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Human Rights Research Group Members

Bertil Emrah Oder

Co-Chair

Bertil Emrah Oder is the Dean and Professor of Constitutional Law at Koç University Law School, received her PhD in both public and private law from University of Cologne (Germany). Dr. Oder’s research focuses on comparative constitutional law, European Union law and international human rights law. She is a full member of the Science Academy and has national and international awards for her scholarly achievements. She has been also selected as Henry Morris Lecturer of International and Comparative Law in 2012 by Chicago-Kent College of Law. She has served as international consultant of UN Women and Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and published four books, dozens of articles, editorials and book chapters on various subjects in public law with focus on human rights and judicial review. Fluent in English, German and Turkish, Dr. Oder holds also LLB and MA/LLM degrees from the University of Istanbul and Marmara University (Turkey).

Dr. Upasana Mahanta

Associate Professor and Executive Director

Dr. Upasana Mahanta is an Associate Professor and Executive Director, Centre for Women, Law & Social Change, Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU).

Atagün Mert Kejanlıoğlu

Atagün Mert Kejanlıoğlu is currently a doctoral student at McGill University Faculty of Law. His dissertation is focused on populist challenges to constitutionalism and responses that constitutional theory can develop against these challenges.

Alejandro Rodiles Bretón

Profesor de tiempo completo

Adam Shinar

Dr. Adam Shinar is an assistant professor at the Radzyner Law School in IDC Herzliya. He has an S.J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he also served as the Clark Byse Fellow. He also holds an LL.B. from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School. He clerked for the President of the Israeli Supreme Court, Aharon Barak, and worked as an attorney for several human rights NGOs in Israel and India. He specializes in constitutional law and theory, administrative law, and labor law.

Tracy Gutuza

Associate Professor in the Department of Commercial Law

After obtaining her LLB in 1995, Tracy completed her articles and was admitted as an attorney in 1997. Thereafter she worked as a legal advisor and, in 2003 she joined the law faculty as a lecturer. After a short absence from the law faculty and employment at the South African Revenue Service, she rejoined the faculty in March 2015. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Commercial Law and is involved in the teaching of both undergraduate and postgraduate law students, in the areas of tax and finance law. Her research interests are in the areas of business law, tax law, finance law, international tax law and legal education. Her PHD thesis focused on the methods used to relieve international double taxation in South African domestic legislation and tax treaties entered into by South Africa. See more.

Anton Kok

Prof Anton Kok holds the degrees BCom (Law) LLB LLM LLD (Pret). After completing his articles of clerkship at Deneys Reitz Inc (now Norton Rose Fulbright), Sandton, Anton was appointed senior lecturer to the Department of Legal History, Comparative Law and Legal Philosophy (now the Department of Jurisprudence) in 1999. He completed his doctorate in March 2008, entitled “A socio-legal analysis of the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 4 of 2000”. He was promoted to associate professor in 2010. He was appointed as the Programme Coordinator for the LLB for 2008 and 2009 and as Deputy Dean of the Faculty in 2010 and as acting dean from January to October 2011. He was reappointed for a second term as Deputy Dean in 2014. At undergraduate level, Anton has taught Legal Skills, Critical Race and Gender, Introduction to Law, Law and Literature and Human Rights. He is the coordinator for Essay and Seminar 400. At postgraduate level he has taught on Discrimination Law in the LLM (Human Rights and Constitutional Practice), LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa) and the LLM/MPhil (Multi-disciplinary human rights).His main areas of interest are equality legislation, human rights and legal education.

Victor Torre de Silva

Professor of Law at IE Law School

Professor of Law at IE Law School and Legal Adviser in the Council of State (Spain) since 1991, and having served as Undersecretary of Defense for the Spanish government for four years, Víctor Torre de Silva is an expert in administrative law, and is also interested in contracts and property law. He has also served as director in the board of several companies, including the Spanish railways company, the Spanish ports authority and “Construcciones Aeronáuticas, S.A.” (today part of EADS), and has been chief of staff of the Speaker of Spanish Parliament (Congreso de los Diputados). He received the Isabel la Católica Great Cross by royal decree in May 2004. In the course of his career he has had numerous articles and research works published in specialised journals, including Revista de Administración Pública (Spanish public sector journal) and Revista Española de Derecho Administrativo (Spanish administrative law journal). Professor Torre de Silva’s research projects include a thesis undertaken at Harvard on regulatory agencies.

Lior Zemer

Visiting Associate Professor at Boston University School of Law

Lior Zemer joined the Radzyner School of Law in 2006. Before his PhD studies and after his LL.B Lior completed two Masters’ degrees. A Master degree at Oxford University (with distinction) and LL.M (magna cum laude) from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Dr. Zemer is a Visiting Associate Professor at Boston University School of Law. He previously taught at the faculties of law in Leicester and Birmingham, UK, and Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto. Prior to joining legal academia he served as the assistant lawyer to Judge J.D. Cooke at the European Court of First Instance and Judge S. von Bahr at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Dr. Zemer’s research interests include Intellectual property law and policy, jurisprudence, international and European law.

