ESNLT Members & Expertise

Tobacco control is a niche area in legal scholarship and innovative knowledge exchange depends on cross-fertilization and comparison. The ESNLT therefore manages an inclusive approach and is thus by outset open to any legal scholar holding a relevant expertise to the network’s core focus.

Prof. Pia Acconci (Ph.D. in International Economic Law at the Università of Bergamo, Università of Turin and Università Commerciale L. Bocconi, Milan, 1997) has been a researcher and a professor of European Union Law and International Law for more than fifteen years. She has been an associate professor of European Union Law and International Investment Law (held in English since the academic year 2014/2015) at Facoltà di Giurisprudenza (Law Faculty), Università degli studi di Teramo (permanent appointment since 2002). On 24 January 2014 she was awarded the Italian national scientific qualification (abilitazione scientifica nazionale) as full professor of international and EU law (validity: 6 years). She has been a member of the Italian Society of International Law (since 1997), a member of the Italian Branch of the International Law Association (since 2004) and a member of the European Society of International Law (since 2016). Since June 2016, she has been a co-coordinator and member of the Interest Group of ‘Società italiana di diritto internazionale’ (SIDI) on ‘Diritto internazionale e dell’Unione europea in materia di salute’ (‘International and EU Law on Health’). Since October 2014, she has been the co-ordinator and member of the Working Group of the Italian Branch of the International Law Association (ILA) on ‘Rural Sustainability and Food Security’. Since 2015 she is also a member of the Committee on ‘Global Health Law’ of the International Law Association (ILA). In addition she supervised research projects funded by the Italian Ministry of Education and has been an editor for various international and national yearbooks, journals and book series. Previously, he was awarded the special prize eccellenza nella ricerca (“Excellency in Research”) at the Università Commerciale L. Bocconi, Milan (2002) and obtained an Italian National Research Council (CNR) Fellowship (1998-1999). Professor Acconci authored many articles and two books.

ESNLT relevant expertise : International and EU Health Law, Human Rights, Tobacco Control, Food Safety and Security, Sustainable Development, International Investment Law

Dr. Raouf Alebshehy is a public health consultant with a background in medicine and healthcare reform. He currently works as monitoring coordinator in Tobacco Tactics – part of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath and a partner in the global tobacco industry watchdog STOP. He is interested in maximizing the impact of tobacco control policies through his work in coordinating monitoring tobacco industry interferences. Raouf worked in international public health policy, including with the World Health Organization, and the Secretariat of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. He was the Eastern Mediterranean Region’s coordinator for the WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic and was the technical officer for reporting and knowledge management for the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products. He also has field experience as primary healthcare physician and has coordinated health projects with public sector, NGOs, and UN agencies.

Raouf holds a Master of Public Health; Postgraduate Diploma in Total Quality Management for Healthcare Reform; Postgraduate Certificate in Nutrition; Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery; and enrolled in part-time Postgraduate Certificate Degree in Health Research Ethics; and PhD in Public Health.

ESNLT relevant expertise: Tobacco control, public health, Middle East tobacco control regulations, WHO FCTC

Prof. Alberto Alemanno is an academic, public interest lawyer, health and civic advocate. He is currently Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law at HEC Paris, Global Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and scholar at the O’Neill Institute of National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, where he has taught in the past. Alberto leads several public interest ventures. The EU Public Interest Clinic he established in Paris and New York enables every year dozens of students to provide pro bono advice to non-profit organisations active in EU policymaking around public health, open government and transparency across Europe, such as Transparency International, Wikimedia and Access Info Europe. To scale the impact of his clinic, Alberto runs The Good Lobby, the first advocacy skill-sharing community aimed at connecting people with expertise with civil society organizations who need them in pursuit of the public interest. Alberto established eLabEurope, a civic start up committed to improve civic literacy, engagement and participation by lobbying in the public interest. His MOOC –Understanding Europe – available on Coursera has already trained more than 100.000 citizens about to gain a voice in the EU policy process thus rendering the EU more accountable. In addition he runs the Summer Academy in Global Food Law & Policy(10^th edition). Alberto is the founder and editor of the European Journal of Risk Regulation, the leading journal of Global Law, Science and Public Policy, published by Cambridge University Press and he recently published Lobbying for Change: Find Your Voice to Create a Better Society (Icon, 2017). Originally from Italy, Alberto is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the College of Europe and holds a PhD from Bocconi University. The World Economic Forum named Alberto Young Global Leader in 2015.

