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© 2001–2024 Pritzwalks – LLM GUIDE – Master of Laws (LL.M.) Programs Worldwide

McGill University Faculty of Law

The information on this page was provided by the law school.

Official Guide to Canadian JD Programs

Introduction

Established in 1848, McGill University’s Faculty of Law is the oldest in Canada. The Faculty of Law is located on the slopes of beautiful Mount Royal, adjacent to McGill’s main campus in the heart of downtown Montreal, Quebec. For over a century and a half, McGill’s Faculty of Law has remained at the vanguard of legal education and scholarship, and counts among its graduates Canadian Prime Ministers and Supreme Court justices.

A legal education at McGill is one that is marked by the mutually sustaining relationship between the common law and the civil law as the Western world’s two major legal traditions, in dialogue with Indigenous legal traditions. It recognizes that the law comes from a broad range of sources, and is predicated on the study of law as an intellectual inquiry that is inherently “transsystemic.” From the beginning of the BCL/JD, the common law and the civil law are taught together (in both French and English) as a pragmatic and scholarly preparation for law in a changing world.

The JD Program

Enrollment/Student Body

• 1,423 applicants
• 234 offers first-year class 2020
• 182 enrolled first-year class 2020
• 37 percent visible or racialized minority (first year)
• 63 percent women (first year)
• 8 provinces represented
• Approximately 38 undergraduate schools represented
• 44 full time, of which 20 are women
• 65 sessional lecturers

Library and Physical Facilities

• 225,000 volumes
• Extended hours during the academic period, 24-hour access during exams
• Access to major Canadian, American, and European electronic databases
• 4 full-time librarians

The Nahum Gelber Law Library provides resources and services that support teaching and research at the Faculty of Law and its affiliated institutes and research centres. In addition to Canadian and Quebec law, its collection’s strengths are air and space law, comparative law, international law, conflict of laws, continental private law, and human rights. It also holds extensive materials from Great Britain, France, and the United States. The Peter Marshall Laing Special Collections Room houses the  Wainwright Collection  of the  ancien régime  law, as well as other rare books. Other collections of note include an extensive collection of French legal theses and the John Humphrey Human Rights Collection.

• 105 credits required to graduate with BCL and JD degrees
• Advanced undergraduate options offered—minor, major, and honours
• Joint programs offered—Law/MBA and Law/MSW
• Experiential learning opportunities: clerkships, legal clinics, internships, competitive mooting
• Small group focused learning on ethical and methodological issues
• Integration workshops and Focus Week workshops

Under McGill’s integrated program, which was inaugurated in 1999–2000, students obtain both a common law (JD) and a civil law (BCL) degree upon successful completion of 105 credits, which may be taken over three, three and one-half, or four years.

The renewed McGill curriculum that debuted in the fall of 2016 features multiple opportunities for problem-based learning, translation of knowledge into action, and the development of skills that are critical to engaged, effective, and enlightened jurists.

Legal studies at McGill explore the two legal traditions which are presented through an innovative, integrated curriculum that has been developed with a view toward fostering critical and comparative analysis. The faculty emphasizes the mastery of underlying principles in private and public law, with a wealth of courses in legal theory, human rights, social analysis, international law, and corporate/commercial law.

This unique approach to legal education prepares McGill graduates for a wide range of personal and professional opportunities across Canada and around the world.

Student Activities

The student body at McGill is extremely active and has been the driving force behind a number of faculty institutions, including the Law Students Association, the Legal Information Clinic, and internationally known Law journals such as the  McGill Law Journal , the  McGill Journal of Law and Health , and the  McGill International Journal of Sustainable Development Law and Policy . In addition, there is student representation on each of the faculty’s standing committees, including the Curriculum Committee, the Admissions Committee, and the Faculty Council, which is the central decision-making body of the faculty. For more information on student life beyond the classroom (including clerkships and competitive mooting), please visit our Student Affairs webpage.

Career Placement and Bar Passage

Career Development Office

Under the direction of a McGill Law alumna and member of the Quebec Bar and Law Society of Upper Canada, the Career Development Office (CDO) offers a number of student services, including individual consultations to assist students in making informed decisions about law-related careers. Recent graduates of the McGill Law program (0–5 years) may also take advantage of the CDO’s services.

As well, the Career Development Office updates and publishes many resources that are linked to the job-search process in the legal profession as well as in specific practices of law (e.g., the  International Career Guide , the  Public Interest Career Guide , etc.). Through a bimonthly newsletter, its own highly informative website, and a job-search portal (myFuture) the CDO is able to announce events and opportunities to students in a variety of different ways.

Motivated by a collaborative approach, the CDO collects and solicits feedback from McGill Law students in order to draw on their experiences during the program, thus enabling the CDO to develop and better its resources for the entire student community. The CDO is eager to listen to the needs of students through various means of both formal and informal communication.

Through the faculty’s mentorship program, second- and third-year students can request to be paired with a McGill alumnus/alumna working in their area of interest, who can act as a resource person and inspiration in their academic, personal, and professional undertakings.

Thanks to the excellent relationship the Career Development Office holds with many prestigious graduates, the CDO also organizes many events and workshops that allow students to explore the vast career opportunities that are available to them, and to meet experts and potential employers from a variety of different fields.

As well as organizing its own on-campus interviews (OCIs) for Toronto and the American market, the CDO accompanies interested students, step-by-step, through the organized recruitment processes in other cities (Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, etc.). It also provides support and resources to those who wish to explore options outside of the organized recruitment processes.

Studying at McGill opens the door to a well-known variety of careers, although the majority of our alumni begin their careers in private practice. Every year, students completing their studies are accepted into graduate programs at major US and English law schools, such as Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Berkeley, Oxford, and Cambridge, as well as at major schools in continental Europe, such as Paris, Strasbourg, and Florence. McGill’s law graduates also enjoy great success in the highly selective Supreme Court Clerkship program; in 2018–2019, no fewer than 7 of the Supreme Court’s 27 clerks are McGill graduates.

Tuition and Aid

Expenses and Financial Aid

• Approximate tuition and fees (2021–2022)—$5,060.61 (Quebec students); $10,841.01 (non-Quebec Canadian students); $52,359.21 (international students)
• Estimated additional expenses—$1,000 (books) plus living expenses
• Faculty of Law entrance scholarships and bursaries available
• Government loans and bursaries through the McGill Scholarships and Student Aid Office

The Faculty of Law offers a variety of renewable and nonrenewable entrance scholarships and bursaries ranging from $800 to $10,000. The faculty also has a large number of in-course prizes and awards for excellence and contribution to the life of the school.

Admission Decisions: Beyond the Numbers

• Minimum 2 years (60 credits) of undergraduate studies or DEC required
• Application deadline—November 1
• LSAT not required, but must be disclosed and will be considered if written
• Multiple LSAT scores averaged
• Oldest LSAT score accepted—June 2016
• Median GPA—85 percent
• Median LSAT score—165
• Application fee—$122.52 (CAD)

Applicants must demonstrate substantial reading ability in, and aural comprehension of, both English and French, as there is substantial exposure to materials in French throughout the program.

The faculty’s Admissions Committee seeks to select those applicants best suited to studying law in McGill’s uniquely comparative, transsystemic, and bilingual environment, based on a holistic evaluation of a candidate’s academic record, linguistic abilities, personal statement, extracurricular and community activities, and letters of reference.

The committee seeks to achieve a plural learning community drawn from across Quebec, Canada, and beyond, in which there is a wide range of aspirations, backgrounds, and life experiences.

