts to Combat Trafficking
and to Aid Exploited Individuals
“This research examines the role of stereotypes and its effect on legal
responses to human trafficking. Although trafficking in persons is a massive
human rights violation with an estimated 21 million victims worldwide, the
rate of prosecutions of perpetrators has been shockingly low. This dissertation
explores whether emphasis on exploitation rather than victim consent will
improve legal responses and efficacy in victim identification and
protection.”
Eric George [email protected]
PhD. Candidate, Department of Political Science, York University
Commercial Arbitration as an Instrument of Corporate Power
“My paper examines the increasing use of commercial arbitration by large-
scale corporations since the 1980s. I argue that commercial arbitration
should not merely be seen as an alternate venue of dispute resolution, but as
part of a neo-liberal movement that has sought to reshape legal institutions,
and by implication, the contours of the existing political-economic order in
favor of global corporations.”
Marika Giles Samson [email protected]
Doctoral Candidate, Centre for Human Rights & Legal Pluralism, Faculty of
Law, McGill University, https://www. mcgill.ca/humanrights/a
boutus/students/#MGS http://ca.linkedin.com/in/mgsamson
Judicial Persecution: the Misuse of Court Processes to Marginalise Political
Opposition and Repress Dissent
“This research project considers the particular harms of misusing court
processes as a means of distracting, harassing, and ultimately sidelining
political opponents. This phenomenon is considered in several forms, from
criminal prosecution, to civil suits (often called SLAPPs), to administrative
proceedings, and across a variety of contexts, to test the hypothesis that
such proceedings can be considered as a unified whole, what I call “judicial
persecution". Beyond the hypothesis itself, my project aims to accurately identify the values at stake in such
proceedings, and, in doing so, to elaborate possible criteria for distinguishing between improper, persecutory
proceedings and proper prosecutions.”
Paola Gomez Molina [email protected]
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Feminist Critical Influence on Marriage and Matrimonial Property System: a
Study of the historical, social, political and legal context surrounding the
enactments of the current matrimonial property system laws in Mexico, Chile,
and Colombia.
“This project aims to show the relationship between feminist critique of the
matrimonial property system and married women's legal capacity reform in
Mexico, Chile, and Colombia, through a historical reconstruction of the
social, political, and legal context surrounding the enactment of the law that
reformed married women legal capacity in the three mentioned Latin
America countries.”
Mateusz Grochowski [email protected]
Assistant Professor in the Institute of Legal Studies, Polish Academy of
Sciences Research affiliate in the European University Institute (Florence)
Researcher in the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of the Republic of
Poland
https://pan-pl.academia.edu/Mateusz Grochowski
Default Rules as a Regulatory Tool in Contract Law: European and
Transnational Perspective
“The research focuses on challenges brought about to the issue of default
rules by EU private law and transnational contracting. It tries to identify the
benchmarks of the newly arising phenomena and verify classical concepts
of default rules in contract law.”
Ugljesa Grusic [email protected]
Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of Nottingham:
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk /law/people/ugljesa.grusic
The Civil Liability of the State for Grave Violations of Human Rights Committed
Abroad
“My research is inspired by the recent spate of litigations commenced
against the British State by civilians from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya
and Kosovo for acts and omissions of UK agents, officials, departments and
agencies that allegedly resulted in grave violations of the claimants’ human
rights. The claims are typically advanced on two bases: under the Human
Rights Act 1998 and in tort, namely negligence and trespass to the person. I
am interested to find out what is the role performed by the civil law claims in
tort in this context and whether, and to what extent, private law in general, and private international law in
particular, are capable of supporting this role?”
Patricia Hania [email protected]
Fellow, Winkler Institute for Dispute Resolution, Osgoode Hall Law School, York
University, Toronto, ON
What Opportunities and Barriers face Lawyers when Adopting an Advocacy
and Environmental Law Reform Role?
“As a public law scholar, I am interested in the structure and dynamics of
natural resource and environmental governance regimes that operate at a
local scale. I examine law and policy to understand how norms interact,
regulate and become embedded in legal sites of contested and complex
decision-making. Currently, I am interested in the challenges facing
environmental regulatory lawyers in bringing forward novel legal claims
grounded in collective community interests and transnational environmental law norms. In particular, I am
interested in the question: What opportunities and barriers face lawyers when adopting an advocacy and
environmental law reform role?”
