Visiting Fellows
Applications 2025
The call for applications for the Visiting Fellows Programme 2025 is now open. The deadline for submission is 30 September 2024.
Call 2025
The Institute for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies at the University of Lucerne invites applications for our Visiting Fellows Programme 2025. The fellowship programme supports junior scholars who wish to spend a period of time in Lucerne pursuing work that overlaps with or otherwise complements scholarly activities currently being pursued at the institute. During their stay, fellows enjoy access to our specialist resources, and are invited to share and develop their ideas under the supervision of one or more of our faculty.
Tailored to PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers, the programme is open to all working on interdisciplinary topics at the intersections between law, the humanities and the social sciences. Focusing on critical and theoretical approaches, the institute aims to bring together a diverse group of scholars who read and think widely across fields, contexts and disciplines.
For this year's scheme, we particularly welcome applications in the following key thematic areas:
- Law and New Technologies
- Law and the Life Sciences
- Theories of Justice
- Legal Histories
- Law, Art, Politics
- Law and the Visual
- Legal Gender Studies
The deadline for submissions is Monday 30 September 2024. Please complete the application form (below) and send this together with an up-to-date academic CV (inc. publications where applicable) to lucernaiuris@unilu.ch.
Applicants are advised to consult the Guidelines (below) prior to making submissions.
Fellows 2024
Veronica Pecile
Law as Material: The Making of Italian Colonies through Legal Fiction
Veronica Pecile is a socio-legal scholar developing a critical and ethnographic approach to law. In her research, she adopts a historical and ethnographic perspective on Western legal forms, focusing on property. During her stay at the institute, Veronica will analyse how Italian colonies were established through legal discourses and techniques materialising fantasies of domination and dispossession. She will focus on the circulation of property law models between the colonies and the metropolis to argue that the colonisers’ use of law tells a peculiar story of Italian modernity - one in which fragmentation acted as a structure of domination.
Veronica has held postdoctoral positions at the Swiss Institute in Rome, the ETH Zurich and Harvard Law School. She received her PhD in Law and Social Sciences from EHESS with a thesis on the uses of law made by movement for the commons in Southern Italy after the 2008 economic crisis, which she is now turning into her first book.
Lana K. Gotvan
A Behavioural Approach to the Initiation Problem in Insolvency Law
Lana K. Gotvan is interested in behavioural law and economics, with her PhD research focusing on developing a comprehensive behavioural framework for generating incentives with legal rules. Her research specifically addresses the initiation problem in insolvency law. She wants to explore the role bounded rationality, bounded willpower, and bounded self-interest play in delaying the initiation of insolvency proceedings. Furthermore, she seeks to propose efficient incentive mechanisms for prompt initiation of insolvency proceedings, informed by insights from behavioral economics. Lana’s other fields of interest include negotiation theory and intellectual property law.
Lana obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Additionally, she completed the Magister Juris at the University of Oxford with distinction. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD in Economics at the University of Ljubljana while working as a teaching and research assistant at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana.
Previous Fellows
2023: Cody Rei-Anderson, Péter Techet
2022: Lisa Stuckey, Cristiano Moita
2021: Laura Knöpfel, Nicole Karam (suspended due to covid)
2020: Alexander Damianos, Fernando Tagle
2019: Paolo Do, Laura Petersen, Amadou Sow
2018: Michael Moterossi, Justine Poon
2017: Matthew Birkhold, Tze Ping Lim
2016: Jan Broulik, Georg Grünstäudl
2015: Kyriaki Pavlidou
2014: Mariavittoria Catanzariti
2013: Alberto Ghibellini
About
The visiting fellows programme is designed to facilitate intellectual exchange between our members and the wider academic community. The scheme accommodates junior scholars who wish to spend a period of time in Lucerne pursuing work that overlaps with or otherwise complements scholarly activities currently being pursued at the institute. During their stay, fellows enjoy access to our specialist resources, and are invited to share and develop their ideas under the supervision of one or more of our faculty.
Tailored to PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers, the programme is open to all working critically, theoretically and innovatively at the intersections between law, the humanities and the social sciences. A leading aim of the scheme is to foster conversations that cut across borders both geographic and disciplinary. We strongly believe that the academic and international diversity of our fellows greatly enriches the intellectual life of the institute.
Fellowship at a Glance
Visiting fellows are provided with workspace at the university, some administrative support, a fixed stipend for accommodation and living costs, and economy travel to and from Lucerne.
During the period of their visit, fellows are invited to contribute fully to the intellectual life of the institute by participating in our programme of workshops, seminars, reading groups and colloquia. They are encouraged to interact with all our members, including our own PhD and postdoctoral researchers, and are invited to take advantage of activities on offer across the university.
It is expected that fellows are resident in Lucerne for the duration of their stay. Upon completion of their visit, fellows are requested to submit a short report of their experiences.
Enquiries
Informal enquiries about possibilities for visiting the institute as a fellow are welcome at all times. Please contact Dr. Steven Howe (steven.howe@unilu.ch).