Admission to McGill’s Faculty of Law is highly competitive. Students offered admission at McGill generally have outstanding academic records in addition to their other achievements and qualities. The candidates offered admission in 2020 had an average UGPA of A (85 percent) and an average LSAT score of 165. However, the assessment of a candidate’s suitability for and potential to succeed in, as well as contribute to, McGill’s law program is more complex than a comparison of numbers. The Admissions Committee looks for indicators of intellectual curiosity; community engagement; insight (cultural, economic, political, social, and otherwise); leadership skills; ability to work with others; maturity; ethical sense; judgment; and potential for development through opportunity or adversity, among other criteria.

Indigenous Applicants

McGill Law is committed to supporting Indigenous students and we welcome dialogue with interested prospective applicants. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis persons are strongly encouraged to apply to the Faculty of Law, and are invited to self-identify on their application form. This allows McGill to inform students about specific services and funding opportunities and to assess the school’s progress in the recruitment and retention of Indigenous students. This includes Status, Treaty, Registered, Non-Status, and Non-Registered Indigenous persons.

We acknowledge that our bilingualism admission requirement may represent an added challenge for some Indigenous applicants for whom English or French may be a third language, and potentially perceived as a colonizing influence. We don’t wish you to exclude yourself from applying on linguistic grounds—and we encourage you to speak with us if you have concerns on this point. Financial support is available to admitted Indigenous candidates who wish to improve their abilities in English or French before starting the program. Financial support is also available to help deal with a relative weakness in English or French during legal studies here. Please contact us to find out how we can support you.

Indigenous persons are strongly encouraged to apply to the Faculty of Law and are invited to self-identify. McGill offers Indigenous students the opportunity to study and complete research with a wide range of legal scholars in English and French. The Faculty is host to a vibrant Indigenous Law Students’ Association and the Aboriginal Human Rights Initiatives. McGill also gives Indigenous students the possibility to acquire practical experience working at the Legal Clinic at Kahnawake, to participate in the Faculty's LEX (Law-Éducation-Connexion) program with the Kahnawake Survival School, as well as the chance to participate in the national Kawaskimhon Moot or to complete at McGill a Minor in Indigenous Studies. McGill's First Peoples' House provides a sense of community and a voice for Indigenous students who have left their communities to study at McGill. A “home away from home,” First Peoples’ House offers a mentoring program, computer facilities, guest lectures, elder visits, academic counselling, and an ever expanding resource centre as well as housing.

Indigenous students may be eligible for numerous sources of financial support.

Diversity and excellence are essential to our faculty. Indeed, our faculty’s excellence is based on its diversity. Applications from candidates of diverse ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds are encouraged. A plurality of perspectives is crucial to the creation of a dynamic intellectual community and resonates with the faculty’s academic mission of providing a pluralist, bilingual, and comparative legal education.

Contact Information

MA & PhD in Architecture

Ucla architecture and urban design offers two academic graduate degrees: the master of arts in architecture (ma) and doctor of philosophy in architecture (phd)..

The programs produce students whose scholarship aims to provoke and operate within architecture’s public, professional, and scholarly constituencies. Both programs are supported by the Standing Committee, made up of five faculty members: Michael Osman (interim program director), Cristóbal Amunátegui , Dana Cuff , Samaa Elimam , and Ayala Levin . A number of visiting faculty teach courses to expand the range of offerings.

Applications for the MA/PhD program (Fall 2024 matriculation) are completed via the UCLA Application for Graduate Admission , and are due January 6, 2024. Candidates will be notified of decisions in March 2024; admitted candidates who wish to accept the offer of matriculation must submit their Statement of Intent to Register (SIR) by April 15, 2024.

All MA and PhD students are required to enroll in a two-year colloquium focused on methods for writing, teaching, and researching in the field of architecture. The six courses that constitute the colloquium train students in the apparatus of academic scholarship. Over the two-year sequence, students produce original research projects and develop skills in long-format writing.

Research Opportunities

The intellectual life of the students in the MA and PhD programs are reinforced by the increasing number of opportunities afforded to students through specialized faculty-led research projects. These include cityLAB-UCLA and the Urban Humanities Institute .

MA in Architecture

This program prepares students to work in a variety of intellectual and programmatic milieus including historical research, cultural studies, and interdisciplinary studies with particular emphasis on connections with geography, design, art history, history of science and literary studies, as well as studio and design based research.

Beyond the core colloquium, MA students take a series of approved courses both at UCLA AUD and across campus. The MA program is a two-year degree, culminating in a thesis. The thesis is developed from a paper written by the student in their coursework and developed in consultation with the primary advisor and the standing committee. In addition to courses and individual research, students often participate in collective, project-based activities, including publications, symposia and exhibitions.

The program is distinguished by its engagement with contemporary design and historical techniques as well by the unusual balance it offers: fostering great independence and freedom in the students’ courses of study while providing fundamental training in architectural scholarship.

Recent MA Theses

• Jacqueline Meyer, “Crafting Utopia: Paolo Soleri and the Building of Arcosanti.”
• Joseph Maguid, “The Architecture of the Videogame: Architecture as the Link Between Representational and Participatory Immersion.”
• Meltem Al, “The Agency of Words and Images in the Transformation of Istanbul: The Case of Ayazma.”
• Courtney Coffman, “Addressing Architecture and Fashion: On Simulacrum, Time and Poché.”
• Joseph Ebert, “Prolegomena to a Poiesis of Architectural Phenomenology.”
• Jamie Aron, “Women Images: From the Bauhaus Weaving Workshop to the Knoll Textile Division.”
• Gustave Heully, “Moldy Assumptions.”
• Brigid McManama, “Interventions on Pacoima Wash: Repurposing Linear Infrastructure into Park Spaces.”

MA Typical Study Program

Phd in architecture.

This program prepares students to enter the academic professions, either in architectural history, architectural design, or other allied fields. PhD students are trained to teach courses in the history and theory of architecture while also engaging in studio pedagogy and curatorial work. In addition to the colloquium, PhD students take a series of approved courses both at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design and across campus. They select these courses in relation to their own research interests and in consultation with their primary advisor. The priorities for selection are breadth of knowledge and interdisciplinary experience that retains a focused area of expertise. To this end, the students identify Major and Minor Fields of study. The Minor Field is generally fulfilled by satisfactorily completing three courses given by another department and the Major Field by five courses offered by UCLA Architecture and Urban Design.

Once coursework is completed, PhD students move to the Comprehensive Exam, Qualifying Exam, and the writing of a dissertation, and final defense, if deemed appropriate by the doctoral committee. In the transition from coursework to exams, PhD students work on one paper beyond its original submission as coursework. The paper begins in the context of a departmental seminar, but often continues either in the context of an independent study, summer mentorship, or a second seminar with faculty consent. Upon the research paper’s acceptance, students begin preparing for their comprehensive exam. Before their third year, students must also satisfactorily complete three quarters of language study or its equivalent according to University standards. The particular language will be determined in consultation with the Standing Committee. The Comprehensive Exam is administered by at least two members of the Standing Committee and at most one faculty member from another Department at UCLA, also a member of the Academic Senate.

The Comprehensive Exam tests two fields: the first covers a breadth of historical knowledge—300 years at minimum—and the second focuses on in-depth knowledge of a specialization that is historically and thematically circumscribed. Students submit an abstract on each of these fields, provide a substantial bibliography, and prepare additional documentation requested by their primary advisor. These materials are submitted to the committee no less than two weeks before the exam, which occurs as early as the end of the second year. Students are encouraged to complete the Comprehensive Exam no later than the end of their third year of study.