Sasha Holden [email protected]
PhD Candidate, King's College London
A Feminist Approach to Prohibitions on Polygamy in Immigration; the
Implications for Women and for Human Rights
“Sasha's PhD research applies a post-modern feminist analysis to family
reunification restrictions in UK immigration law, as they apply to women in
polygamous marriages. Her research questions the apparently neutral status
of law and policy in relation to the treatment of polygamy, and develops a
feminist understanding of both family reunion and human rights guarantees,
as they apply in this context, making suggestions for legal and policy reform.”
Karolina Januszewski [email protected]
Teaching and Research Associate at Department for European, International
and Comparative Law Section for International Law and International
Relations, University of Vienna
https://intlaw.univie.ac.at/en /staff/academic-research-
personnel/januszewski-e/
The Insecurity Business and International Law
“In my research, I am interested to explicate the dual role PIL plays regarding
the increased public-private cooperation in security matters. Such a study
essentially requires engaging not only with international law’s regulatory
function to contain and remedy, but also to look at the law’s facilitating
potential due to its conceptual binaries, contradictory nature and discursive power.”
Linda Kirk [email protected]
ANU College of Law, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, Title:
Deputy Director and Sub-Dean, Migration Law Program, ANU College of
Law, Weblink: law.anu.edu.au/staff/linda-kirk
Administrative Justice, Consistency and Decisional Legitimacy: The Use of
Country Guidance Cases in Asylum Status Determination
“The purpose of this research project is to examine the use of Country
Guideline Determinations in the United Kingdom and Guidance Decisions in
Australia, and to assess whether, and if so how, these are effective in
promoting consistency of outcomes in asylum cases. The particular focus of
the research is whether it is legitimate for the judiciary to engage in what is
akin to a policy-making role, in promulgating guidance in asylum cases, which has the effect of determining
the asylum status of individuals whose claims are not subject to a comprehensive and individualised
assessment.”
Erick Onyango K'omolo [email protected]
The University of Hong Kong (Dr. Komolo & Partners) www.drkomolo.com
Regime Fragmentation Patterns in Kenya’s Marine Fisheries
“The paper examines the question of fragmentation of legal regimes in the
regulation/management of the commons, especially marine fisheries. Using
a case study of Kenya's marine fisheries, it attempts to bring out disparate
informal and formal regulatory mechanisms that have historically regulated
the sector and argues that the failure to establish a mechanism for horizontal
coordination that allows information exchange is largely to blame for the
continued depletion of the country's marine resources.”
Jennifer Lander [email protected]
PhD Candidate, School of Law, University of Warwick
Globalised Extractive Development and State Transformation in Mongolia:
New Strategies of Capital and Control on the "Final Frontier"
“My research focuses on Mongolia’s adoption of an extractive development
strategy and the type of legal and political infrastructure that supports it.
How is the Mongolian state reordered by its integration into the global
minerals economy? I argue that we can identify specific axes of juridical-
political (re)ordering within the state that stabilise foreign investment in the
mining sector, by marginalising resistant institutions and actors at the central
and provincial levels of government, as well as within civil society. This
exclusion occurs through legal and financial mechanisms, reinforced by
political narratives of nationalism, corruption and criminality, and has important implications for the functionality
of constitutional democracy in Mongolia.”
Michael Leach [email protected]
Tilburg University, European Doctorate in Law and Development (EDOLAD)
Normative Plurality and the Rule of Law in Afghanistan
“My general academic interest and recent professional experience has
been on law and legal reform in post-conflict and conflict-affected societies.
My primary research focus for my Ph.D. is on the normative plurality of the
'Rule of Law' as a concept. I use Afghanistan as a case study to address the
following questions: to what degree is “Rule of Law” a variable and
contested concept when implemented in legal reform and development
projects, and to what effect?”
Feja Lesniewska [email protected]
Senior Teaching Fellow, School of Law and Centre for International Studies
and Diplomacy, SOAS, University of London
https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff36963.php
The Use of ICT to Reduce Illegal Forest Activities and Trade in Central and
West Africa: new opportunities for forest peoples to secure rights.
“The research investigates how forest peoples are using ICT to enforce forest
law reforms, often resulting from transnational initiatives, that support forest
peoples rights, to tackle illegal activities and trade. This is part of a larger
research project on law and the drivers of deforestation in a global context.”
