Global Fellows

2022-2023 Current Global Fellows

Global Fellow Eirik Bjorge

Eirik Bjorge
Senior Global Research Fellow 
Norway
eb4378@nyu.edu

Eirik Bjorge is a Professor of Law at Bristol University Law School in the United Kingdom. He has written mainly about public international law, human rights law, public law, and the intersections between these fields. At present his research is focused on sanctions in international law and on “general principles of law”. He has previously taught at Sciences Po Law School, Paris, and the University of Oxford and in 2013–2016 he was a Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. In 2020 he was a visiting professor at La Sapienza University Rome. Eirik is an Academic Fellow of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.

He is the author of The Evolutionary Interpretation of Treaties (OUP 2014), which was awarded the King of Norway’s Gold Medal, and Domestic Application of the ECHR: Courts as Faithful Trustees (OUP 2015) and a co-editor (with Cameron Miles) of Landmark Cases in Public International Law (Hart 2017, reissue 2020) and (with Mads Andenas QC) of Farewell to Fragmentation: Reassertion and Convergence in International Law (CUP 2015). He is a co-author (with Sir Frank Berman KCMG QC) of the chapters on the law of treaties in the forthcoming Oppenheim’s International Law (10th edn, OUP) and Satow’s Diplomatic Practice (8th edn, OUP). His articles have appeared in e.g. the American Journal of International Law, the British Yearbook of International Law, the Law Quarterly Review, the Cambridge Law Journal, and ICON. He has sat as an arbitrator (ICC) and acts as counsel in international proceedings (before e.g. the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, and ICSID and UNCITRAL arbitration tribunals ).

Center Affiliation: Institute for International Law and Justice
Research Project: Imposition of unilateral sanctions and the duty not to deprive a people of its own means of subsistence

 

Post-Doctoral Global Fellow Elena De Nictolis

Elena De Nictolis
Post-Doctoral Global Fellow
Italy
ed2527@nyu.edu

Elena De Nictolis research focuses on how to understand and assess the role of cities in tackling polycentric, complex problems through urban public policies and collective action mechanisms. She also has interest in the governance of urban resources, services, and infrastructures as commons within the context of the economic crisis and urban commons policy innovations. Her research on this focused on Italian cities and cities in Europe.

Elena was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University (2021-2022); visiting researcher and teaching fellow at ICD Herlzliya (Harry Radzyner Law School 2022); postdoc at Luiss (Department of Political Science) (2019-2021) where she was lecturer (adjunct) at the Department of Law and Political Science (climate justice; urban law and policy; governance of innovation and sustainability). Elena is currently a member of the NYC Mayor Panel on Climate Change (equity workgroup).

Elena holds a BA and MA (Politics) and a PhD (Political Theory, Political Science and Political History) from Luiss (Rome).

At NYU, Elena will be affiliated with the Guarini Center for Environmental, Energy, and Land Use Law. She will further pursue research on urban law and policy and the role of cities in tackling crises of a global nature through an institutional approach.

Center Affiliation: Guarini Center on Environmental, Energy, and Land Use Law
Research Projects: The urban challenge to contemporary law and policy categories? Cities as legal experimental grounds to tackle climate disruptions.

 

Post-Doctoral Global Fellow Neli Frost

Neli Frost
Post-Doctoral Global Fellow
Israel
nf2286@nyu.edu

Neli Frost is a Post-Doctoral Global Fellow affiliated with the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Her project at NYU will focus on the legal and normative challenges posed by the increasing harnessing of artificial intelligence capabilities in global governance. Her research and teaching interests include international law and international human rights law, with a thematic focus on international legal theory and democratic jurisprudence in the context of the intersections between law and technology.

Neli received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in April 2022, and holds an LLM, an LLB and a BA in East Asian Studies from Tel-Aviv University. Her research to date has centered on the regulatory roles performed by transnational corporations in the field of human rights (EJIL 2021) and on the hazards that Information and Communication Technology companies pose to the infrastructures of democratic governance. During her time at Cambridge Neli supervised International Law for undergraduates, taught LLM workshops on international human rights and the law of global governance, and was an Associate Editor of the British Yearbook of International Law.

