NUS - Faculty of Law : Asia's Global Law School

VISITING SCHOLARS & RESEARCHERS

Visiting Scholars & Researchers in AY 2016-2017

Visiting Scholars in AY 2016-2017
		Jari Pirjola Finland October 2016 Dr Pirjola is a Senior Legal Adviser (Doctor of International Law) and works in the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman in Helsinki. At the moment he is on sabbatical leave from the University of Helsinki. Furthermore, Dr Pirjola is also a representative of Finland in the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). Dr Pirjola is currently working in two complementary research projects. One project deals with the use of human rights norms and language in different cultural and institutional contexts. This project is based on his dissertation "Dark and Bright Sides of Human Rights - towards pragmatic evaluation". The other project focuses on the legal as well as anthropological analysis of the European refugee and migration crisis. The title of this research project is "International protection and modern nomadism".

		Edna Ramirez-Robles Mexico October 2016 Prof. Dr. Edna Ramirez-Robles is a consultant on legal and policy issues in international trade and investment matters. She has participated globally in projects financed by governments and International Organizations such as The World Bank, UNCTAD, WTO, IADB, EU, OIC, IDB, UEMOA and EIF. She has worked within the Secretariats of UNCTAD (Trade Facilitation), WTO (Legal Affairs), and IADB (Integration and Trade). Currently, she is leading the Mexican phase of a research project on “Investment Law and Governance in Argentina, Czech Republic, India and Mexico” at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. She is also a Professor of International Law and Public Policy at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico, where she is Senior International Advisor. At NUS Edna is updating her forthcoming book on Flexibilities in International Trade Law.

		Jörn Axel Kämmerer Germany December 2016 to February 2017 Jörn Axel Kämmerer, born in 1965, has been a Professor (chair holder) at Bucerius Law School since 2000. He was a Guest Professor at Université Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) from 2005 to 2007 (part-time) and at Seoul National University, Republic of Korea, in 2007. He studied law at Tübingen University, Germany, and Université d’Aix-en-Provence/Marseille III, France. Appointed Doctor of law in 1993, he received his “venia legendi” (Habilitation) in Public Law, European Law and Public International Law in 2000 by Tübingen Law Faculty. His research focuses on market regulation, privatization as well as law and finance in both German public law and EU law. A Directors of the Institute on Company and Capital Markets Law (ICCML/IUKR) at Bucerius, he was appointed member of an advisory committee to the German Ministry of Finance on financial markets regulation in 2011. He is the author of a textbook on Constitutional Law and has made contributions to renowned legal commentaries, mainly on basic rights. With two colleagues he conducted an interdisciplinary his research project on the evolution of Public International Law (with financial assistance by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). In 2016 he was elected Secretary-General of the Societas Iuris Publici Europaei (SIPE). Jörn Axel Kämmerer teaches in German and English and has given lectures or lecture series at academic institutions of various countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa.

		Cornelis Jaap Wouter Baaij USA January 2017 to February 2017 Cornelis Baaij is a J.S.D. candidate at Yale Law School, where in 2015 he earned an LL.M. degree. Previously, he was Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam School of Law, teaching contract law and national and international civil procedure. He received his PhD degree cum laude for his work on legal harmonization in Europe’s multilingual environment, part of which he conducted as Fulbright Scholar at Columbia Law School. Cornelis has master degrees in both law and philosophy. Cornelis’ current research focusses on the significance of legal enforceability in international commercial arbitration, and the critical role that national courts therefore play in the development of transnational contract law. As visiting scholar at NUS Law, Cornelis specifically examines the potential impact of the Singapore International Court of Commerce on the advancement of transnational norms in cross-border commercial dispute resolution.