Rafael Lima Sakr [email protected]
PhD Candidate and Law Teacher at the London School of Economics
https://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/law/subjects /phd _students/rafael-lima-
sakr.htm
Rethinking Development in WTO: A Law and Development Framework for
South-North Regional Trade Regimes
“My research started with my curiosity to understand how the contemporary
debate around WTO law, development and regional trade agreements got
locked up around the quantitative measurement of tariffs instead of focusing
on if these regional regimes have fulfilled their promises of economic
development. Drawing on recent studies showing that South-North RTAs
have not boosted economic development, my doctoral project aims to
explain how the WTO law has constrained, instead of incentivizing, countries to replace the existing system of
discriminatory RTAs for an institutional alternative.”
Emilio Meyer [email protected]
Adjunct Professor of Constitutional Law at the Federal University of Minas
Gerais, Brazil (https://ufmg.academia.edu /EmilioPelusoNederMeyer).
Coordinator of the Study Centre on Transitional Justice (http://cjt.ufmg.br)
and of the Executive Secretariat of the Latin America Transitional Justice
Web http://www.rlajt.com
Study Centre on Transitional Justice: Dictatorship and Accountability
“Deals with the responsibility for crimes against humanity practiced during
the Brazilian dictatorship of 1964-1985, aiming the creation of databases that
can orchestrate state actor’s and civil society’s measures. It has a clear
transnational perspective, especially focused on Latin America countries.”
Stephen Minas [email protected]
Research Fellow, Transnational Law Institute, King's; Visiting Lecturer &
doctoral candidate, Dickson Poon School of Law, King's; Member, IUCN
World Commission on Environmental Law; Honorary Fellow, School of
Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne.
https://stephenminas.me
Networks in the Transnational Governance of Climate Change Technology
“This project examines the interface between the public international law
(PIL) of climate change, centred on the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and elaborated chiefly through
diplomatic negotiation, and the public, private and hybrid networks of non-
state actors active in the governance of climate technology. The project aims to locate agency in the
development of transnational norms, substantive regulations and inter-institutional contracting and relations.”
Eric Kibet Morusoi [email protected]
Riara University Law School, Nairobi, Kenya
(http://www.riarauniversity.ac.ke/eric-kibet/)
The Right to Freedom of Expression and Political Transformation in Kenya
“This ongoing Doctor of Laws (LLD) research project at the University of
Pretoria investigates the right to freedom of expression and its role in the
socio-political transformation ambitions of Kenya’s 2010 Constitution. The
thesis claims that while the 2010 Constitution embraces the ideals of
transformative constitutionalism and enacts a framework that is supportive of
reform, the existing legal regime as well as the legal and political culture
undermines these aspirations.”
Venkatesan Natarajan [email protected]
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Latin American Studies, University of
Arkansas
Officers, Trials, and the Aftermath of Argentina’s Military Rule
“An ethnographic study of the costs of violence for those who commit
injuries and those who suffer them in the context of Argentina. I also study
how the Argentine judiciary determines whom to hold accountable for the
country's former human rights violations.”
Liiri Oja [email protected]
European University Institute, Law Department, PhD Researcher
Who is the ‘Woman’ in Human Rights Law: Narratives of Women’s Bodies and
Sexuality in Reproduction Jurisprudence
“I analyse reproduction jurisprudence of human rights law forums, and ask,
how women’s bodies and sexuality have been constructed in cases
concerning maternal mortality, abortion, assisted reproduction,
reproductive violence. I argue that the way women are portrayed –
whether as victims, villains or something else – plays an essential role for
achieving women’s full citizenship. Thus, the human rights law forums need
to adopt a reproductive rights based analysis in order to create
empowering and transformative narratives.”
Genevieve Painter [email protected]
Post-doctoral Fellow, McGill University, Faculty of Law
https://mcgill.academia.edu/GenevieveRenardPainter
Speaking Jurisdiction: Indigenous Declarations at the League of Nations,
Empire, and the Making of the International
“This project is about declarations of Indigenous sovereignties in transnational
spaces. I consider sovereignty claims by the Haudenosaunee before the
League of Nations. Drawing on archival research, rhetorical theory, and
legal theory about jurisdiction, I study declarations and denials of Indigenous
sovereignty as dialogues that simultaneously precede and conjure the
demarcation between national and transnational.”
Maria Penas Defago [email protected]
PhD in Law and Social Sciences, National University of Córdoba, Argentina
(UNC). Professor in Sociology of Law and researcher of the Sexual and
Reproductive Rights Program in the School of Law and Social Sciences, UNC.
Abortion Rights Lawfare in Latin America
“The project analyses the strategic use of rights and law in battles over abortion
rights in Latin America – and the various effects of this lawfare between
opposing groups. Currently, as part of that project and other research, my
primary research interest is the lawfare around sexual and reproductive rights in
Latin America, in particular in El Salvador.”