Center Affiliation: Center for Human Rights and Global Justice
Research Project: The ‘political voice’ in the age of the algorithm: the novel democratic challenges of AI-based global governance

 

Global Fellow Arthur Guerra Filho

Arthur Guerra Filho (Spring)
Post-Doctoral Global Fellow
Brazil
agf6295@nyu.edu

Arthur Guerra Filho is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Sao Paulo (USP), where he is also a member of the Constitution, Politics and Institutions (CoPI) research group. His postdoc research is funded by a FAPESP fellowship. Arthur’s research and teaching interests include constitutional law, electoral law, antitrust law, and media law. He has research expertise on the legal regulation of the democratic process, particularly issues on political finance (campaign finance and party funding), lobbying and political corruption. He has also written on the relationship between antimonopoly law and democracy.

Arthur holds a PhD in Law from King’s College London (funded by a CAPES/ Ministry of Education of Brazil scholarship), a Master of Laws (LLM) from the University of California at Berkeley, and a law degree (LLB) from the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo. His work has been published in leading international journals, such as the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement (Oxford University Press) and King’s Law Journal (Routledge). Before his PhD, Arthur practiced law in Brazil at Oliveira Marques Advogados Associados, where he first joined as an associate lawyer and later became a partner.

His current postdoc research at the University of Sao Paulo looks at how the Brazilian Judiciary has decided cases of Operation Car Wash (arguably the largest anti-corruption operation in history) and its implications for the Brazilian constitutional democracy. At NYU Law, Arthur will examine the experience of the United States in dealing with similar cases about corruption in campaign finance and gifts given to politicians.

Research Project: Courts, Political Finance Corruption and the Contours of Democracy: The Experiences of Brazil and the US

 

Global Research Fellow Rocio Lorca

Rocío Lorca
Global Research Fellow
Chile
rl1365@nyu.edu

Rocío Lorca is assistant professor of criminal law in the School of Law of the University of Chile. Besides teaching Criminal Law, Professor Lorca teaches seminars on Punishment and Poverty, Philosophy of Punishment, and Gender and Punishment. Her research focuses on the philosophy of punishment, and particularly on the relationship between criminal justice and other spheres of justice such as economic and political justice. Currently she has been exploring abolitionist discourses and the conceptual and philosophical reasons that have been raised against it. Her work has been published in numerous journals and books in Spanish and has published in English in journals such as Criminal Law and PhilosophyThe Leiden Journal of International LawLaw Culture and the Humanities, and in The Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence.

As a Hauser Global Fellow she will spend the academic year working on a research project about the concept of impunity and its impact on the punitive imagination of critical social movements such as the feminist and the human rights movements. She will be associated with the Center for Law and Philosophy.

She holds a law degree from University of Chile (´07), an LLM in Legal Theory from NYU (´10) and a JSD also from NYU (´15).  She received a Fulbright Scholarship (’09) for her study in the US, and in 2018 she was a Fellow in the Transnational Program for Criminal Justice at UCLA’s School of Law.

Center Affiliation: Center for Law and Philosophy
Research Project: The punitive imagination in the fight against impunity

 

Global Fellow Fernando Bordin

Fernando Lusa Bordin (Fall)
Global Research Fellow
Brazil
flb234@nyu.edu

Fernando Lusa Bordin is an Assistant Professor in International Law at the University of Cambridge, where he also serves as John Thornely Fellow in Law at Sidney Sussex College and a Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. His research focuses on topics of public international law, including international legal theory, law-making, the law of international organizations, international dispute settlement, the law on the use of force and international investment law. His monograph, The Analogy between States and International Organizations, was published by Cambridge University Press and received the 2020 Certificate of Merit in a Specialized Area of International Law from the American Society of International Law.

Prior to taking his post in Cambridge, Fernando received an LLB (with honours) from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), an LLM from NYU School of Law (where he was a Grotius Scholar), the Diploma of Public International Law from the Hague Academy of International Law and a PhD from the University in Cambridge (for which he received the Yorke Prize). He served as Assistant to Professor Giorgio Gaja at the International Law Commission in the summers of 2009 and 2011, and as Judicial Fellow (law clerk) to Judge Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade at the International Court of Justice between 2009 and 2010. He also worked as Research Associate to Prof James Crawford in 2014, and served as Junior Counsel for Mauritius in the Chagos Marine Protected Area Arbitration (Mauritius v UK).