ESNLT relevant expertise : evidence-based policy making, regulatory impact assessment, tobacco control in both the EU and WTO contexts, transparency, public health, civic engagement

Dr. Elisavet Athanasia Alexiadou is a lawyer working in the field of health and human rights law. She obtained her Ph.D. degree from Leiden University (Institute of Public Law - supervisor: Prof. dr. A.C. Hendriks) on a dissertation concerning the national implementation of the right to health with a special focus on Greece (2016). Her research interests involve human rights law, public (international) law, health law, bioethics, patients’ rights, health governance (health systems management, regulation and strengthening; accountability; health sector privatization and corruption), disability law with particular reference to health-related issues, and health inequalities owed to, inter alia, immigration, minority and socio-economic status. Please contact Elisavet at: e.alexiadou@umail.leidenuniv.nl.

ESNLT relevant expertise: health law, human rights, tobacco control and regulation, and public health

Damon Barrett (LLM) is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Stockholm, researching the child’s right to protection from drugs in international law. He is co-Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, which he co-founded in 2009, and a Visiting Fellow at the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. Among other topics, Damon teaches global health and human rights, drug control and human rights and transnational crimes. He is the editor of the anthology 'Children of the Drug War’ and has authored numerous academic articles and NGO reports on aspects of human rights and drug policy.

ESNLT relevant expertise: drug control and human rights, harm reduction and the right to health, drugs and the rights of the child.

Dr. Oliver Bartlett joined Liverpool Law School as a Lecturer in Law in August 2015. He holds LLB and MJur degrees from the University of Durham (MJur funded by Durham Law Scholarship). Ollie also obtained his PhD from the University of Durham (funded by Durham Law School Scholarship), which examined the legal, political and ethical issues involved in designing an EU addiction strategy. Ollie teaches Public Health law and European Union law. He is Module Coordinator for the Public Health and Non-Communicable Disease Prevention module (third year optional), leads the Law and Addiction pathway in the Law and Social Justice module (second year core) and teaches on the Law of the European Union modules (second year core). Ollie has also been a visiting lecturer at the University of Nantes. Ollie has presented his work at national and international conferences. He is currently a Deputy Director of the Law and Non- Communicable Disease Unit within Liverpool School of Law and Social Justice. He is also currently a Case Commentary Editor for the European Journal of Risk Regulation.

ESNLT relevant expertise : public health law and ethics, relationship between law, social justice and complex social phenomena, addiction and the law, regulation of alcohol and psychoactive substances, the justiciability of the right to health, public health ethics (particularly public health paternalism), critical theory of public health law, boundaries of public health law-making authority, taxation and minimum pricing of tobacco.

Dr. Jasper Been is a consultant neonatologist at the Erasmus MC - Sophia Children's Hospital in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He trained as an MD and paediatrician at Maastricht University Medical Centre, where he also obtained his PhD in neonatal pulmonology and an MPH in epidemiology. Supported by personal fellowships he then became a postdoc at The University of Edinburgh and at Stanford University and trained in neonatology at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and Sophia Children's, Rotterdam. Jasper is a clinician-academic with a research focus around perinatal public health, with particular expertise in tobacco control, large-scale analysis of routinely collected health care data, and systematic reviews. His research helped establish the considerable impact that tobacco control policies have on children’s health internationally. Jasper is involved in various national working groups and guideline committees to help reduce parental smoking and children’s smoke exposure. He is interested in establishing international collaborations to help explore the potential for tobacco control and endgame policies as well as individual-level interventions to benefit child health in both high and low resource settings.

ESNLT relevant expertise: Tobacco control and perinatal and child health; Smoking cessation in pregnancy; International tobacco control

Adam Bertscher is a PhD candidate at University of Bath’s Department of Health. Prior to beginning his PhD, Adam has worked on public policy issues in South Africa, the UK and European Union. His work has covered international human rights law and alcohol control, the politics and governance of health policymaking, evaluations of disease control programmes, healthcare, food systems, impact research, foresight research and antimicrobial resistance. Adam is a founding member and Secretary to the Executive Committee of the Framework Convention on Global Health Alliance. Adam believes that global health law has the potential to bring together all actors under the banner of the right to health. This could provide a strong basis for improving the health and wellbeing of the planet and make its inhabitants better-off. He holds an MPH in Health Systems and a BSocSci in philosophy and psychology from University of Cape Town as well as a BA honours in psychology from University of South Africa.