Carlos Perette [email protected]
Doctoral Candidate Sociology of Law - University of the Basque Country –
UPV/EHU – Basque Country – Spain.
Transnational Judicial Networks and the Promotion of Regional Legal
Standards: The case of the Ibero American Judicial Summit (IAJS)
“My research project is a doctoral study on transnational judicial networks. For
this I use The Cumbre Judicial Iberoamericana, a (trans)regional judicial
network comprising Latin American countries and some Iberian (European)
ones (Madrid, Portugal, Andorra). I try to study the way in which a transnational
judicial network as a transnational legal actor produces soft regulation and
becomes a regional source of law.”
Noemi Perez Vasquez [email protected]
PhD Candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS),
University of London.
The United Nations’ Impact on the Access to Justice of Women in Post-conflict
Societies
“My thesis analyses the transitional justice policies designed and implemented
in post-conflict societies under International Administration and answers the
following research question: ‘What is the impact of the transitional justice laws
and policies implemented by the United Nations on women’s access to
justice?’ More specifically, my thesis evaluates the impact of the policy
approach designed and implemented by the UN International Administration
on transitional justice in post-conflict societies”.
Metka Potocnik [email protected]
Queen Mary University of London (PhD Candidate)
http://www.law.qmul.ac.uk/research/students/86405.html King’s College
London – Dickson Poon School of Law (Visiting Lecturer)
The Settlement of Trade Mark Disputes under International Investment Treaties
“The present research aims to evaluate the substantive protection of trade
marks under international investment treaties. The question is topical in the light
of novel claims filed by private investors with international arbitration tribunals for
devaluation of trade marks in the tobacco trade, resulting from the tobacco
control measures seeking to safeguard public health.”
George Radics [email protected]
Lecturer, Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore
http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/soc/faculty/gradics .html
Racialized Cosmopolitanism and the Global City: Comparing Alcohol Policies
in Singapore’s Little India and Clarke Quay.
“My current research explores how different legal regulations in the city-state
of Singapore are a product of race, class, and the growing economic
disparity brought upon by globalization. In particular, my research concerns
the different ways in which alcohol consumption is regulated for South Asian
migrant workers and high-end transnational expats. As Singapore attempts to
project itself as a “cosmopolitan” city by shedding its image as a “strait-
laced” and “boring” city, it is reinventing itself as a playground for the rich, while migrant workers, a substantial
part of the Singaporean economy, become disenfranchised, spatially restricted, and stripped of civil rights.”
Rashmi Raman [email protected]
Assistant Professor of Law and Assistant Director, Centre for International Legal
Studies, Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat,
Haryana 131001, National Capital Region of Delhi, India
http://jgls.edu.in/content/ rashmi-raman
Role of International Courts in Transitional Justice: A Vindication of the Language
of TWAIL
“A study of the power of language in international law that argues that the
narrative of international law is informed by its actors. The project tries to
compare and contrast the agenda and narratives of TWAIL and transitional
justice, two completely unrelated aspects of the greater discipline and see if
there is a common thread – that of human suffering – that joins their disparate
skeins.”
Prabhash Ranjan [email protected]
Assistant Professor, South Asian University, New Delhi, India
http://www.southasianuniversity.org/index.php?option=com_
content&view=article&id=51&Itemid=233&staff_id=65
Indian Model Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) 2015: A Critical Analysis
“This paper critically analyses India's new model Bilateral Investment Treaty
(BIT) from the perspective of whether it reconciles investment protection with
host State's right to regulate. The paper will discuss whether the model BIT has
been able to make the investment protection standards clearer and precise
or not.”
Jennifer Raso [email protected]
SJD Candidate, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, Junior Fellow, Centre for
Criminology and Sociolegal Study
Administrative Justice: Guiding Caseworker Discretion
“My doctoral research explores the adjudicative practices of Canadian
administrative agencies, focusing on social assistance programs. Through a
qualitative, sociolegal study of front-line decision-makers, my work reveals how
their discretion is collective and negotiated, as they rely on coworkers for
support and reach decisions in consultation with supervisors, colleagues, and
other program administrators. These findings challenge the archetypal
independent legal decision-maker who underlies both Western legal theory and
common law doctrines governing the judicial review of administrative
decisions.”
