Expertise and People | School of Law | The University of Aberdeen

Expertise and People

As international relations evolve, whether through greater integration or through rethinking of the relationships between legal orders, so too do the rights and obligations of individuals and businesses evolve. The Centre’s research contributes by responding to change, and by helping law and policy-makers to prepare for it. As a research hub at the heart of the major actual and proposed developments of our time – from an ever closer European Union, to Scottish independence, to Brexit – the Centre for Private International Law endeavours to anticipate major legal issues, and to deploy expertise to identify questions, and to provide answers.

The Centre is led by Dr Katarina Trimmings (Director) and Dr Patricia Živković (Associate Director).

Dr Katarina Trimmings, Director

Katarina's research interests fall within the area of private international law of family law, in particular international parental child abduction and cross-border surrogacy arrangements. She is currently working on a major collaborative EU-funded project on the protection of abducting mothers in return proceedings (POAM project). Previous projects include child abduction in the European Union (K Trimmings, Child Abduction within the European Union, Hart Publishing, 2013); cross-border litigation in Europe (EUPILLAR project, funded by the European Commission; Beaumont, M Danov, K Trimmings & B Yuksel (eds), Cross-Border Litigation in Europe, Hart Publishing, 2017) and international surrogacy arrangements (funded by the Nuffield Foundation; K Trimmings & P Beaumont (eds), International Surrogacy Arrangements: Legal Regulation at the International Level, Hart Publishing, 2013). Katarina is one of the authors of the 15th edition of Cheshire’s Private International Law (Oxford University Press, 2017). Katarina offers supervision to postgraduate research students in the areas of private international law of family law and comparative family law.

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Dr Patricia Živković, Associate Director

Patricia finished her undergraduate studies in 2011 at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb. She holds an LL.M. degree in International Business Law ('12) and an S.J.D. (PhD) degree ('16) from the Central European University (Budapest/New York). She successfully defended her doctoral thesis on the topic “The Determination, Payment, and Allocation of Costs in International Commercial Arbitration” with the highest grade (summa cum laude). Patricia worked as a research assistant for Professor Emeritus Tibor Várady at the CEU during her doctoral studies and continued to work on arbitration cases as a counsel in a law firm. She actively fosters the usage of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms by co-chairing the Young Croatian Arbitration Practitioners, an association for younger members of the arbitration community in Croatia, which she also co-founded, and by coaching students from various international law faculties for participation in the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot Court. She also holds the position of an associate editor of the Kluwer Arbitration Blog. Her focus in teaching and researching includes international disputes resolution, with a particular emphasis on international commercial arbitration, private international law, commercial law, the law of the European Union, and IT law.

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Professor Justin Borg-Barthet

Justin’s research, teaching, and postgraduate supervision address a wide range of subject matter, principally in European Union law and Private International Law. The unifying theme in this body of work is an exploration of the allocation of decisional power as between individuals, States, and supranational regulators. He is the author of a leading monograph on corporate mobility (The Governing Law of Companies in EU Law (Bloomsbury/Hart 2012). The book was described as ‘a remarkable analysis of the complex issues resulting from the intersection of private international law of companies and companies' freedom of establishment under the TFEU’ (P Behrens (2013) CMLRev 1870). This book and his other publications are cited extensively in the literature. Justin has acted as a consultant to the European Parliament on a review of the Brussels IIa Regulation, and as part of a steering committee advising the European Commission on the possible introduction of legislation concerning the cross-border mobility of companies. His work on the recognition of same-sex relationships was cited with approval in Advocate General Wathelet's Opinion in Case C-673-16 Coman.

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Dr Nevena Jevremovic

Nevena brings ten years of practical and academic experience designing, developing, and delivering courses and training programs in international commercial law and arbitration. She is currently an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, School of Law, and Guest Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

She was a guest lecturer at the Prince Sultan University, College of Law, Female Campus (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), Faculty of Law at the University of Zenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina), International Sarajevo University (IUS), and University of Verona & CILE's Summer School, teaching courses on CISG, contract and commercial management, technology and law, and international commercial arbitration. She is a trainer in various national and international training programs for B&H judges, in-house counsels, arbitrators, and students.

Nevena's research and teaching focus on the impact of ethical and social values and technology on trading relationships and contracts' social role in achieving sustainable development goals. She is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Faculty of Law at the University of Zenica, focusing on the quality of goods in CISG and SDG 12: Sustainable Consumption and Production. Nevena is the author of the national monographs on the Civil Procedure and Energy Law in volumes of the International Encyclopaedia of Laws. She published a dozen articles and book chapters on international dispute resolution and international commercial law. She holds an LL.M. in International Law from the University of Pittsburgh, School of Law (2016), and an LL.M. in Civil Law in the EU from the University of Sarajevo, School of Law (2015).

Ms Konstantina Kalaitsoglou

Konstantina joined the Law School of the University of Aberdeen as a Teaching Fellow in September 2021. She finished her undergraduate studies with First Class Honours in 2019 and an LLM in International Commercial Law in 2020, with Distinction, both from the University of Aberdeen. Her Master thesis focused on the enforceability of asymmetrical arbitration clauses under the UN Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards. Since 2021, Konstantina has been an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and has acted as Assistant Mediator in commercial mediation. Her current research focuses on the dispute resolution sector of Scotland and questions relating to its development and tailoring to the energy industry.

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Dr Onyója Momah

Onyója is a barrister and legal academic, consistently ranked as a leading junior in The Legal 500 UK. She is an international child and family law expert practising exclusively in the areas of child rights, international parental disputes, inter-country adoption, child protection and gender-based violence. She holds a BA (Hons) in Economics and Law (2009) and was awarded the Frances Oldham QC prize; was called to the Bar of England and Wales, Gray’s Inn (2010) and completed her LL.M thesis with distinction on international parental child abduction (2011), her work was identified as an example of excellence. Alongside practice at the Bar, she was an Elphinstone Scholar and completed her PhD in the private international law of family law at the University of Aberdeen (2018). Her PhD focused on domestic violence in the context of international parental disputes and Article 13(1) b) of the 1980 Hague Convention. Onyoja’s academic articles and papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals and she has guest-lectured as well as presented at various conference, workshops and seminars in the UK and around the world, including Europe, Africa and South America. She currently serves on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Law and Society, and is a past committee/current member of the Child Abduction Lawyers Association; and British Nigeria Law Forum wherein 2016 and 2017, she presented at seminars on child rights in Nigeria and on the benefits of Nigeria implementing the Hague Children’s Conventions; she continues to advocate for this cause. Onyója works with Dr Katarina Trimmings on the POAM project as the project Research Assistant.

Dr Michiel Poesen

Michiel’s research interest is in civil and commercial private international law, with a particular focus on EU and international harmonisation in the field. Michiel has held visiting teaching and research positions at the University of Edinburgh, Maastricht University, Heidelberg University, ELTE Budapest and Hasselt University. He obtained a PhD from KU Leuven in 2021. His dissertation was titled “Charting the Periphery of Jurisdiction in ‘Matters Relating to a Contract’ in the EU Law of Civil Jurisdiction”. His work on jurisdiction in matters relating to a contract under Art 7(1) Brussels Ia was cited in AG Szpunar's Opinion in Case C-265/21 AB, AB-CD v Z EF. Prior to joining the Law School, Michiel was a postdoctoral research fellow at the KU Leuven Special Research Fund and a fixed-term lecturer of International Business Law in the Leuven LL.M. programme. He gained practical experience as a junior dispute resolution associate in a Brussels-based law firm, as a trainee at the European Commission (DG Justice and Consumers), and as a law clerk in two Belgian commercial courts.

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