ESNLT relevant expertise: health policy development, unhealthy products, human rights, public health law, examining how governance mechanism or instruments can be applied to address industry interference in health policy

Nienke Boderie is a PhD Researcher at the department of Public Health, Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. After completing the research master in Health Sciences with a specialisation in public health she started working at the Erasmus MC as a PhD student focussing on personalised incentives for smoking cessation among hospital employees. Furthermore, Nienke is involved in a systematic review assessing public support for novel smoke-free policies. She is interested in tobacco end game strategies form individual to societal level.

ESNLT relevant expertise : tobacco control, smoking cessation, incentives, public support

Michelle Bruijn is a PhD Candidate and a soon to be Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen. She works as a post-doc researcher in the project "Novel smoke-free policies to protect children as part of a tobacco endgame". She studies the smoke-free zones in Groningen and Rotterdam. She is also working on a research project studying local health policies to measure local efforts to create a smoke-free society. Her research interests revolve around public order law, public health law, and empirica legal research methods.

ESNLT relevant expertise: tobacco control, health policy development, smoke-free zones

Dr. André den Exter is an associate professor of health law at Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. André holds a Ph.D. in law. He is the holder of a Jean Monnet Chair of European Union Health Law and has held several visiting (associate) professorships in international and European health law, including one at Danylo Medical University Lviv (Ukraine), and another at the National School of Public Health, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal). He has recently edited a handbook entitled European Health Law, published by Maklu Press Antwerp (2017) and covering the main aspects of health law from a European perspective.

Prof. Pamela Ferguson hold the Chair in Scots Law at the University of Dundee, Scotland. Prior to becoming an academic, Professor Ferguson was a member of the Scottish prosecution service: the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS). She has researched and published extensively in Scottish criminal law and procedure, and is co-author of a leading criminal law text: PR Ferguson and C McDiarmid, Scots Criminal Law: A Critical Analysis (Edinburgh University Press, 2014, 2nd edn). Other recent books are PR Ferguson, Breach of the Peace (Dundee University Press, 2013) and P Duff and PR Ferguson (eds), Scots Criminal Evidence Law: Current Developments and Future Trends (forthcoming, 2017).

ESNLT relevant expertise : Scottish Criminal law, evidence and procedure, law relating to smoking in public places in the UK, legal and ethical aspects of clinical trials for new drugs, treatment, medical negligence, abortion, and euthanasia.

Prof. Aart Hendriks is a health and human rights lawyer, attached to Leiden Law School as professor in health law. His scientific and practical work covers a large range of health and human rights attached issues, including the links between smoking, health and law. Besides serving as a professor in law, he is surrogate judge at the Rotterdam Court and member of the Board of Supervisor of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. He regularly serves as consultant for regional and international health and human rights organisations and teaches both nationally and internationally.

Prof. Tamara K Hervey is Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law at the University of Sheffield, UK. She researches, teaches, and writes on EU social and constitutional law, in particular its application in health fields; on equality law; on interfaces between biosciences and (European) law; on social rights; and on legal pedagogy. Tamara is author/editor of 16 books/edited collections and over 100 articles and book chapters, including T Hervey and C Young with L Bishop, Research Handbook in European Union Health Law and Policy (Edward Elgar, 2017) and T Hervey and J McHale, European Union Health Law: Themes and Implications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Law in Context, 2015).

Tamara’s collaborations with UK, R-EU and North America-based scholars, policy-makers, practitioners, across disciplines, include work on EU and Transnational Health Law and Policy with Katherine Fierlbeck (Dalhousie) and others; Patient and Professional Autonomy, Human Rights, and Trans-national Trade Law with Sally Sheldon (Kent) and Rebecca Gomperts (‘Women on Web’); on Comparative Health Law with David Orentlicher (Indiana). Tamara is also working on EU Health Law and UK Health Law post-Brexit, with UK and R-EU- based health lawyers (Paris; Uppsala; Copenhagen; Santander; Brussels; Amsterdam; Rotterdam; Zagreb; Innsbruck; Cork). She has acted as special advisor to the House of Commons Health Committee, on the health implications of Brexit.

ESNLT relevant expertise: EU health law, public health aspects of EU health law, EU tobacco regulation

Gohar Karapetian (LLM) is a PhD Researcher and Lecturer at the Department of Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and Public Administration of the Faculty of Law, University of Groningen. In 2015, Ms. Karapetian has been involved in the Dutch case between the Youth Smoking Prevention Foundation (Stichting Rookpreventie Jeugd) and the State, in the capacity of legal assistant to the attorney who represented the Youth Smoking Prevention Foundation. In this case, Ms. Karapetian was particularly involved in the constitutional aspects of the applicability of art. 5.3 FCTC in the Dutch legal order.