Gabriel Rojas [email protected]
Ph.D. in Law Candidate. Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia
Meanings of the Concept of Impunity and the Social Institution of Punishment
in the Colombian model of Transitional Justice
“I suggest a critical perspective of criminal justice to explore the relationship
between the purposes of punishment and its relation to retributive or
restorative measures in a context of mass violence and atrocity, particularly in
the transitional justice model of Colombia.”
Adriane Sanctis De Brito [email protected]
PhD. Candidate at University of São Paulo
Race and Civilisation as Continuities in Transnational Law: the case of Brazilian-
British relations on the anti-slavery project (1822-1888)
“My research examines how Brazilian lawyers conceived a novel international
law discourse to meet British pushes for abolitionism, by which they sought to
affirm the newly independent nation as ‘civilised’, while preserving slavery
structures.”
Rebecca Schmidt [email protected]
TBGI Postdoctoral Fellow Osgoode Hall Law School
(http://www.osgoode.yorku.ca/faculty-and-research/visitors/post-docs/)
Complex Multi-Level Regulatory Networks and Emerging Structures Governing
Transnational Regulation
“The project focuses on multi-level networks of governance interactions and
their implications for existing public policy requirements. Examining both
bottom-up approaches, as well as top-down regulation, the project
concentrates particularly on the dynamics between the local and the
transnational level.”
Berenice Schramm [email protected]
Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow Centre for Gender
Studies, SOAS
Rekindle the Circle of Legal Hermeneutics Through a Feminist Epistemology
of Law: The case of judging in international law
“Having a Doctorate in international law, I currently work on my postdoctoral
project in feminist epistemology of judicial interpretation in international law. I
am particularly interested in deconstructing the classical Franco-German
approach to hermeneutics in order to understand and possibly overcome its
shortcomings from a feminist perspective. I am at the moment carrying out
sociolegal research on female judgeship at the ICJ.”
Ximena Sierra-Camargo [email protected]
Visiting Fellow, Kent Law School (UK) and PHD Candidate, Universidad del
Rosario (Colombia)
Sovereignty, Development and (Neo)colonialism: an analysis of the
transnational large-scale gold mining regulation in Colombia and the role of
the Colombian Constitutional State
“My research explores the colonial legacies of current mining legislation and
projects in Colombia from a global political economic perspective. It aims to
expose the (neo)colonial nature of development strategies surrounding
contemporary mining activities, and how these (neo)colonial legacies
operate through the rule of law.”
Natasha Stamenkovikj [email protected]
PhD researcher, Tilburg Law School, European and International Public Law
Department. https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/ webwijs
/show/n.stamenkovikj-2.htm
The Prospect for Justice for the Yugoslav War Victims under European and
International law
“The research looks at the efforts of the European regional organizations
(notably, the Council of Europe, and the European Union) in providing
human rights protection, and thus, justice to war victims in the context of the
Yugoslav wars. The focus is put on the efforts to protect and secure the right
to truth for the victims of disappearance and their family members. The
research looks at such initiatives raised, both, during and after the conflicts. Finally, the author will try to develop
ideas over the future prospect for justice for Yugoslav war victims, but also for victims from other conflicts,
through assessment of the prospect for developing better mechanisms for cooperation, coordination and
control of peace management processes of the European regional organizations.”
Dareen Toro [email protected]
PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London
Religious Freedom and Cultural Diversity in European Human Rights Law; Is Article
9 of the European Convention on Article 9 a replica of the Protestant theology?
“The research analyses the status of Article 9 of the European Convention on
Human Rights (ECHR). The notion of ‘religion’ and ‘religious freedom’ encoded in
the ECHR has not been theorized adequately by reference to its own particular
cultural background, which has been taken for granted. When this background
is inserted, it gives rise to a range of problems and distortions. The research
examines how religious freedom came to be one of the central claims within
Christian Protestant theology in association with linked ideas, as that of the
secular. The ‘two kingdoms’ of Luther, the private realm of the conscience and
the public realm of the (sinful) body, which may be punished by the magistrate
(state) are reflected today in the split between the assertion of religious freedom in Article 9(1) and the limitations
expressed in Article 9(2) of the ECHR. A further hypothesis will be developed around the notion of intelligibility
suggesting that the current framework of the ECtHR is less intelligible to claimants that do not share a Protestant
background; and it is even less intelligible to claimants of non-Abrahamic religions who tend to present themselves as
‘religions’ before the court to fit into the normative framework of Article 9.”