		Sabine Ulricke Gless Germany January 2017 Sabine Gless has been a Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Proceedings at the University of Basel (Switzerland) since 2005. From 1997 to 2005 she worked at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg/Br (Germany). Professor Gless earned a doctorate in law from the University of Bonn (Germany) and completed her habilitation at the University of Münster (Germany), examining principles for evidence transfer across different criminal justice systems. Her research and writing encompasses various fields of criminal law and criminal procedure law as well as international criminal law. In particular, she is interested in matters of judicial assistance (within the framework of European criminal law) and the evolution of general principles of cross border co-operation. Recently she has worked and published in the area of law and robotics with an emphasis on legal issues of using automated cars.

		Hitoshi Nasu Australia February 2017 to December 2017 Dr Hitoshi Nasu is an Associate Professor of Law at the Australian National University, with expertise in public international law, particularly in the fields of international security law and the law of armed conflict. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Political Science from Aoyama Gakuin University and a Master’s degree and a PhD in Law from the University of Sydney. He has written on a wide range of international law issues including peacekeeping, the protection of civilians, the responsibility to protect, human security, state secrets and national security, disaster relief and management, security institutions and international rule of law, and new technologies and the law of armed conflict, with over 60 publications. He is the author of International Law on Peacekeeping: A Study of Article 40 of the UN Charter (Martinus Nijhoff, 2009) and co-editor of Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region: Towards Institution Building (with Ben Saul, Routledge, 2011), Asia-Pacific Disaster Management: Comparative and Socio-legal Perspectives (with Simon Butt and Luke Nottage, Springer, 2013), New Technologies and the Law of Armed Conflict (with Rob McLaughlin, TMC Asser, 2014), and Legal Perspectives on Security Institutions (with Kim Rubenstein, Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is currently completing a co-authored monograph, ASEAN as a Security Institution: Law and Policy, with Rob McLaughlin, Donald R Rothwell and See Seng Tan. During his visit at NUS Law, his research will focus on the multidimensional relationship between the concept of security and international law, with a view to producing a sole-authored monograph.

		Anja Jetschke Germany March 2017 – April 2017 Professor Dr. Anja Jetschke is the Chair of International Relations at the University of Göttingen and currently the Vice-President of the German Political Science Association. She received her doctorate from the European University (Florence). From 2012-2015 she headed the research program on international governance at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies. She held research fellowships at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Ohio State University and the University of Berlin. Her Comparative Regional Organizations Project (CROP) currently develops the world’s largest treaty database on regional organizations with the aim of exploring the diffusion of institutional designs among regional organizations. While at NUS, Anja Jetschke will also work on the effects of refugee flows on regional human rights commitment in Southeast Asia. Her publications include many articles and chapters on comparative regionalism, ASEAN, and a prize-winning book, Human Rights and State Security: Indonesia and the Philippines (2011).

Visiting Researchers in AY 2016-2017
		Kwong Qi Jun Japan August 2016 Qi Jun is a Master’s Candidate in the Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University under the supervision of Professor Masabumi Suzuki. Her topic concerns the design of a unified ASEAN patent regime under the ASEAN Economic Community, in order to strengthen R&D activities and technology transfer within the region. Qi Jun earned her LL.B. from Nagoya University, serving as valedictorian of her class in 2015. She is now pursuing her studies under a research grant provided by the Ministry of Education of Japan (MEXT) and a scholarship provided by the Sato Yo International Foundation. A dedicated “mootie”, Qi Jun is actively involved in various international moots and served as the coach for the Nagoya University team in the 13th Willem C. Vis (East) moot. While at NUS, her research will focus on Singapore’s pioneering role in shaping the IP landscape for ASEAN, and examine the current IP harmonization efforts undertaken across ASEAN countries.