The Comprehensive Exam itself consists of two parts: an oral component that takes place first, and then a written component. The oral component is comprised of questions posed by the committee based on the student’s submitted materials. The goal of the exam is for students to demonstrate their comprehensive knowledge of their chosen field. The written component of the exam (which may or may not be waived by the committee) consists of a written response to a choice of questions posed by the committee. The goal of this portion of the exam is for students to demonstrate their research skills, their ability to develop and substantiate an argument, and to show promise of original contribution to the field. Students have two weeks to write the exam. After the committee has read the exam, the advisor notifies the student of the committee’s decision. Upon the student’s successful completion of the Comprehensive Exam, they continue to the Qualifying Exam.

Students are expected to take the Qualifying Exam before the beginning of the fourth year. The exam focuses on a dissertation prospectus that a student develops with their primary advisor and in consultation with their PhD committee. Each student’s PhD committee consists of at least two members of the Standing Committee and one outside member from another department at the University (and a member of the Faculty Senate). Committees can also include faculty from another institution. All committees are comprised of at least three members of UCLA Academic Senate. The prospectus includes an argument with broad implications, demonstrates that the dissertation will make a contribution of knowledge and ideas to the field, demonstrates mastery of existing literature and discourses, and includes a plan and schedule for completion.

The PhD dissertation is written after the student passes the qualifying exam, at which point the student has entered PhD candidacy. The dissertation is defended around the sixth year of study. Students graduating from the program have taken posts in a wide range of universities, both in the United States and internationally.

Recent PhD Dissertations

• Marko Icev, "Building Solidarity: Architecture After Disaster and The Skopje 1963 Post-Earthquake Reconstruction." ( Read )
• Anas Alomaim, "Nation Building in Kuwait, 1961-1991."
• Tulay Atak, “Byzantine Modern: Displacements of Modernism in Istanbul.”
• Ewan Branda, “Virtual Machines: Culture, telematique, and the architecture of information at Centre Beaubourg, 1968–1977.”
• Aaron Cayer, "Design and Profit: Architectural Practice in the Age of Accumulation"
• Per-Johan Dahl, “Code Manipulation, Architecture In-Between Universal and Specific Urban Spaces.”
• Penelope Dean, “Delivery without Discipline: Architecture in the Age of Design.”
• Miriam Engler, “Gordon Cullen and the ‘Cut-and-Paste’ Urban Landscape.”
• Dora Epstein-Jones, “Architecture on the Move: Modernism and Mobility in the Postwar.”
• Sergio Figueiredo, “The Nai Effect: Museological Institutions and the Construction of Architectural Discourse.”
• Jose Gamez, “Contested Terrains: Space, Place, and Identity in Postcolonial Los Angeles.”
• Todd Gannon, “Dissipations, Accumulations, and Intermediations: Architecture, Media and the Archigrams, 1961–1974.”
• Whitney Moon, "The Architectural Happening: Diller and Scofidio, 1979-89"
• Eran Neuman, “Oblique Discourses: Claude Parent and Paul Virilio’s Oblique Function Theory and Postwar Architectural Modernity.”
• Alexander Ortenberg, “Drawing Practices: The Art and Craft of Architectural Representation.”
• Brian Sahotsky, "The Roman Construction Process: Building the Basilica of Maxentius"
• Marie Saldana, “A Procedural Reconstruction of the Urban Topography of Magnesia on The Maeander.”
• David Salomon, “One Thing or Another: The World Trade Center and the Implosion of Modernism.”
• Ari Seligmann, “Architectural Publicity in the Age of Globalization.”
• Zheng Tan, “Conditions of The Hong Kong Section: Spatial History and Regulatory Environment of Vertically Integrated Developments.”
• Jon Yoder, “Sight Design: The Immersive Visuality of John Lautner.”

A Sampling of PhD Alumni and Their Pedagogy

Iman Ansari , Assistant Professor of Architecture, the Knowlton School, Ohio State University

Tulay Atak , Adjunct Associate Professor, Pratt School of Architecture

Shannon Starkey , Associate Professor of Architecture, University of San Diego

Ece Okay , Affiliate Research, Université De Pau Et Des Pays De L'adour

Zheng Tan , Department of Architecture, Tongji University

Pelin Yoncaci , Assistant Professor, Department Of Architecture, Middle East Technical University

José L.S. Gámez , Interim Dean, College of Arts + Architecture, UNC Charlotte

Eran Neuman , Professor, School of Architecture, Tel Aviv University

Marie Saldana , Assistant Professor, School of Interior Architecture, University of Tennessee - Knoxville

Sergio M. Figueiredo , Assistant Professor, Eindhoven University of Technology

Rebecca Choi , Assistant Professor of Architecture History, School of Architecture, Tulane University

Will Davis , Lecturer in History, Theory and Criticism, Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore

Maura Lucking , Faculty, School of Architecture & Urban Planning, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

Kyle Stover , Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, Montana State University

Alex Maymind , Assistant Professor of Architecture and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Architecture, University of Minnesota

Gary Riichirō Fox , visiting faculty member at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and lecturer at USC School of Architecture

Randy Nakamura , Adjunct Professor, College of Arts and Sciences, University of San Francisco

Aaron Cayer , Assistant Professor of Architecture History, School of Architecture + Planning, University of New Mexico

Whitney Moon , Associate Professor of Architecture, School of Architecture & Urban Planning, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

Todd Gannon , Professor of Architecture, the Knowlton School, Ohio State University

Dora Epstein Jones , Professor of Practice, School of Architecture, the University of Texas at Austin

Sarah Hearne , Assistant Professor, College of Architecture and Planning, University of Colorado Denver

PhD Typical Study Program

*The choice of language to fulfill this requirement must be discussed with the Ph.D. Standing Committee

Our Current PhD Cohort

AUD's cohort of PhD candidates are leaders in their fields of study, deepening their scholarship at AUD and at UCLA while sharing their knowledge with the community.

Adam Boggs is a sixth year Ph.D candidate and interdisciplinary artist, scholar, educator and Urban Humanist. His research and teaching interests include the tension between creativity and automation, craft-based epistemologies, and the social and material history of architecture at the U.S.-Mexico border. He holds a BFA in Sculpture Cum Laude from the Ohio State University, and an MFA in Visual Art from the State University of New York at Purchase College. Prior to joining the doctoral program at UCLA he participated in courses in Architecture (studio and history) at Princeton University and Cornell University. His dissertation analyzes the history of indigenous labor during the Mexican baroque period to form a comparative analysis with the 20th century Spanish revival architecture movement in Southern California and how the implementation of the style along the U.S.-Mexico border might function as a Lefebvrian “thirdspace” that disrupts binary thinking. In Spring 2024 he will teach an undergraduate seminar course at AUD on the history of architecture at the U.S.-Mexico border as part of the CUTF program.

Hanyu Chen is a second-year doctoral student at UCLA AUD. Her research focuses on the intersection between (sub)urban studies, heritage conservation, and the genders of the space. Specifically, it concerns the dynamics of genders in (sub)urban areas and how these dynamics are conserved as heritage. Born and raised in China for her first 18 years, Hanyu chose the conservation of comfort stations in China as her master's thesis at the University of Southern California, where she earned her master’s degree in Heritage Conservation and officially started her journey in architecture. Her thesis discusses the fluidity and genders of comfort stations and how they survive in contemporary China’s heritage conservation policies.

Hanyu also holds a Bachelor of Science degree in AMS (Applied Mathematics and Statistics) and Art History from Stony Brook University.

Yixuan Chen

Yixuan Chen is an architectural designer and a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA. Driven by an impulse to demystify both the grand promises and trivial familiarities of architecture, her research embarks on the notion of everydayness to elucidate the power dynamics it reveals. She investigates the conflicts between these two ends and focuses on modernization across different times and places.

Prior to joining UCLA AUD, she was trained as an architect and graduated from the University of Nottingham's China Campus with a first-class honors degree. Her graduation project “Local Culture Preservation Centre,” which questioned the validity of monumental architecture in the climate crisis, was nominated for the RIBA President's Medal in 2016.