ESNLT relevant expertise: Constitutional law, citizenship, international law in the domestic legal order, WHO FCTC, Tobacco case law in the Netherlands.

Prof. Steven Lierman is associate professor in medical law and administrative law at the KU Leuven and (part-time) professor in international and European health law at the University of Antwerp. He is head of Health Law in the Leuven Institute for Healthcare Policy and of the Institute for Administrative Law (Leuven Centre for Public Law). He is the promotor of several research projects in both fields of law and the (co)author of national and international contributions on topics of private and public law. He was awarded the André Prims-prize for health and the Fernand Collin-Prize for law 2006 for his doctoral thesis on prevention, precaution and liability. He is vice-president of the Management Committee of the Belgian Medical Accidents Fund, member of the Committee on medical ethics of the medical school and the university hospital at the KU Leuven and of the Belgian Advisory Committee on Bioethics. Previously, he was a member of the KU Leuven Social and Societal Ethics Committee (SMEC). From 2003 to 2012 he was a law clerk (référendaire) at the Belgian Supreme Court.

ESNLT relevant expertise : medical law, international and EU health law

Dr. John Lombard is a lecturer in the School of Law, University of Limerick. John completed a PhD in University College Cork in 2014. His doctoral thesis sought to identify an appropriate legal framework for specialist palliative care in Ireland. He has a forthcoming book on this topic titled ‘Law, Palliative Care and Dying: Legal and Ethical Challenges’, to be published by Routledge in early 2018. John previously worked in the School of Law and Social Justice at the University of Liverpool where he lectured in Medical Law and Equity. He has also previously worked as a research assistant in the Governance, Risk, and Compliance Technology Centre based in University College Cork. At present, John is the module director for  intellectual property law and medical law at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in UL. He is also a member of the faculty ethics committee, course director for the Law Plus degree programme, and sits on the advisory board of the Research Evidence into Policy Programme project which is a partnership between the School of Law and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. John’s interests lie broadly in the areas of medical law, public health, and intellectual property law.

ESNLT relevant expertise: medical law, human rights, intellectual property law, the law on palliative care, nursing law and ethics  

Dr. Benn McGrady is a Technical Officer (Legal) in the Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases Department at the World Health Organization in Geneva where he is responsible for providing technical assistance to WHO Member States and building their legal capacity to prevent noncommunicable diseases. Benn has advised public health bodies, governments, inter-governmental organizations and non-governmental organizations particularly on international trade and investment issues and trained government officials around the world. Benn has taught at Georgetown University Law Center and Sydney Law School and is the author of Trade and Public Health: The WTO, Tobacco, Alcohol and Diet (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

ESNLT relevant expertise: noncommunicable diseases, public health, international trade and investment

Dr. Margherita Melillo works at the European University Institute on a project on the role of evidence in the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and in the related international disputes. In 2016, she has been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia Law School. She has published in the Journal of International Criminal Justice, in the European Journal of Risk Regulation, and has an article forthcoming in the Journal of World Trade.

ESNLT relevant expertise: FCTC, litigation, evidence, evidence-based

Prof. Stefania Negri is associate professor of International Law at the School of Law of the University of Salerno and Jean Monnet Chair in European Health, Environmental and Food Safety Law (2016-2019). Since 2010 she is the founder and director of the Observatory on Human Rights: Bioethics, Health, Environment , an international network of more than 40 Italian and foreign academics and experts from Europe and the Americas. Prof. Negri is National Contact Point for Italy for the European Association of Health Law, co-convener and member of the Coordinating Committee of the Interest Group on "International Health Law" at the European Society of International Law, co-convener of the Interest Group on "International and EU Health Law" at the Italian Society of International Law, and member of the Committee on Global Health Law at the International Law Association. Since 2015 she is the founder and director of the Summer School on International and European Environmental Law (since 2017 Jean Monnet Summer School on Health & Environment ). Her research interests focus on human rights, international and European health law and bioethics, environmental health and food safety. She has widely published in Italian, English, French and Spanish. Please contact Stefania.