		Lemuel Didulo Lopez Australia September 2016 Lemuel D Lopez is a Ph.D. Law candidate at the University of Melbourne. His doctoral thesis explores, identifies, compares and explains the approaches of courts in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong when Choice-of-Forum clauses in international commercial contracts are challenged. His legal practice in the Philippines and Indonesia involve cross-border transactions, commercial dispute resolution, arbitration, M&A, transnational anti-graft and corruption, mining and energy. Lemuel also previously taught Private International Law and was a legal consultant on commercial aspects of agrarian reform. He was the Filipino Australian Students Council President, and a finalist in the 2015 Victoria International Education awards - International Student of the Year (Research). He was selected to sit for the oral exam as among the top 4 finalists for the highly competitive Diploma in Private International Law at the 2016 Summer Course of the Hague Academy of International Law. Lemuel completed his Master of Laws (with Merit) and Master of Diplomacy at the Australian National University, Bachelor of Laws at the University of the Philippines, and Bachelor of Arts (Cum Laude) at the Ateneo de Manila University. He is a member of the Philippine Bar, Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and Asian Society of International Law.

		Khushboo Shahdadpuri Singapore November 2016 – February 2017 Khushboo is an LL.B. (Hons) graduate from King’s College London and an LL.M. graduate from Columbia Law School. In her legal practice, Khushboo has acted as co-counsel in international arbitration proceedings under major institutional regimes (including ICC, SIAC, UNCITRAL, LCIA and LMAA) as well as in arbitration-related litigation in the Singapore High Court. Khushboo represented Columbia University at the LLM. International Commercial Arbitration Moot Competition in 2016 where her team was semi-finalist and won the best oralist title. She was also selected to work under the Immediate Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague. Khushboo’s areas of interest lie in the arena of international commercial and investment arbitration. She has published articles in leading journals such as the Singapore Academy of Law Journal and recently in the Asian International Arbitration Journal on the regulation of third-party funding in international arbitration. At NUS, she will continue to explore these topics including the duties of counsels in third-party funding and the evolving role of multi-tiered dispute resolution. Khushboo is a qualified lawyer in Singapore and is awaiting admission as a New York Attorney.

		Michael Johannes Böhme Germany January 2017 to February 2017 Michael is a Ph.D Law candidate at the University of Munich, and a research associate with one of the leading VAT law firms in Germany. Being sponsored by the scholarship of the Federal Republic of Germany, Michael spent time in the U.S. at the German Consulate General in Atlanta as well as a delegate of the European Law Students’ Association at UNCITRAL in New York. After passing the First State Exam in the State of Bavaria in 2015, he started his research project on a particular aspect of German VAT fraud law at the University of Munich, focusing on the so called prohibition of compensation ("Kompensationsverbot") in tax fraud cases. Michael's research at NUS will focus on European and International VAT fraud law. By implementing European and International law into his research, his results will be important, not only from a German perspective, but also from a transnational point of view.

		Morten Frank Denmark March 2017 Morten Frank is a PhD Fellow at the University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Law, Denmark, writing a dissertation on pathological arbitration agreements. A ‘pathological’ arbitration agreement is an agreement drafted in such a way that it generates disputes as to its own interpretation and may cause the arbitration agreement to be ineffective or inoperative altogether. The agreement is, in other words, defective because it does not automatically create the necessary legal basis for the arbitration process. The PhD project will address the issue of interpretation of pathological arbitration agreements in an international comparative perspective. Morten holds LL.M. degree from National University of Singapore (’12), New York University School of Law and the University of Copenhagen. He is a qualified lawyer in Denmark and New York State, respectively. Prior to the PhD Fellowship, Morten has practiced for several years at a major law firm in Copenhagen, specializing in arbitration, litigation and contracts.