She also holds a Master of Arts degree with distinction in Architectural History from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. Her dissertation, “Shijing, on the Debris of Shijing,” explores the vanishing shijing places, or urban villages, where rural migrant workers negotiate their urban identity in Chinese cities, revealing shifting power relations. Additionally, she authored an article in Prospectives Journal titled "Architectural Authorship in ‘the Last Mile,’" advocating for a change to relational architectural authorship in response to the digital revolution in architecture.

Pritam Dey is an urban designer and second-year doctoral student at UCLA AUD. His research interest lies at the intersection of colonial urbanism, sensorial history, and somatic inquiries. His architecture thesis investigated the crematorium and temple as sensorial infrastructure, and was presented at World Architecture Congress at Seoul in 2017. Previously Dey worked in the domain of urban design, specifically informal markets, as a shaper of urbanism in Indian cities. Prior to joining the AUD doctoral program, his past research focused on investigating the role of informal and wholesale markets in shaping up urbanity in the Indian city cores and co-mentored workshops on Urbanity of Chitpur Road, Kolkata with ENSAPLV, Paris which was both exhibited at Kolkata and Paris. He also co-mentored the documentation of the retrospective landscape of Hampi with the support of ENSAPLV and French Embassy. His investigations on the slums of Dharavi title ‘The tabooed city’ was published in the McGill University GLSA Research series 2021 under the theme: the city an object or subject of law?

An urban designer and architect, Pritam Dey pursued his post graduation from School of planning and Architecture, Delhi. During his academic tenure at SPA, he was the recipient of 2018 Design Innovation Center Fellowship for Habitat design allowing him to work on the social infrastructure for less catered communities in the Sub Himalayan Villages. In 2022 He mentored a series of exhibitions on the theme of Water, Mountains and Bodies at Ahmadabad.

He was the 2022-23 Urban Humanities Initiatives Fellow at UCLA and recipient of 2023 UCLA Center for India and South Asia fellowship for his summer research.

Carrie Gammell

Carrie Gammell is a doctoral candidate working at the intersection of architectural history, property law, and political economy. Her research focuses on claims, investments, and intermediary organizations in the United States, from the Homestead Act of 1862 to the Housing Act of 1934.

Carrie is also a Senior Research Associate at cityLAB UCLA, where she studies state appropriations for California community college student housing. In the past, she contributed to Education Workforce Housing in California: Developing the 21st Century Campus, a report and companion handbook that provides a comprehensive overview of the potential for land owned by school districts to be designed and developed for teachers and other employees.

Prior to joining AUD, Carrie worked as an architectural designer in Colombia and the United States, where she built a portfolio of affordable housing, multi-family residential, and single-family residential projects as well as civic and cultural renovations and additions. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Rice University and a Master in Design Studies (Critical Conservation) from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Anirudh Gurumoorthy

Anirudh Gurumoorthy is a PhD candidate at UCLA AUD. His dissertation, tentatively titled (Un)Certain Tropics and the Architecture of Certain Commodities, 1803-1926, focuses on the spatial and environmental histories of natural history/sciences in the long-nineteenth century as it related to the political economy of empire within South Asia. He is interested in the ways the materiality of commodity extraction and production contends with how, where, and why certain ‘tropical’ animals, vegetables, and minerals are attributed with a metropolitan sense of ‘value’. Moving from the United States to Britain (and back) through various parts of the Indian Ocean world as markets for singular forms of ice, rubber, and cattle form, peak, and collapse, the dissertation ultimately aims to reveal interconnected spatial settings of knowledge, control, regulation, display, and labor where knowledge systems, technical limits, human and nonhuman action/inaction, differentiated senses of environments and value continually contend with each other to uphold the fetishes of the world market. Gurumoorthy holds a B.Arch. from R.V. College of Architecture, Bangalore, and an M.Des in the History and Philosophy of Design and Media from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Chi-Chia Hou

Chi-Chia Hou is a doctoral candidate in his sixth year at UCLA AUD. His working dissertation, “New Frontier: Architecture and Service 1893-1960,” explores his interest in architecture and wealth, changing ideas of profit and management, and social scientific discourses for measuring work and worker, self and others, and values of landed property.

His research locates moments of theorizing methodologies to manage income-generating properties in schools of agriculture, home economics, and hotel studies. The schools taught their students theories, while instilling the imminence of faithful direction of oneself, of self-as-property. The pedagogies, existing beyond the purview of Architecture, were of immense architectural consideration.

Chi-Chia Hou took a break from school in the previous academic year to learn from his daughter and has now returned to school to learn from his brilliant cohorts.

Adam Lubitz

Adam Lubitz is an urban planner, heritage conservationist, and doctoral student. His research engages the intersection of critical heritage studies and migration studies, with an emphasis on how archival information can inform reparations. His community-based research has been most recently supported by the Columbia GSAPP Incubator Prize as well as the Ziman Center for Real Estate and Leve Center for Jewish Studies at UCLA.

Prior to joining AUD, Adam worked at World Monuments Fund within their Jewish Heritage Program, and taught GIS coursework at Barnard College. His master's thesis applied field research with experimental mapping techniques in the old town of a municipality in Palestine. Adam holds MS degrees in Historic Preservation and Urban Planning from Columbia University and a BA in Urban Studies from New College of Florida.

José Monge is a PhD candidate in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design. His dissertation, titled Maritime Labor, Candles, and the Architecture of the Enlightenment (1750-1872) , focuses on the role that whale-originated illuminants, specifically spermaceti candles and oil, played in the American Enlightenment as an intellectual project and the U.S. as a country. By unravelling the tension between binaries such as intellectual and manual labor–the consumers that bought these commodities and the producers that were not able to afford them–the project understands architecture as a history of activities that moved from sea to land and land to sea, challenging assumptions about the static “nature” of architecture.

Kurt Pelzer

Kurt Pelzer is a fourth-year PhD candidate at UCLA AUD. Their research explores the relational histories, material flows, and politics of land in and beyond California in the long nineteenth century during the United States parks, public lands, and conservation movements.

Their current scholarship traces the settler possession and exhibitionary display of a Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) in the 1850s; an act that contested the ways Miwok peoples ancestral to California's Sierra Nevada knew and related to life and land. Their broader interests include histories of colonialism and capitalism in the Americas, environmental history, and Blackness and Indigeneity as a methodological analytic for political solidarities and possibilities.

Prior to arriving at UCLA, Pelzer worked at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the Architecture and Design Curatorial Department participating in exhibitions, programming, and collections work. Pelzer completed a Master of Advanced Architectural Design in the History, Theory, and Experiments program from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and earned their Bachelor's degree in Landscape Architecture from the College of Design at Iowa State University.

Shota Vashakmadze

Email Shota Vashakmadze

Shota Vashakmadze is a sixth-year PhD candidate at UCLA AUD. His dissertation traces the conjoined histories of architectural computing, environmental design, and professional practice in the late 20th century, adopting critical approaches to architecture’s technical substrates—the algorithms, softwares, and user protocols of computation—to examine their social and political dispositions. In his scholarship and pedagogy, he aims to situate forms of architectural labor within the profession’s ongoing acculturation to environmental crisis. Most recently, he has been leading the development of the interdisciplinary “Building Climates” cluster, a year-long course sequence at UCLA, and co-organizing an initiative dedicated to fostering discourse on climate change and architecture, including a two-day conference entitled “Architecture After a Green New Deal.”

His research has been supported by the Canadian Centre for Architecture and appeared in journals including Architectural Theory Review , The Avery Review, and Pidgin Magazine. He is currently completing a contribution to a collection on landscape representation and a chapter for an edited volume on architecture, labor, and political economy.