ESNLT relevant expertise: International and European health law, environmental law, food safety, international biolaw, international criminal law, human rights

Athanasios Panagiotou (LLM) is attorney-at-law in Athens, Greece and a member of the Athens Bar Association. He received his Law degree from the Faculty of Law of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2011. He holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Medical Law from Queen Mary University of London (2013). He is currently a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His articles on contemporary topics of medical liability have been published in national and international peer-review journals. He has presented papers at various medical law conferences. He is the national contact point of the European Association of Health Law in Greece and member of the Laboratory for the Research of Medical Law and Bioethics of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has received an Excellence Scholarship by the Research Committee of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Mr. Panagiotou has been part-time instructor at the School of Business of the American College of Greece-Deree since May 2016. His research interests include medical liability, the EU Directive 2011/24/EU, the regulation of patient safety, patient’s rights, and the legal issues of evidence-based medicine.

ESNLT relevant expertise: Tobacco regulation in Greece and aspects of enforcement, domestic comparative examples of tobacco regulation, medical liability, the EU Directive 2011/24/EU, the regulation of patient safety, patients’ rights, law and evidence-based medicine.

Pieter Pecinovsky (LLM) (1990) is a Belgian academic expert in Belgian, European and international labour law. After graduating (cum laude) in 2013 as Master of Laws at KU Leuven he joined the Institute of Labour Law (Faculty of Law) of the KU Leuven as PhD Candidate. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Frank Hendrickx he is currently finishing his doctoral thesis on EU economic governance and social rights. Pieter Pecinovsky is member of the Academic Network on the European Social Charter and Social Rights (ANESC) and is appointed as expert in the Belgian Advisory Council on Social Criminal Law. Publications

ESNLT relevant expertise : regulation of smoking and tobacco use, future regulation of smoking on the workplace

Prof. André Pereira is Professor of Law at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), where he also holds a Master of Laws about “Informed Consent” and a PhD in Law under the title “Patients’ Rights and Medical Liability”. He is Director of the Centre for Biomedical Law and Researcher at the University of Coimbra Institute for Legal Research. Besides being member of several Ethics Committees (Vice- President of the Institutional Review Board of AIBILI; Council of Bioethics of the Portuguese Society of Human Genetics; IBMC-INEB Animal Ethics Committee (Oporto) and Animal Ethics Committee of the University of Coimbra), he is Member of the National Ethics Committee for Clinical Research and was elected by the National Parliament as Member of the National Council of Ethics for Life Sciences. At the International level, Pereira published in international journals and books and is Fellow of the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law (Austria), Treasurer and Member of the Executive Committee of the World Association for Medical Law, and he was elected in 2015 as member of the International Academy of Comparative Law.

ESNLT relevant expertise: health law, ethics in life sciences and clinical research

Kelsey Romeo-Stuppy has been working on global tobacco control since 2013. As Managing Attorney, Kelsey leads ASH’s programs on human rights and criminal law. She advises ASH on other legal issues and assists on several other ASH programs including divestment and tobacco industry monitoring. She also writes for “Smoke Alarms,” ASH’s legal blog.

Kelsey has received commendation for her legal research, writing, and advocacy. She recently published an article in the American Bar Association’s International Law News on Tobacco and Human Rights in Latin America. The article was chosen by another ABA Publication, GP Solo Magazine, to be included in a “Best of the ABA” feature issue. During law school, Kelsey was selected to represent the University of Pittsburgh in two international moot court competitions: the Niagara and Jessup International Moot Courts. The University of Pittsburgh School of Law faculty named her to the Order of Barristers, an organization that honors oral advocacy and brief writing skills. She was awarded the CALI Excellence for the Future Award in Legal Research and Writing, and she won an international writing competition, the M.W. McLean International Law Writing Award.

Kelsey strives to continue learning and has completed numerous continuing education programs including earning a certificate from Georgetown Law’s O’Neill Institute Summer Program on Health Rights Litigation. Kelsey holds a J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where she also earned a certificate in International and Comparative Law, and centered her coursework around human rights. Kelsey holds a B.A. from the University of Maryland, College Park where she earned her degree with a double major in Government and Politics and Criminology and Criminal Justice.

ESNLT relevant expertise: international and comparative law, human rights, tobacco control, public health.

Nicole Rusli (LLB) (Network Assistant) is currently pursuing an LLM in International Commercial Law at the University of Groningen (RUG). She recently completed her LLB in International and European Law at RUG and her interest in global health law has led her to actively assist the GHLG network with several events, notably the annual Summer School on Health and Human Rights. During the course of her undergraduate degree, she undertook an internship at UNAIDS Indonesia where she facilitated a variety of legal assistance. She is now a research assistant under the European Scientific Network on Law and Tobacco project and manages the website of the Global Health Law Research Centre.