		Jakob Horn Germany March 2017 – April 2017 Jakob Horn is a PhD candidate at the University of Jena, Germany. In 2015, Jakob graduated from the University of Jena with his First State Exam (Erste juristische Prüfung). During his studies, he spent a semester abroad at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA. Graduating top of his class, he won a scholarship issued by the German Federal State of Thuringia (Landesgraduiertenstipendium) to sponsor his PhD project. In addition, Jakob is a research and teaching assistant at the Chair for Civil Law, Civil Procedure, International Private Law, International Civil Procedure, European Private Law and Comparative Law (Chair holder: Prof. Dr. Giesela Rühl, LL.M. (Berkeley)). His work encompasses the support of the chair holder’s research, as well as the teaching of classes in German private law. Jakob’s PhD thesis focuses on the Emergency Arbitrator, a set of provisions introduced by several international arbitration institutions to provide parties to arbitration with the possibility to obtain preliminary relief by arbitral means before a tribunal is constituted. During his four-week research visit, Jakob wants to gain insight into Singapore arbitration law regarding the Emergency Arbitrator.

		Marija Jovanović United Kingdom March 2017 – April 2017 Marija received a doctorate from the Law Faculty, University of Oxford in July 2016, having previously obtained MPhil (2012) and Magister Juris (2011) degrees also from Oxford, and an LLB from the University of Kragujevac, Serbia. Her doctoral dissertation examines the role of human rights law in addressing human trafficking. She conducted research visits to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg (2012), the Humboldt University in Berlin (2014), and she interned at the ICTY in the Hague. Marija taught Human Rights Law, Criminal Law, and International Law at the University of Oxford and in Serbia. She has been engaged as an expert consultant for human rights and rule of law reforms at the AIRE Centre (London), the Singapore Institute of Foreign Affairs, the Canada-Serbia Judicial Reform Programme (Belgrade), and the National Legislative Development Project (Hanoi). At NUS, she will carry out a research on the anti-trafficking action in ASEAN.

		Jiangtian Xu United Kingdom April 2017 - May 2017 Jiangtian Xu is a PhD Candidate at University of East Anglia. He is one of the four 2017 UACES Scholars. From April to May 2017, he will be researching on EU-ASEAN Civil Aviation Relations under the supervisor of Professor Alan Tan and will also conduct some related interviews in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. His stay at NUS is fully financed by the UACES Scholarship granted by University Association of Contemporary European Studies headquartered in London. Jiangtian read Economics at University College Dublin. He holds a Master of Business Administration from University of Macau and a Master of Public Policy from Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management in South Korea. Apart from being UACES Scholar, Jiangtian received a Global Ambassador Fellowship from Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management. He has also been awarded a United Nations University Scholarship, two DAAD Fellowships from Germany and Yale University’s European Horizons Grant.

		Relja Radovic Luxembourg May 2017 – June 2017 Relja is a doctoral candidate at the University of Luxembourg in public international law under the supervision of Professor Matthew Happold. His research project concentrates on the relationship between general public international law and investment arbitration, in regard to the consensual nature of international adjudication and arbitration and relating jurisdictional issues. In particular, his research examines to what extent investment arbitration has developed special jurisdictional rules, differentiating from those of general public international law, and to what extent such changes affect the consensualism of investment arbitration. Relja holds an LLB and an LLM from the University of Novi Sad (Serbia), as well as an LLM (Adv) in public international law from Leiden University (the Netherlands). Relja has worked on cases before the International Court of Justice, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, as well as in the field of commercial arbitration.

		Seemantani Sharma Malaysia June 2017 – July 2017 Seemantani Sharma is an international intellectual property, media and regulatory lawyer at the Asia – Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), the world's largest broadcasting union. At the ABU, she represents 270 broadcasters from 69 countries of the Asia – Pacific region at the WIPO SCCR meetings on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations. Her writings have been published in prominent journals such as the Journal of Intellectual Property & Practice (OUP), the Economic & Political Weekly and online web journals such as the Wire, the Economist and the IP Slate. Her primary research areas are international intellectual property and copyright law. She holds an LL.M. in Intellectual Property from the George Washington University Law School while her Bachelor of Laws is from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University. At NUS, her research will focus on examining the myopic outlook of Article 14.3 of TRIPS vis-à-vis the rights of broadcasting organizations.

National University of Singapore

NUS Faculty of Law

VISITING SCHOLARS & RESEARCHERS