Shota holds an MArch from Princeton University and has a professional background in architecture, landscape, and software development. Before coming to UCLA, he researched methods for designing with point cloud data and wrote Bison, a software plugin for landscape modeling.

Alexa Vaughn

Alexa Vaughn (ASLA, FAAR) is a first year PhD student in Architecture + Urban Design and a Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellow , from Long Beach, California. She is a Deaf landscape designer, accessibility specialist, consultant, and recent Fellow of the American Academy in Rome (2022-23). She is a visionary speaker, thought leader, prolific writer and researcher, and the author of “ DeafScape : Applying DeafSpace to Landscape,” which has been featured in numerous publications.

Her professional work is centered upon designing public landscapes with and for the Deaf and disabled communities, applying legal standards and Universal Design principles alongside lived experience and direct participation in the design process. She is an expert in designing landscapes for the Deaf community (DeafScape) and in facilitation of disabled community engagement. Prior to joining the A+UD program, Alexa worked for several landscape architecture firms over the course of six years, including OLIN and MIG, Inc.

Through a disability justice lens, her dissertation will seek to formally explore the historical exclusionary and inaccessible design of American urban landscapes and public spaces, as well as the response (activism, policy, and design) to this history through the present and speculative future. She will also actively take part in activist- and practice-based research with cityLAB and the Urban Humanities Institute .

Alexa holds both a BA in Landscape Architecture (with a minor in Conservation and Resource Studies) and a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture (MLA) from the University of California, Berkeley, with specialization in accessible and inclusive design. Much of her work can be found at www.designwithdisabledpeoplenow.com and on Instagram: @DeafScape.

Yashada Wagle

Yashada Wagle is a third year PhD student in Critical Studies at UCLA AUD, and a recipient of the department's Moss Scholarship. Her research focuses on imperial environmental-legislative regimes in British colonial India in the late nineteenth century. She is interested in exploring questions around the histories of spaces of extraction and production as they network between the metropole and the colony, and their relationship with the conceptions of laboring bodies therein. Her master's thesis focused on the Indian Forest Act of 1865, and elucidated the conceptualization of the space of the ‘forest’ through the lenses of its literary, legislative, and biopolitical trajectories, highlighting how these have informed its contemporary lived materiality.

Wagle holds a Bachelor in Architecture (BArch) from the Savitribai Phule Pune University in India, and a Master in Design Studies (History and Philosophy of Design and Media) from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She was previously a Research Fellow at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies (KRVIA) in Mumbai, India.

In her spare time, Wagle enjoys illustrating and writing poetry, some of which can be found here .

Dexter Walcott

Dexter Walcott is a registered architect currently in his fifth year with the Critical Studies of Architecture program at UCLA. His research focuses on the Latrobe family and early nineteenth century builders in the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys. He is interested in the role of the built environment in histories of labor, capitalism, steam-power, and industry.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Joy is a fifth-year PhD student in architecture history. Her research explores geology as antiquity from early 19th – 20th century British colonial Hong Kong and China. She holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature with a focus in German from Middlebury College in 2017, and is a graduate of The New Normal program at Strelka Institute, Moscow in 2018. Previously, she has taught in the Department of Architecture at University of Hong Kong, as well as the Department of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

After working as a curatorial assistant at Tai Kwun Contemporary in 2019, she has continued the practice of art writing and translation, collaborating with many local Hong Kong artists as well as international curators such as Raimundas Malašauskas. In her spare time, she practices long-distance open water swimming. In 2022, she completed a 30km course at the South of Lantau Island, Hong Kong.

The MA and PhD programs welcome and accept applications from students with a diverse range of backgrounds. These programs are designed to help those interested in academic work in architecture develop those skills, so we strongly encourage that you become familiar with fundamental, celebrated works in the history and theory of architecture before entering the program.

Applicants to the academic graduate programs must hold a Bachelor’s degree, or the foreign equivalent. All new students must enter in the fall quarter. The program is full-time and does not accept part-time students.

Applications for the MA and PhD programs (Fall 2024 matriculation) will be available in Fall 2023, with application deadline of January 6, 2024; please revisit this page for updates. Accepted candidates who wish to enroll must file an online Statement of Intent to Register (SIR) by April 15, 2024.

How to Apply

Applying to the MA and PhD programs is an online process via the UCLA Application for Graduate Admission (AGA).

Completing the requirements will take some time, so we strongly recommend logging in to the AGA in advance to familiarize yourself with the site and downloading the documents and forms you will need to complete your application.

You can also download this checklist to make sure you have prepared and submitted all the relevant documents to complete your application.

Your Statement of Purpose is a critical part of your application to the MA and PhD programs. It is your opportunity to introduce yourself and tell us about your specific academic background, interests, achievements, and goals. Our selection committee use it to evaluate your aptitude for study, as well as consideration for merit-based financial support.

Your statement can be up to 1500 words in length. Below are some questions you might want to consider. You don’t need to answer every question; just focus on the elements that are most relevant to you.

• What is your purpose in applying to the MA or PhD program? Describe your area(s) of research interest, including any areas of concentration and specialization.
• What experiences have prepared you for this program? What relevant skills have you gained from these experiences? Have your experiences led to specific or tangible outcomes that would support your potential to contribute to this field (e.g. performances, publications, presentations, awards or recognitions)?
• What other information about your past experience might help the selection committee in evaluating your suitability for this program? E.g. research, employment, teaching, service, artistic or international experiences through which you have developed skills in leadership, communication, project management, teamwork, or other areas.
• Why is UCLA Architecture and Urban Design the best place for you to pursue your academic goals?
• What are your plans for your career after earning this degree?

Your Personal Statement is your opportunity to provide additional information to help the selection committee evaluate your aptitude for study. It will also be used to consider candidates for UCLA Graduate Division fellowships related to diversity. You can read more about the University of California Diversity Statement here .

Your statement can be up to 500 words in length. Below are some questions you might want to consider. You don’t need to answer every question; just focus on the elements that are most relevant to you.

• Are there educational, personal, cultural, economic, or social experiences, not described in your Statement of Purpose, that have shaped your academic journey? If so, how? Have any of these experiences provided unique perspective(s) that you would contribute to your program, field or profession?
• Describe challenge(s) or barriers that you have faced in your pursuit of higher education. What motivated you to persist, and how did you overcome them? What is the evidence of your persistence, progress or success?
• How have your life experiences and educational background informed your understanding of the barriers facing groups that are underrepresented in higher education?
• How have you been actively engaged (e.g., through participation, employment, service, teaching or other activities) in programs or activities focused on increasing participation by groups that have been historically underrepresented in higher education?
• How do you intend to engage in scholarly discourse, research, teaching, creative efforts, and/or community engagement during your graduate program that have the potential to advance diversity and equal opportunity in higher education?
• How do you see yourself contributing to diversity in your profession after you complete your academic degree at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design?

A Curriculum Vitae (résumé of your academic and professional experience) is recommended but not required.

Applicants must upload a scanned copy of the official transcripts from each college or university you have attended both in the U.S. and abroad. If you are accepted into the program you will be required to submit hard copies. These can either be sent directly from each institution or hand-delivered as long as they remain in the official, signed, sealed envelopes from your college or university. As a general rule, UCLA Graduate Division sets a minimum required overall grade-point average of 3.0 (B), or the foreign equivalent.

As of this Fall 2023 cycle, the GRE is NOT required as part of your application to UCLA AUD. No preference will be given to those who choose to submit GRE scores as part of their application.