Between 2016 and 2018, Fernando served as Assistant to the ICSID Tribunal constituted to hear the case of Veolia Propreté v. Arab Republic of Egypt (ARB/12/15).

Center Affiliation: Institute for International Law and Justice
Research Project: International Organizations as Law-Maker

 

Post-Doctoral Global Fellow Sebastian Mantilla Blanco

Sebastián Mantilla Blanco (Spring)
Post-Doctoral Global Fellow
Germany
sm11115@nyu.edu

Sebastián is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Public Law of the University of Bonn (Germany). His current research focuses on the effects of treaty termination over non-State beneficiaries of international treaties. At NYU, Sebastián will analyze the protection of foreign investors in the event of unilateral or mutual termination of investment agreements.

Sebastián holds a Doctorate in Law (Dr. Iur.) from the University of Bonn (summa cum laude / dissertation award from the Konrad-Redeker Foundation); an LLM from the University of Bonn (summa cum laude); and a law degree (LLB equivalent) from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá (Colombia).

Sebastián has published widely on different subjects of international law, including investment law, trade law, and international legal history. His English language publications include the books Full Protection and Security in International Investment Law (Springer 2019) and National Security Exceptions in International Trade and Investment Agreements (Springer 2020, coauthored with A. Pehl). In addition to his academic activities, Sebastián has gained experience in international arbitration as an independent Counsel of Zuleta Abogados (Colombia). He has also been a Visiting Professor at Universidad de La Sabana (Colombia).

Center Affiliation: Institute for International Law and Justice
Research Project: Termination of Investment Treaties and Third-Party Rights

 

Post-Doctoral Global Fellow Weimen Shen

Weimin Shen
Post-Doctoral Global Fellow
China
ws2508@nyu.edu

Weimin Shen is a Post-Doctoral Fellow affiliated with the Center for Law, Economics, and Organization. Her research focuses on antitrust and competition policy. She is particularly interested in how domestic and international competition policy instruments, such as antitrust or competition laws, interact with international trade.

Weimin received her JSD and LLM from Washington University School of Law, EdM from the University of Massachusetts, and LLB from Fudan University. She earned the 2022 Antitrust Writing Award for Best Student Article in the Student Category for “Assessing the Strategic Situation Underlying International Antitrust Cooperation.” Her work in English has appeared in or is forthcoming in the Journal of Transnational Law & Policy and the Emory International Law Review.

At NYU Law, Weimin will examine critical roadblocks in the way of certain significant and warranted international antitrust cooperation.

Center Affiliation: Center for Law, Economics, and Organization
Research Project: (1) Market Power and Inequality: A Case Study of International Antitrust Regulation/(2) International Antitrust Negotiations and Developing Countries’ Preferences

 

Post-Doctoral Global Fellow Ewan Smith

Ewan Smith (Spring)
Post-Doctoral Global Fellow
United Kingdom
ems10003@nyu.edu

Dr Ewan Smith is a Fixed Term Fellow of Christ Church, Oxford and an Early Career Fellow at Oxford University's Bonavero Institute of Human Rights.

Ewan read law at Oxford, the University of Paris and Harvard Law School. He has previously taught at the University of London and Tsinghua University in China and has been a Visiting Researcher at Peking University and the National University of Singapore. He is admitted to practice in New York, where he worked for Debevoise and Plimpton LLP. Before returning to Oxford, Ewan spent ten years working as a diplomat for the UK Foreign Office. He advises governments and other organisations.

Ewan’s work looks at how rules govern powerful institutions, with a focus on foreign relations law and comparative public law. His recent work on China looks at the how the Communist Party conceives of familiar ideas like the rule of law and the separation of powers.  His recent work on the UK argues that we should enable Parliament, judges and civil servants to hold our foreign policy to account, and suggests how we might do that. At NYU, he will be working on a monograph about the relationship between written and unwritten constitutions.

Center Affiliation: US-Asia Law Institute
Research Project: Written Constitutions?