Nadezhda (Nadya) Purtova

Assistant Professor at Tilburg Institute for Law

Nadezhda (Nadya) Purtova (LLM, Central European University; MSc, Leiden University; PhD cum laude, Tilburg University) is Assistant Professor at Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society. Her research interests include comparative data protection and information privacy law and property law, as well as economics of data protection law. Her doctoral dissertation ‘Property rights in personal data: a European perspective’ (Tilburg Best Doctoral Dissertation Award) is published by Kluwer Law International. In the past years, Nadya was also involved in research on privacy and safety aspects of eHealth, privacy of health data, and economic analysis of data protection law.

Sudarshan Ramaswamy

Dean, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy

Dean, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, Sudarshan comes with a distinguished career in the three domains of research, development programme formulation and implementation, and governance. A nationally successful debater at the college level, Sudarshan was a Rhodes Scholar at the Balliol College, University of Oxford, where he obtained his M.Phil degree. He was Research Fellow at the St. John’s College, University of Cambridge for many years where he taught and carried out research on issues relating to law and public policy. Sudarshan holds a Masters degree from the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi where he held a UGC scholarship for Centre for Advanced Studies in Economics. Sudarshan has an impressive track record of publications comprising books, articles, and UN policy reports. He has a dozen years of experience in inter-disciplinary research and teaching in development economics, human development, law, state and poverty at the Universities of Delhi (1972-74), Oxford (1974-77), Cambridge (1977-82), and East Anglia (1982-83). He has another 28 years of experience in the United Nations Development Programme and the Ford Foundation related to public policy.

Matej Accetto

Gulbenkian Professor of Law at Católica Global School of Law

Matej Accetto is Gulbenkian Professor of Law at Católica Global School of Law/UCP in Lisbon. He studied law at the University of Ljubljana, taking his LL.B. in 2000; he then received an LL.M. from Harvard Law School in 2001 and a Doctorate in Law from the University of Ljubljana in 2006, where he has also previously served as Associate Professor of European Law. His other experiences include having spent time as a stagiaire at the Court of Justice of the European Union, a Fellow of the Lord Slynn of Hadley European Law Foundation (2003–04), the Monica Partridge Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge, Fitzwilliam College (2006), a Japan Foundation Fellow at Waseda University (2011) and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Law (2012). He has offered visiting courses at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing (China), ISES Foundation in Kőszeg (Hungary), Irkutsk State University (Russia) and Católica, as well as visiting lectures at various universities around the world. His primary area of expertise is EU law, with particular interest in issues involving judicial review, the relationship between EU and national legal orders and nationality law.

Yiğit Sayın

Assistant Professor at Koç University Law School

Yiğit Sayın (LLB Istanbul University) (LLM University of Warwick) (Phd Istanbul University) had his bachelor degree on law from Istanbul University School of Law in 1998 and his LLM degree on International Economic Law from University of Warwick in 2001. After practicing law as an attorney and a legal consultant for four years, he started his phd on private law at Istanbul University School of Law in 2003. In 2004 he joined Istanbul University School of Law as a research assistant within the department of Roman Law Studies. In 2009, he received his Phd on private law and moved to work in Koç University College of Law as an assistant professor. He had taught a variety of courses (Roman Law, Legal Theory, Legal History, Advocacy Law, Legal Aspects of International Transactions, International Business Law) and has also developed a course of Ethical Reasoning for students of all disciplines. He has published works on International Financial Institutions, Law of Obligations, Legal History and Roman law.

Amnon Lehavi

Dean of Radzyner Law School

Amnon Lehavi (Yale, J.S.D) is the Atara Kaufman Professor of Real Estate and Dean of Radzyner Law School, and Academic Director, Gazit-Globe Real Estate Institute, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya. Prof. Lehavi is a leading authority on property, real estate, land use controls, international economic law, and law and globalization. He is the author of The Construction of Property: Norms, Institutions, Challenges (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and the editor of Gated Communities (Nevo Press, 2010). Prof. Lehavi has published extensively in top journals, including the Columbia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Texas Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Minnesota Law Review, Law and Social Inquiry, and Yale Journal of International Law. He has won numerous prizes, including the 2007 Tzeltner Award for an outstanding young scholar and the 2008, 2010, and 2014 IDC Award for excellence in scholarship. Prof. Lehavi served as the Chairperson of the Israeli Association of Private Law (2012-2013) and the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley (2013-14).

Claudio Lucena

Professor at Paraíba State University

Claudio Lucena is a Professor and former Dean of the Law Faculty at Paraíba State University (UEPB) in Brazil.

Francisca María Pou Giménez

Academic Division of Economics, Law and Social Sciences

Murat Önok

Assistant Professor at Koç University Law School

Dr. Önok’s fields of research are criminal law, human rights law and international criminal law. He has also taught public international law and criminology.

Eli Bukspan

Senior lecturer in the Radzyner Law School

His teaching and research focus on the areas of contract and corporate law as well as corporate social responsibility, risk management, compliance and ethics.