However, if you do take the GRE exam and wish to include it as part of your application: More information on this standardized exam can be found at www.ets.org/gre . In addition to uploading your GRE scores, please direct ETS to send us your official score sheets. Our ETS codes for the GRE are below:

UCLA Architecture and Urban Design Institution Code: 4837 Department Code: 4401

We recommend you take the exam at least three weeks before the application deadline as it usually takes 2-3 weeks for ETS to send us the test scores.

If you have received a Bachelor’s degree in a country where the official language of instruction and primary spoken language of daily life is not English, you must submit either a Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or an International English Language Testing System (IELTS). Exempt countries include Australia, Barbados, Canada, Ireland, Jamaica, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. This is a requirement that is regardless of your visa or citizenship status in the United States.

To be considered for admission to the M.Arch. program, international students must score at least a 92 on the TOEFL or a 7 on the IELTS exam. Because processing, sending, and receiving TOEFL and IELTS scores can take several weeks, international students must schedule their exam no later than October 31 in order to meet UCLA deadlines. TOEFL scores must be sent to us directly and uploaded as part of the online submission. Our ETS codes for the TOEFL are below:

UCLA Architecture and Urban Design Institution Code: 4837 Department Code: 12

If your score is less than 100 on the TOEFL or 7.5 on the IELTS, you are also required to take the English as a Second Language Placement Examination (ESLPE) on arrival at UCLA. The results of this test will determine any English as a Second Language (ESL) courses you need to take in your first term of residence. These courses cannot be applied towards your minimum course requirements. As such, you should expect to have a higher course load than students not required to take ESL courses.

If you have earned a degree or completed two years of full-time college-level coursework in the following countries, your TOEFL / IELTS and ESLPE requirements will be waived: U.S., U.K., Canada (other than Quebec), Australia, and New Zealand. Please provide official transcripts to demonstrate course completion. Unfortunately, we cannot accept any other documentation to demonstrate language proficiency.

Three (3) letters of recommendation are required. These letters should be from individuals who are familiar with your academic and professional experiences and can evaluate your capacity to successfully undertake graduate studies at UCLA. If you do not have an architecture background please note that we are looking for letters that evaluate your potential as a graduate student, not necessarily your architecture experience.

Letters of recommendation must be sent electronically directly to UCLA by the recommender. When logged in, you can enter the name and email address of each of your recommenders. They will be contacted by email with a request to submit a letter on your behalf. You can track which letters have and have not been received. You can also send reminders to your recommenders to send their letters.

Writing samples should illustrate an applicant’s capacities for research, analytical writing and scholarly citation. Texts may include seminar papers, theses, and/or professional writing.

Please complete and submit the Department Supplement Form to confirm your intention to apply to the MA or PhD program.

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.  

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Public Air Law Treaties and Conventions

These documents relate primarily to laws and agreements governing aviation. You may also wish to consult issues of the Annals of Air and Space Law for recent developments.

Volume XXX (2005) of the Annals of Air & Space Law is a thorough compendium of international air law instruments. It is also available in CD-ROM. Click here to order a copy.

"Chicago" acts and related protocols

Chicago Convention [.pdf] - Convention on International Civil Aviation Chicago, December 7, 1944

Transit Agreement [.pdf] - International Air Services Transit Agreement Chicago, December 7, 1944

Transport Agreement [.pdf] - International Air Services Transit Agreement Chicago, December 7, 1944

Article 93bis [.pdf] - Protocol Relating to an Amendment to the Convention on International Civil Aviation Montreal, April 27, 1947

Article 45 [.pdf] - Protocol Relating to an Amendment to the Convention on International Civil Aviation Montreal, June 14, 1954

Article 48(a) [.pdf] - Protocol Relating to an Amendment to the Convention on International Civil Aviation Rome, September 15, 1962

Trilingual Text [.pdf] - Protocol on the Authentic Trilingual Text of the Convention on International Civil Aviation Buenos Aires, September 24, 1968

Final Clause [.pdf] - Protocol Relating to an Amendment to the Convention on International Civil Aviation Montreal, September 30, 1977

Quadrilingual Text [.pdf] - Protocol on the Authentic Quadrilingual Text of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago, 1944) Montreal, September 30, 1977

Article 83bis [.pdf] - Protocol Relating to an Amendment to the Convention on International Civil Aviation Montreal, October 6, 1980

Article 3bis [.pdf] - Protocol Relating to an Amendment to the Convention on International Civil Aviation Montreal, May 10, 1984

Article 56 [.pdf] - Protocol Relating to an Amendment to the Convention on International Civil Aviation Montreal, October 6, 1989

Article 50(a) [.pdf] - Protocol Relating to an Amendment to the Convention on International Civil Aviation Montreal, October 26, 1990

Quinquelingual Text [.pdf] - Protocol on the Authentic Quinquelingual Text of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago, 1944) Montreal, September 29, 1995

Six Language text [.pdf] - Protocol on the Authentic Six-Language Text of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago, 1944) Montreal, October 1, 1998

Convention de Chicago [.pdf] - Convention relative à l'aviation civile internationale

Accord au transit [.pdf] - Accord relatif au transit des services aériens internationaux

Accord au transport [.pdf] - Accord relatif au transport des services aériens internationaux

Texte trilingue [.pdf] - Protocole concernant le texte authentique trilingue de la Convention relative à l'aviation civile internationale

Clause finale [.pdf] - Protocole concernant un amendement de la Convention relative à l'aviation civile internationale

Article 83bis [.pdf] - Protocole concernant un amendement de la Convention relative à l'aviation civile internationale

Article 3bis [.pdf] - Protocole concernant un amendement de la Convention relative à l'aviation civile internationale

  "Aviation Security" instruments

Rome Convention 1933 - Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules relating to the Precautionary Attachment of Aircraft Rome, May 2, 1933

Tokyo Convention [.pdf] - Convention on Offences and Certain Other Acts Committed on Board Aircraft Tokyo, September 14, 1963

The Hague Convention [.pdf] - Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft The Hague, December 16, 1970

Montreal Convention (1971) [.pdf] - Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against Safety of Civil Aviation Montreal, September 23, 1971

Montreal Convention (1988) [.pdf] - Protocol for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts of Violence at Airports Serving International Civil Aviation Montreal, February 24, 1988

Montreal Convention (1991) [.pdf] - Convention on the Marking of Plastic Explosives for the Purpose of Detection Montreal, February 24, 1988

Tokyo Convention [.pdf] - Convention relative aux infractions et à certains autres actes survenant à bord des aéronefs

Convention de La Haye [.pdf] - Convention pour la répression de la capture illicite d'aéronefs

Convention de Montreal (1971) [.pdf] - Convention pour la répression d'actes illicites dirigés contre la sécurité de l'aviation civile

Convention de Montreal (1988) [.pdf] - Convention pour la répression des actes illicites de violence dans les aéroports servant à l'aviation civile internationale

Convention de Montreal (1991) [.pdf] - Convention sur le marquage des explosifs plastiques et en feuilles aux fins de détection

Joint financing instruments

Joint Financing Iceland [.pdf] - Ageement on the Joint Financing of Certain Air Navigation Services in Iceland (1956) (as amended by Montreal Protocol of 1982) Geneva, September 25, 1956

Financement collectif de l'Islande [.pdf]- Accord sur le financement collectif de certains services de navigation aérienne d'Islande (1956) (amendé par le Protocole de Montréal de 1982)

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Bryan Kohberger returns to court for Idaho murders hearing with ‘surprise witness’: Live updates

LIVE – Updated at 20:00

Bryan Kohberger returned to court this week for a hearing where his defense team questioned a Moscow Police Department detective over the handling of phone records, part of their motion to compel the prosecution to turn over additional evidence in the case.

They’re seeking material including dashcam footage related to the search warrant at Mr Kohberger’s Pennsylvania home and lab testing results.