Prof. Brigit Toebes is an Full Professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the Department of International Law of the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She has been working in the field of international health and human rights law for twenty years, and has published widely in this field (including the forthcoming Research Handbook on Global Health Law, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018).

Her current research focuses on the nature and scope of international (or global) health law as an emerging branch of public international law. For this, she has established Global Health Law Groningen, a research centre that looks at the protection of health through the lens of international law. Current research themes include access to healthcare and essential medicines, chronic diseases, tobacco control, obesity, socio-economic health inequalities, health systems governance, and the protection of health during emergencies. Together with postdoc Marie Elske Gispen, Brigit carries out a project funded by the Dutch Cancer Society on the Rights of Children to a Tobacco-Free Environment, which facilitates the ESNLT. Brigit participates in several international health law networks, including as Co-Chair of the Global Health Law Committee of the International Law Association.

ESNLT relevant expertise: Human rights, health law, non-communicable diseases, health sector corruption, children and tobacco

Dr. Aikaterini [Katerina] Tsampi is Assistant Professor of International Law at the University of Groningen (Department of Transboundary Legal Studies) and participates as a post-doc researcher in the project “Novel smoke-free policies to protect children as part of a tobacco endgame: assessing international and local experiences to generate transferable lessons for the Netherlands, 2019-2021”. In the framework of this project, she will assess the implications of novel smoke-free policies from a human rights law perspective. Her research interests revolve around International Human Rights Law, the system of the European Convention on Human Rights/Council of Europe and National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). She was awarded, in 2017, a PhD in Human Rights from the University of Strasbourg, France. Her monograph "Le principe de séparation des pouvoirs dans la jurisprudence de la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme" was recently published by Pedone (2019). She completed LLM studies in International Human Rights Law and IHL at the Panthéon-Assas University Paris II and in Specialised Public Law at the Universities of Bordeaux IV and Athens. From 2013 until 2017, she was employed as Legal Officer at the Greek National Commission for Human Rights, the NHRI of Greece. She has been involved in several human rights projects and activities, as an independent researcher, and she is a trainer, qualified through the CoE HELP program. She is a qualified lawyer at the Rhodes Bar Association. She has received several scholarships (Ile-de-France-“Bourse d’excellence” Paris, CFF Greece).

Sam Varvaštian (LLM) is a PhD researcher at the School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University, working on human rights-based climate change litigation. His professional interests span across two inter-related areas: environmental protection and public health, with key emphasis on large-scale environmental challenges that endanger the lives and livelihoods of communities across the globe, namely climate change and air pollution. Furthermore, he is interested in the general aspects of risk regulation. He has published on a range of issues within these areas, including climate change and air quality policy and litigation, food law and policy, and the regulation of emerging medical technologies. His research works usually focus on transnational aspects in regulation and litigation and comparative legal analysis, mostly covering European and United States law.

Sam is a member of the World Commission on Environmental Law and actively participates in several international associations dedicated to promoting environmental and health law and legal scholarship as well as human rights. Frequent updates can be found through his list of publications as well as his Twitter account.

ESNLT relevant expertise: International law, environmental law, climate change law, public health law, food and drug law, human rights

Dr. Pedro A. Villarreal is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany. He is currently manager of the International Health Governance (IHG) Project. He performed his doctoral studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he received the Marcos Kaplan prize for the best doctoral dissertation in Law and Social Sciences. He has publications in the field of International Law and Health, particularly in the regulation of epidemics and pandemics by the World Health Organization.

ESNLT relevant expertise: international health governance, public health and law, intersections between international economic law and health, WTO case law related to tobacco

Dr. Rumiana Yotova is a fellow and director of studies in Law at Lucy Cavendish College and an Affiliated Lecturer at the Law Faculty, University of Cambridge. She lectures International Law, Investment Law and EU External Relations. Her research interests are in the areas of international law, international dispute settlement, investment law and international health law. Rumiana practices as a Door Tenant at Thomas More Chambers. Rumiana completed her PhD in Cambridge under the supervision of Prof. James Crawford and assisted him with cases as his Research Associate. Prior to this, she spent time at the Secretariat of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the European Commission in Brussels and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Rumiana did her Magister Juris at the University of Sofia, an LL.M Advanced in International Law at Leiden University and was awarded the Hague Academy Diploma in International Law cum laude. She was a founder and editor-in-chief of the Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law (now Cambridge International Law Journal). Rumiana is a fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law and a member of the Cambridge Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences. She has advised the Nuffield Council on Bioethics on the international and comparative law aspects of new technologies.