Basil Ugochukwu [email protected]
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (International Law), Centre for International
Governance Innovation, Waterloo, Canada
[https://www.cigionline.org/person/basil-ugochukwu]
Litigating Climate Change: Re-Imagining Polycentricism for Judges and
Lawyers
“My overarching area of research is climate change and human rights. My
current research deals with climate change litigation. I will analyze
comparative climate change jurisprudence from selected jurisdictions and
institutions to test the extent to which the reasoning in the caselaw resonates
with the idea that human rights norms could be utilized to address the
adverse impacts of climate change. My TLSI presentation examines the unique challenges of litigating climate
change as a polycentric issue from the perspectives of lawyers and judges.”
Catalina Vallejo Piedrahita [email protected]
PhD candidate at Los Andes University School of Law (Bogota, Colombia) and
affiliated researcher at the Centre on Law & Social Transformation (Bergen,
Norway)
Climate Change Regulatory Regimes in Amazon Countries
“This PhD research examines the global regulations on climate change and the
land in three Amazon countries: Colombia, Peru and Brazil. The project
approaches questions such as what is the nature and shape of the global
climate regulatory regime and what consequences it has had in the domestic
environmental regimes of the three countries, as well as in re-distributive policies
for the traditionally unprivileged citizens who inhabit the Amazon region.”
Vasanthi Venkatesh [email protected]
University of California- Berkeley, Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program,
Faculty of Law, https://www.law.berkeley. edu/php-
programs/jsp/viewProfile.php?id=290
Rethinking the Temporary, Reconstituting the Citizen: Rights Mobilization by
Foreign Temporary Workers in Comparative Perspective
“My research project is a cross-national comparative examination of legal
mobilization by temporary foreign workers in Canada (agricultural workers in
southern Ontario), Israel (domestic and agricultural workers), United States
(guest workers in Louisiana), and Hong Kong (domestic workers). It examines
under what conditions do temporary foreign workers in low-wage, precarious
sectors use litigation to achieve collective goals. It looks at how mobilization
and claims-making by migrant workers is facilitated or restricted by the law at four case-sites. Using interviews
and participant observation, I also examine how different advocates for migrant workers strategize to use the
law. Lastly, I critique existing theories of citizenship for their inability to reconcile "guest workers" within their
frameworks and definitions of citizenship. I propose a new framework that configures such "jurisgenerative"
practices of workers as "acts of citizenship" to expand on the theories.”
George Wilson [email protected]
PhD Candidate in Law at the School of Law, University of Leeds. My university
webpage can be found
here: http://www.law.leeds.ac.uk/people/research-students/wilson
Towards a Minimum Wage Policy for the European Union? A Socio-Legal
Perspective
“My doctorate explores the legal implications of suggestions for an EU
minimum wage policy and draws upon literature from multiple disciplines to
develop a proposal for its regulatory form.”
Kay Wilson [email protected]
PhD Candidate, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne,
Victoria, Australia
Mental Health Laws: Abolish or Reform?
“Mental Health Laws authorise and regulate the involuntary detention and
psychiatric treatment of persons with severe mental health problems in most
jurisdictions. My thesis takes a socio-legal approach to evaluating the
justifications for mental health law, the arguments for and against its
abolition, and the options for reform using a human rights conceptual
framework with a focus on the concepts of dignity, equality and
participation in the context of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities.”
Adrienne Yong [email protected]
University of Hertfordshire, go.herts.ac.uk/adrienne_yong & King’s College
London, https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en /persons/adrienne-
yong(a80c2f49-297a-4aed-a9ae-929919d3e783).html
The Constitutional Crisis of the EU Citizen in Fundamental Rights Protection
and EU Citizenship Law
“This paper discusses the relationship between EU citizenship law, EU
fundamental rights protection and its effects on the EU citizen, arguing that
various existing judicial and constitutional developments indicated that
fundamental rights protection should have remained an integral part of the
decision-making, particularly in Union citizenship cases.”
Fabian Zhilla [email protected]
Lecturer of Law & Ethics at Canadian Institute of Technology, Albania; Lead
Researcher of the Open Society Foundation Project in Albania on organised
crime
Sentencing Approach of Serious Crime Court in Albania
“This project seeks to understand the sentencing policy of Serious Crime
Courts toward organised crime in the last five years. The study will be based
on the analysis of 50 court decisions and will assess four indicators (i.e.
interpretation of "organised crime" definition by the court; timing of the
issuing of the court's decision; applied margin of sentences for similar cases
and number of accepted remand orders from the prosecution by the
court).”