The 29-year-old criminology PhD student is currently awaiting trial for the murders of University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, who were killed on November 13, 2022, at their off-campus house in Moscow, Idaho.

Police linked Mr Kohberger to the murders that rocked the town of Moscow through DNA evidence, cellphone data, an eyewitness account and his white Hyundai Elantra.

However, his attorneys have tried to argue that the DNA may have been planted and that the state has not handed all the evidence for the defense to review.

Earlier this year, his attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the murder charges against him, citing a biased grand jury, inadmissible evidence and prosecutorial misconduct. But Judge John Judge denied the motion.

A trial date has not been set.

Who is Bryan Kohberger?

Defense demands evidence in Idaho murders case

Bryan kohberger defense grills detective over newly revealed phone records in idaho murders case, ‘when did you learn about those documents’: kohberger defense grills detective, ex-roommate of idaho murders victims reveals last text.

Everything we know about the Idaho murders

Did Idaho police delete a key piece of evidence?

What are the cellphone records prosecutors and defense are fighting over.

Defense attorneys for Bryan Kohberger are hoping to get their hands on a trove of key evidence they believe could support his alibi that he was out stargazing on the night of the brutal Idaho murders and so could not have been the mass killer.

Among this evidence is mystery cellphone data that law enforcement officials have admitted to only discovering now – 18 months on from the murders.

Here’s what we know so far:

Bryan Kohberger: What are the cellphone records being fought over?

ICYMI: Bryan Kohberger’s father called police on him nine years before murders

Bryan Kohberger’s father called the police on his son nine years before his son allegedly murdered four University of Idaho students in a shocking knife attack that has horrified America.

Court records, newly obtained by ABC News, reveal that Mr Kohberger was arrested and charged with stealing one of his sister Melissa’s cellphones back in 2014.

The then-19-year-old had recently left rehab for drug addiction issues and had returned to the family home in Pennsylvania.

Then, on 8 February 2014, he stole the $400 iPhone and paid a friend $20 to pick him up and take him to a local mall where he then sold it for $200.

When confronted by his father Michael over the theft, Mr Kohberger chillingly warned him “not to do anything stupid”, according to the court records. His father reported the incident to the police.

Catch up on the story here:

Bryan Kohberger’s father called police on him nine years before Idaho murders

Bryan Kohberger faces death penalty for the murders

Bryan Kohberger is facing the death penalty if convicted of the November 2022 murders of four University of Idaho students.

He is accused of breaking into an off-campus student home on King Road, in Moscow, and stabbing the four students to death with a large, military-style knife.

Two other female roommates lived with the three women at the property and were home at the time of the massacre but survived.

One of the survivors – Dylan Mortensen – came face to face with the masked killer, dressed in head-to-toe black and with bushy eyebrows, as he left the home in the aftermath of the murders, according to the criminal affidavit.

For more than six weeks, the college town of Moscow was plunged into fear as the accused killer remained at large with no arrests made and no suspects named.

Then, on 30 December, law enforcement suddenly swooped on Mr Kohberger’s family home in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania and arrested him for the quadruple murders.

He was tied to the murders through his DNA found on a knife sheath left on the bed next to Mogen’s butchered body.

The motive remains unknown and it is still unclear what connection the WSU PhD student had to the University of Idaho students – if any – prior to the murders. The murder weapon – a fixed-blade knife – has never been found.

Here’s what the site of the Idaho murders looks like now

Before yesterday’s hearing, NewsNation’s Brian Entin visited the site of the Idaho murders on King Road in Moscow, Idaho.

The property was razed on 28 December 2023 during the school’s holiday break.

Demolition began before the sun came up and within two hours, the three-story house was gone.

It marked an emotional step for the victims’ families and a close-knit community that were devastated by the brutal slayings of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, who were stabbed to death there in November 2022.

What happened to the Idaho murders house?

An empty lot now replaces a Moscow murder house five months after demolition.

Some of America’s most notorious murders happened in private homes.

Many were demolished – some have become tourist attractions.

Andrea Cavallier reports:

Murder homes so horrific they were demolished

Goncalves family responds to Kohberger hearing

The family of victim Kaylee Goncalves expressed their frustrations with the ongoing court delays in response to Bryan Kohberger’s hearing yesterday.

They wrote on the Goncalves Family Facebook page:

“It seems as though we are not making any progress to set a trial date. Is this what justice looks like in America? What is going on? This is OBSURD!  Please pray for us.”

Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger appeared in a Latah County courtroom as part of his defense team’s efforts to compel prosecutors to reveal more of the evidence they plan to use in his upcoming trial.

The 29-year-old criminology PhD student is awaiting trial for the stabbing deaths of University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, who were killed on November 13, 2022, at their off-campus house in Moscow .

Mr Kohberger’s defense team has claimed he was driving around looking at stars at the time of the murders and argue prosecutors have not handed all the evidence over for the defense to review, filing multiple motions to compel since Mr Kohberger’s arrest in late 2022 .

As Mr Kohberger looked on in silence, his public defender Anne Taylor grilled Moscow Police Detective Lawrence Mowery about a series of records related to cell phone data police plan to use in the case.

Bryan Kohberger defense grills police over new phone records in Idaho murders case

ICYMI: Idaho supreme court denies Bryan Kohberger’s bid to toss indictment for Idaho murders

Earlier this year, the Idaho Supreme Court denied a request by Bryan Kohberger , the man charged with the 2022 slayings of four University of Idaho students, for his grand jury indictment to be thrown out.

Mr Kohberger’s attorneys argued, based on their interpretation of Idaho law, that grand jurors were inaccurately told that the standard for an indictment is that there is “probable cause” of the defendant’s guilt, instead of the higher threshold of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The request was first made on 8 February for the Idaho Supreme Court to appeal Latah County District Court Judge John Judge’s decision not to toss Mr Kohberger’s grand jury indictment in the quadruple murder case.

Catch up on the details here.

Idaho supreme court denies Bryan Kohberger loses bid to toss indictment

Will the Kohberger trial put people put people in danger?

Bryan Kohberger ’s defence attorneys have warned that people’s lives may be in danger during his trial for the University of Idaho murders.

Mr Kohberger, a 29-year-old PhD criminal justice student, is accused of killing four students in their off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022. His trial date has not yet been set.

His attorney Anne Taylor filed a motion with the prosecution on 4 April requesting that discovery requests be placed under seal because “the documents contain facts or statements that might threaten or endanger the life or safety of individuals”.

The motion warns that the full release of discovery “would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy”.

Andrea Cavallier reports.

Bryan Kohberger’s attorneys warn lives may be in danger in Idaho murders trial

What’s Bryan Kohberger’s alibi claim?

Bryan Kohberger , the man charged in the deaths of four University of Idaho students in late 2022, was out for a drive the night they were killed, his attorneys said in a court filing last month that lays out more details of the alibi defense he intends to use at his trial.

Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves were stabbed to death at a rental home near the university campus in Moscow , Idaho, early on Nov. 13, 2022.

Kohberger, who was then a criminal justice student at Washington State University in nearby Pullman, Washington, has been charged with four counts of murder. Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty if he is convicted.

More details below.

Man charged with 4 University of Idaho deaths was out for a drive that night, his attorneys say

ICYMI: Idaho murders victim’s family isn’t buying Bryan Kohberger’s alibi

The family of Kaylee Goncalves, one of the four murdered University of Idaho students, have responded to suspect Bryan Kohberger’s alibi statement, saying that they now “feel even more confident in the prosecution of the Defendant”.

Mr Kohberger was on an early morning drive at the time of the killings in November 2022, according to a legal filing from his defence offered late on Wednesday.

