Visiting Researchers Programme

Professor Karolina Ristova - Aasterud is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen School of Law where she is affiliated with the Centre for Constitutional and Public International Law during her research leave from October 2023 to October 2026. During her stay, she will work on her research project on EU multilingualism in the context of the EU enlargement and write textbooks in jurisprudence.

Professor Ristova - Aasterud is joining us from the Faculty of Law Iustinianus Primus, University Ss. Cyril and Methodius, in Skopje, North Macedonia, where she is a tenured Professor of Law, teaching and researching in legal theory, international humanitarian law (crimes against women in armed conflicts), feminist theories on politics, and EU political system. She is the author of three monographs in Macedonian, and of over 40 scholarly articles and book chapters (with OUP, Peter Lang and LIT Verlag).  

She holds a LLB, a MSc (Political Sciences) and a Doctorate in Law from her University in Skopje, and a LLM from Georgetown University in Washington DC as a Fulbright/Ron Brown Fellow. She also studied at the Hague Academy of International Law, Duke-Geneva Institute of Transnational Law, and Academy of European Law of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She was a Visiting Researcher at the University of Edinburgh School of Law and the Europa Institute, Saarland University, in Saarbrücken, Germany, as well as Guest Lecturer at the College of Arts and Sciences, University of South Florida and the University of Montenegro School of Law.

In addition to her academic career, Prof. Dr. Ristova - Aasterud served as an elected member of the City Council of the City of Skopje, an elected member of the Macedonian Parliament, and in the Pardon Committee of the President of the Republic of Macedonia.

Professor Jaakko Husa was a visiting scholar at the School of Law in September 2022. Jaakko Husa holds the Chair in Law and Globalisation at the University of Helsinki. He is a Titular Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law and a Member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. He has published widely in the fields of comparative law, comparative legal linguistics, and comparative constitutional studies. Beyond these fields he has also done scholarly work in the areas of law and literature and comparative legal history. While in Aberdeen he worked with the forthcoming Research Agenda for Comparative Law, which he edits for Edward Elgar Publishing. He also delivered a research seminar 'Is Nordic Law a Legal Family'? 

Yea-Jen Tseng, Professor of International Law at the Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, and Hsin-Chih Chen, professor at the Department of Political Science at the National Cheng-Kung University, also in Taiwan, visited the School of Law from 27 January to 6 February 2023. Professor Tseng’s research focuses on international law-making and the non-nuclear proliferation regime, a cross-disciplinary area between international law and international relations. Professor Chen is interested in power transition theory and hegemony in the history of international relations. He is currently working on the Chinese approach of hegemony-seeking in the international society.     

Professors Tseng and Chen discussed research and teaching collaboration with members of the Research Centre for Constitutional and Public International Law. Professor Tseng also delivered a seminar: ‘Iran’s Nuclear Talks: The Beginning of the NPT Regime Adjustment’ at the School of Law. In this seminar, she analysed the negotiation process related to the Iranian nuclear programme from 2003 to today and its impact on the evolution of the non-nuclear proliferation regime. Following this seminar, Professor Chen shortly addressed the current power of the United States and China, two nuclear weapon States, and the competition between those two States for world hegemony.  

Professors Tseng and Chen pictured alongside Professors Couzigou and Yihdego

I am undergoing my Doctoral research at the National University of Advanced Legal Studies, Kochi, Kerala, India, since 2020 on the topic “The Transformation of Right to Self-determination: A Critical Analysis”.

I started practising law soon after graduation in 2016, specializing in Civil laws, Constitutional law, Family law, Service law etc. I completed my LLM in Public Law and Intellectual Property Rights from the Department of Law, the University of Kerala, in 2017. I started teaching Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Environmental Law and International Law at Kerala Law Academy Law College (Oldest Private Law College in the State) under the University of Kerala as a part-time lecturer. I cleared the National Eligibility Test (NET) conducted by the University Grants Commission of India (UGC) in 2018. Since then, I have been eligible to be appointed as Assistant Professor at any UGC recognized University in India.

I have also been an active coordinator and convenor for various international and national seminars and conferences at The Kerala Law Academy and The National University of Advanced Legal Studies. I have also been involved in moot court training activities and judging since graduation, as I have had my share of experience doing both National and International moots during my law school days. I took a break from the active practice of law end of 2020 and had been concentrating full-time on completing my doctoral research and submitting my thesis within the statutory period.

I am very fortunate to have gotten this opportunity to research at the University of Aberdeen and be part of this fantastic community. I joined the University as a visiting scholar on May 1^st, 2022, for a period of three months. Within the short time that I have joined, I have had a wonderful experience interacting with some of the university's faculty members, and everyone at the School of Law has been very welcoming and accommodating. The work atmosphere has been fantastic and I am looking forward to meeting all the wonderful members of the School of law in the days to come. I take this opportunity to especially thank Professor Zeray for giving me this opportunity and guiding me with my research. Hope to meet you all soon.

Gregg D. Caruso is Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Corning and Honorary Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University (http://www.greggcaruso.com/). His research interests include free will, agency, and responsibility (both moral and legal), as well as cognitive science, neurolaw, moral psychology, criminal law, punishment, and public policy. His research interests are interdisciplinary and relate to the implications of the philosophical and scientific literature on free will for the criminal law and the punishment and rehabilitation of offenders. He has published widely in this area and is currently writing on his third monograph—Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice—which is under contract with Cambridge University Press. He worked as a visiting scholar at the Law School from September to December 2019.