 

Global Fellow Adam Strobeyko

Adam Strobeyko (Spring)
Post-Doctoral Global Fellow
Poland
as17512@nyu.edu

Adam Strobeyko is a researcher at the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Adam has done his PhD in International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute; he has also obtained a MA degree from Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po, and an LLB in European Law from Maastricht University.

Having written his doctoral dissertation on the history of sovereignty, Adam is particularly interested in the processes of digitalization of the welfare state and in the outsourcing of public functions of the state to private entities. His experience in global health law led Adam to think about the increasing use of biometric technologies, the storage and transfer of health data and about the forays of tech companies into digital health.

At NYU, Adam will conduct a research project seeking to offer an infrastructural account of ‘smart walls’ programs in the US and in the EU. In the course of his project, Adam will study the contracting between public and private entities for the purpose of border surveillance. He will explore the role of infrastructures provided by private companies, with a particular focus on biometric and unmanned devices, for the purpose of monitoring of the borders of the sovereign state.

Center Affiliation: Guarini Global Law & Tech
Research Project: The Surveillance Assemblage: An Infrastructural Account of ‘Smart Walls’ in the US and EU

 

Global Fellow Oren Tamir

Oren Tamir
Post-Doctoral Global Fellow
USA and Israel
ot2083@nyu.edu

Oren is a research fellow at Harvard Law, where he is working with several offices there to democratize and diversify legal knowledge. His research interests are primarily in public law, both U.S. and comparative.

Oren received his SJD and LLM from Harvard Law School and LLB (magna cum laude) from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Before starting his graduate studies, he clerked for Justice (now Chief Justice) Esther Hayut of the Israeli Supreme Court and worked for three years as an assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel and Legislative Affairs in Israel’s Ministry of Justice. Oren’s work has been published or is forthcoming in, among other venues, the Maryland Law Review, the Chicago Journal of International Law, and the Berkeley Journal of International Law, and he is also in the process of completing on a U.S. constitutional law case book, co-authored with Professor Lawrence Lessig, which will be out with MIT Press and is intended to also be the first of its kind to be available in electronic form (in cooperation with Harvard Law School’s Innovation Lab).

While at NYU Law, Oren will work on several projects. He will be finalizing his book manuscript that aims to offer a new theory of constitutional review, both for the U.S. and comparatively. He will also be completing a project that attempts to re-imagine the field of administrative law and to suggest how we should build administrative states around the world in a way that would put them on a stronger, much more attractive, footing (among other things as a response to various attempts around the world to bring forth their “deconstruction” and to attack knowledge and expertise). Finally, Oren will work on a project that criticizes the literature on “abusive constitutionalism” or “democratic decline”—suggesting that it has complicated “dark sides” that are counterproductive to this literature’s aim of better safeguarding democracies.

Center Affiliation: Center for Human Rights and Global Justice 
Research Project: Abusive "Abusive Constitutionalism"

 

Global Fellow Maximilien Zahnd

Maximilien Zahnd (Fall)
Post-Doctoral Global Fellow
France
mz3591@nyu.edu

Maximilien (Max) Zahnd is a Post-Doctoral Global Fellow affiliated with the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law. His research strives to unpack tax law’s legal, socio-cultural, spatial, political, and ethnohistorical dimensions. Max holds a JSD from Berkeley Law, where he was a 2019-2020 BELS Fellow. At Berkeley Law, his work studied (1) how the Territory of Alaska used tax law to advance settler colonialism and (2) how Alaska Natives used tribal taxation to fight back. Part of this research is forthcoming in Law & Social Inquiry. Max is also about to submit his PhD thesis in Polar Studies/Geography (University of Cambridge) for examination. The thesis chronicles the socio-legal history of the Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government.

Before coming to NYU Law, Max was a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford. Prior to this, he was a 2020-2021 Fellow-in-Residence at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, and a Doctoral Visiting Fellow at Sciences Po Law School.

While at NYU Law, Max will refine and broaden his PhD thesis into a book manuscript. He will also work on articles that further interrogate tax law’s entanglement with Indigenous sovereignty and settler colonialism.

Center Affiliation: Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law
Research Project: Indigenous Sovereignty, Tax Law, and Settler Colonialism in Alaska