“Mr. Kohberger was out driving in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022; as he often did to hike and run and/or see the moon and stars,” the document reads .

More details in our full story.

Idaho murders victim’s family isn’t buying Bryan Kohberger’s alibi

Key moments in the Bryan Kohberger case so far

Bryan Kohberger scored a minor win last month in the University of Idaho murders when the judge ruled that his defence attorneys will be allowed to continue conducting phone surveys of potential jurors.

Mr Kohberger has been charged with the murders of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves after the four students were found stabbed to death in an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022.

A judge previously entered a not guilty plea for him, paving the way for the case to head to trial where prosecutors have said they plan to seek the death penalty if he’s convicted.

Graig Graziosi has the story.

Bryan Kohberger scores minor win in Idaho murders case

A roommate speaks out

A former roommate of the slain University of Idaho students broke her silence this month, revealing the moment she realized her friends were dead and the final text she sent to them.

Ashlin Couch told KXLY that she moved into the doomed off-campus house on King Road in Moscow, Idaho, in 2020, with her friends Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen.

She moved out in May 2022 and Xana Kernodle took over the lease.

Six months later, in the early hours of 13 November 2022, Goncalves, 21, Mogen, 21, Kernodle, 20, and Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed to death inside the student home.

Andrea Cavallier has the story.

The murder of four college students rocked the quiet town of Moscow, Idaho, and led to the arrest of prime suspect Bryan Kohberger .

Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin – all students at the University of Idaho – were ambushed in their rooms and stabbed to death with a military-style knife that has yet to be found. Police were called to the gruesome scene at the off-campus residence almost eight hours after the vicious attack.

For weeks, only scant details about the carnage were revealed as the community reeled from the tragedy and grappled with fears of a murderer on the loose. That changed with the December 2022 arrest of Washington State University student Mr Kohberger, whose apartment, office and family home were raided and searched for evidence.

Here are some of the key things you need to know about the case, compiled by Andrea Blanco , Rachel Sharp , and Sheila Flynn.

Defense asks about traffic cam footage

The hearing also concerned police efforts to look for evidence on Idaho transit cameras and windy.com, a weather site that temporary displays shots from state transit feeds. The detective said that while police consulted these feeds as potential sources of evidence, they didn’t retain anything of value in the case.

Thursday’s hearing ended without a ruling on the motion to compel, and further proceedings are scheduled for 30 May, which will feature testimony from Leah Larkin and Bicka Barlow, two DNA experts called by the defense.

Moscow Police Detective Lawrence Mowery faced tough questioning on Thursday about records suggesting he didn’t save a file as he was analyzing cell phone data related to Bryan Kohberger’s location during the 2022 murders.

The defense this could mean key pieces of evidence may have been deleted or made inaccessible, but the detective pushed back against this framing.

“I didn’t delete anything,” he said.

Rather, he said during his testimony, he briefly used a police system called CASTViz to make a data analysis of Mr Kohberger’s phone records to be presented to a grand jury in the case in 2023.

Even though he didn’t save his work on the analysis he eventually presented to the grand jury, he continued, all the underlying evidence records were still being retained, meaning the purported evidence agianst Mr Kohberger could be fed back into the program and re-analyzed at any time.

Bryan Kohberger ‘s defense team extensively questioned Moscow Police Detective Lawrence Mowery on Thursday as part of their effort to scrutinize cell phone evidence police believe ties the student to the location of the 2022 murders.

In one exchange, one of Mr Kohberger’s lawyers asked Detective Mowery about documentation related to the findings from two search warrants for the defendant’s cell phone information, one covering a 48-hour period and another for a longer sequence of time.

The detective revealed that he had come across the documentation about this information yesterday, as he prepared for today’s hearing.

The defense is hoping to make the case there’s additional evidence it should have access to, and paint prosecutors as being witholding of key information.

WATCH LIVE: Moscow officer testifies at Bryan Kohberger hearing

Moscow Police Det. Lawrence Mowery is on the stand at Bryan Kohberger’s pre-trial hearing.

The defense is attempting to get the prosecution to turn over more evidence related to DNA and cell phone tower data that they believe supports their clients alibi.

Hearing set to begin shortly

The hearing in Bryan Koberger’s case is set to begin shortly.

Kohberger’s defense will present witnesses to testify about the cell phone data they believe will corroborate with their client’s alibi.

Audio is expected to be available on Judge John Judge’s YouTube page.

It will begin at 2:30pm PT/ 5:30pm ET.

What to expect at Bryan Kohberger’s hearing today

Kohberger’s defense is asking the state to hand over evidence they believe will support their client’s alibi that he was driving around and stargazing on the night of the murders.

The evidence reportedly includes dashcam footage, video and audio recordings of a white sedan at the crime scene, and lab testing results – information police used to arrest Kohberger seven weeks after the murders.

Timeline of the Idaho murders case

On November 2022, four University of Idaho students were found stabbed to death at a rental house in Moscow, in a case that shocked the small college town and drew media attention from across the world.

For nearly seven weeks there appeared to be no suspect in the case. Then, on 30 December 2022, Bryan Kohberger – a PhD student in criminology at Washington State University (WSU) – was arrested and charged with their murders.

In August, Mr Kohberger waived his right to a speedy trial, postponing the proceedings indefinitely.

Here’s a timeline of the case so far:

Timeline of the Idaho college murders

WATCH: Former roommate of murdered University of Idaho students reveals last text

Bryan Kohberger became a household name across America when police swooped on his parents’ home in December and arrested him for the brutal murders of four University of Idaho students.

The former PhD criminology student at Washington State University is accused of stabbing to death Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin in an off-campus student rental home in Moscow, Idaho, on 13 November.

With the 29-year-old now facing the death penalty in the case, The Independent asks: Who really is Bryan Kohberger?

For weeks, only scant details about the carnage were revealed as the community reeled from the tragedy and grappled with fears of a murderer on the loose.

That changed with the December 2022 arrest of Washington State University student Mr Kohberger, whose apartment, office and family home were raided and searched for evidence.

While more information has become public through the release of search warrants and arrest records in recent months, a gag order in the case remains in place and most aspects of the probe and its findings are still a mystery.

Here’s everything we know so far:

Ashlin Couch, a former roommate of the slain University of Idaho students, revealed the moment she realized her friends were dead and the final text she sent to them.

She moved into the doomed off-campus house on King Road in Moscow, Idaho, in 2020, with her friends Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen. Six months after she moved out in 2022, her roommates were slaughtered.

“I remember, I think, getting a second alert or I had been driving home and I texted like our group of friends, and I just had said, ‘Has anyone heard from Maddie?’ And I remember, like my last text message to her was like, ‘Are you okay?’” she said.

“And I felt it like right then and there, I kind of just knew that something was wrong.”

Ex-roommate of Idaho murders victims breaks silence to reveal last text to friends

Bryan Kohberger’s attorney Anne Taylor says state prosecutors are withholding evidence the defense team should be privy to, according to several motions that have been filed.

The decision came after Kohberger’s defense team requested the new evidence relating to the probable cause affidavit used in his arrest, according to The Idaho Statesman.

This evidence includes cell phone tower data, a video of a vehicle seen near the 1122 King Road home and information relating to a driving test.

“The state knows full well what they have and what they’re withholding from us,” Ms Taylor said at a hearing earlier this month. “We don’t know what they’re going to show, but we know they exist.”

Bryan Kohberger returns to court today

The 29-year-old criminology PhD student is back in court today for a hearing where his defense team is expected to call a witness on their motion to compel the prosecution to turn over some evidence in the case.

Kohberger is currently awaiting trial for the murders of University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, who were killed on November 13, 2022, at their off-campus house in Moscow.

The hearing is set for 2:30pm PT/5:30pm ET.