Lori A. Ringhand is the J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law at the University of Georgia and a Fulbright Distinguished Chair Award to spend the Spring 2019 semester as a Visiting Distinguished Professor at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Ringhand teaches courses on constitutional law, election law, and state and local government law. She is a nationally known Supreme Court scholar and the author of the book Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings and Constitutional Change (with Paul M. Collins) published by Cambridge University Press. Her work on the confirmation process has been cited in major national and international media outlets, including the NEW YORK TIMES, the BBC, the WASHINGTON POST, and NPR. Her Fulbright research explored the different approaches to campaign finance regulation taken by the United States and the United Kingdom. She has presented her work on this topic at numerous conference and symposiums, including at the Gresham College London Fulbright Lecture,  the Centre for American Legal Studies at Birmingham City University, the Centre for Law, Policy and Society at the University of Southampton, the George Washington University, the Mercer Law School Symposium on Election Law, and the Marquette University School of Law.

Dr Anna Juryk, assistant professor at the Institute of Law, Administration and Economics of the Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland is an expert in private international law, especially in family matters (alimony, international divorces, and adult protection). She is a member of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and of the Fédération Internationale pour le Droit Européen. She belongs to the research Legal Research on the Child and Family. Anna Juryk has been a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and Private International Law in Hamburg, Germany from 2012 to 2018.

Dr Anna Juryk was granted a fellowship from the Minister of Science and Higher Education in Poland to stay at the Centre for Private International Law of the University of Aberdeen School of Law, from March 27th to April 26th 2019. She then conducted comparative legal research on Scottish, English, Irish and Polish private international and the relevant family law systems to study the legal consequences of Brexit for Polish-British family matters.

Miguel A Marmolejo, Ph.D. got his law degree at the Universidad Cuauht閙oc, Aguascalientes Mexico in 2002, his Master international law degree at the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City in 2009 and his Ph.D. at the Universidad de Estudios de Posgrado en Derecho, Mexico City in 2011. In each stage he was awarded with honoris causa. He has been working as commercial Notary Public (Corredor P鷅lico) since year 2007. He was recognized as one of the youngest commercial notaries in Mexico and by getting the highest grades granted by the Ministry of Economy Office. He has been teaching uninterruptedly since 2012 in various public and private universities in Mexico. In 2017, Dr. Marmolejo was appointed as research professor at the Universidad Panamericana; similarly and in the same year, he was admitted as a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI-1) at CONACYT, maximum distinction in Mexico for official researchers, whereas his line of research is over the recent Mexican Energy Reform as well as the development, implementation and performance of its public policies. Since then, he is being involved from academia, in developing upstream, midstream and downstream projects, clean power ventures and strategic networking with key energy players, suppliers and regulators, including the Mexican Petroleum Institute (IMP).  Recently he is being accredited as social witness by the Ministry of Energy.

During his time at the University of Aberdeen School of Law from 28 August 2018 to 2 October 2018, Miguel has undertaken a great number of activities, including: attended various masters level courses regarding oil and gas (including engineering, science, geology and law); undertaken extensive research at the Law and Main Libraries at the University; undertaken detailed research utilising the University online database; undertaken seminar activities, including speaking to international masters students regarding energy reform in Mexico and energy security; and has worked on an academic article with professor Tina Hunter, Director of the Aberdeen University Centre for Energy Law (AUCEL), which will be submitted to Resources Policy, a high-ranking international journal published by Elsevier.

Huan Jie obtained her bachelor's degree, master's degree and doctorate from the Law School of Wuhan University (China) from 1999 to 2009. She is Associate Professor at the School of Public Administration of the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) and Research Fellow of the Key Laboratory of Land and Natural Resources Law Evaluation Engineering belonging to the Ministry of Natural Resources of China. With a fellowship of the Chinese Foreign Visiting Scholars Program, invited by Professor Tina Hunter, Dr Jie visited the Aberdeen University Centre for Energy Law from October 30, 2017, to October 30, 2018. During her one-year visiting fellowship, Dr. Jie carried out the following research:

Dr Huan Jie’s publications include in particular:

1. Huan Jie and Li Xiaowei, “Comparative Study on the Local regime of Mine Environment Protection Deposit” in China Land and Resources Economy, 2018, 31(08):30-37. (In Chinese)
2. Huan Jie and Tu Yinan, “Analysis on the Conflicts and Resolutions between Shale Gas Development and Agricultural Land Usage in Hubei Province”, Hubei Agricultural Sciences, 2018, 57(10):122-124. (In Chinese)
3. Huan Jie and Ren Morong, “Constitutional Restriction on Disposal of State-owned Assets in Public Institutions - Taking the Demolition of the First Teaching Building of Faculty of Engineering of Wuhan University as an Example”. Accepted by Journal of Gansu Political Science and Law Institute.  (In Chinese)
4. Huan Jie and Tina Hunter: “Access to Agricultural Land for Shale Gas Development in China: Current Conditions, Institutional Barriers, and Breakthroughs”. Under review. (In English)
5. Drafting of a chapter “Energy Law and Regulation in China” to be published in the Handbook for Energy Law by Routledge. (In English)