SJD Program

Doreen is a Michigan International and Comparative Law Scholar and an LLM/SJD student at the University of Michigan Law School. She also completed a research scholar program as a University of Michigan African Presidential Scholar (UMAPS) in 2019. As a research scholar, supervised by Professor Jessica Litman, John F. Nickoll Professor of Law, Doreen focused her research on the best ways and approaches African countries in particular Ghana can take in protecting folklore domestically and beyond state borders against misappropriation.

Doreen has been co teaching law courses at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi Ghana as an assistant lecturer. She teaches courses on Intellectual Property Rights, Immovable Property and contract law. Doreen is also a practising lawyer in Ghana with Moomin and Botta Solicitors, Kumasi. She has experience in commercial transactions and litigations and has represented her firm in a number of intellectual property cases involving international clients.

Her interest for Intellectual Property rights, informed her active membership and involvement in IPNetwork, a non-profit organisation in Ghana that educates the public and promote respect for Intellectual Property Rights in Ghana.

Doreen obtained her first degree in law from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. She proceeded to the Ghana School of Law and obtained her Qualifying Certificate in law and got called to practise Law in the Ghanaian Courts. Thereafter, she obtained her LLM in Maritime law from the University of Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire, Hatfield UK where she was awarded the Chancellors scholarship for outstanding international students. She also holds postgraduate certificates in Intellectual Property law from Cambridge University, UK and Practising Law Institute, NY, USA.

Fields of Academic Interest

Doreen studies and research interests includes Intellectual property rights and development, immovable property rights and oil and gas contracts and negotiations.

Dissertation Project

Doreen’s research focuses on how Ghana can manoeuvre through the complexities of protecting and enforcing copyright in today’s digital world. The aim of her research is to examine the copyright enforcement regime in the United States, United Kingdom and Ghana and come out with informed legislative and judicial reforms that will render the Ghanaian copyright enforcement system more workable and suitable to developing Ghana’s realities. 

Doctoral Committee

• Prof. Jessica Litman, John F. Nickoll Professor of Law – Committee Chair 
• Prof. Laura N. Beny, Earl Warren DeLano Professor of Law; Associate Director, University of Michigan African Studies Center
• Prof. Kristina B. Daugirdas, Professor of Law; Associate Dean for Academic Programming

Education

• Research Scholar, University of Michigan African Presidential Scholar (UMAPS), University of Michigan, 2019 
• LLM, University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, 2011 
• Certificate in Intellectual Property law, University of Cambridge, UK. 
• Certificate in Intellectual Property Practise, Practising Law Institute, NY, USA 
• Qualifying Certificate to Practice Law, Ghana School of Law, 2009 
• LLB, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, 2007

Languages

Asante/Twi, native speaker and English – fluent

Contact

Email: doreena@umich.edu 

Avaskhan Assanaliyev is a Michigan Grotius Fellow and an SJD student at the University of Michigan Law School, where he also completed a research scholar program in 2018. As a research scholar supervised by Professor Vikramaditya S. Khanna, the William W. Cook Professor of Law, Avaskhan focused on regulation of cross-border and domestic mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions, their definition and forms in the U.S., Russia and Kazakhstan.

Avaskhan has been working as an adjunct lecturer at Kimep University Law School located in Almaty, Kazakhstan. His teaching activities include courses on M&A and International Banking Law. He is also a practicing lawyer with significant experience of work for international and local law firms. His professional experience covers, among other things, international M&A transactions. He also advises strategic investors with respect to the establishment of joint ventures, the acquisition and sale of equity or assets of subsoil use companies as well as public and private securities placements involving oil producing ventures and financial institutions.    

Avaskhan obtained his first degree in law from Kazakh Humanitarian Law University (formerly, Kazakh State Law Academy), where he was awarded a government scholarship for study of international law. Thereafter, he attended the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, as an exchange cadet under the U.S.-Kazakhstani international military cooperation program and fulfilled an obligatory military service requirement in Kazakhstan. In 2008, Avaskhan acquired an LLM degree from Duke University School of Law. He received a highly competitive Kazakhstani Presidential International Scholarship "Bolashak" that funded his study at Duke.  

Fields of academic interest

Avaskhan's areas of interest include M&A, Corporate Law, Securities Law, Law and Economics, Tax Law, Comparative Law and International Arbitration.  

Dissertation project 

In his research, Avaskhan is concentrating on the legal aspects of corporate takeovers and the principles of market for corporate control. The current state of Russian and Kazakhstani corporate law framework may be characterized by the lack of comprehensive modern research of legal regulation of corporate takeovers and anti-takeover measures.

With the development of the Astana International Financial Center's (the AIFC) common law framework, the need for introducing the market for corporate control principles is in order. The proposed two-phased approach to introducing the market for corporate control principles represents an original concept for corporate law reforms in two post-Soviet emerging countries: Russia and Kazakhstan.  

The biggest challenge of Avaskhan's current research is to find the ways to elaborate the required legal reforms that would create favorable conditions for the corporate control market in Russia and Kazakhstan. Keeping that main idea in mind, the legal reforms introducing the market for corporate control principles, through the AIFC's platform in the first phase, will foster this process. In the second phase, similar legal reforms may be introduced into Kazakhstani and potentially Russian corporate laws.

Doctoral committee

• Prof. Nicholas C. Howson, Pao Li Tsiang Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
• Prof. Vikramaditya S. Khanna, L. Bates Lea Global Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School - Committee Chair
• Prof. Julian D. Mortenson, James G. Phillipp Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School

Education

• Research Scholar, Michigan Grotius Scholarship, University of Michigan Law School, 2018
• LLM, Duke University School of Law, 2008
• Certificate in Transnational Law, University of Hong Kong, Asia-American Institute, 2007
• Exchange Cadet, United States Military Academy, West Point, 2006
• LLB in International Law, Kazakh Humanitarian Law University, 2005

Languages

• Russian – native speaker
• English – fluent
• Kazakh – proficient  

Contact

Email:  aasan@umich.edu

Kushagr Bakshi is a Michigan International and Comparative Law Scholar and an SJD student at the University of Michigan Law School, where he completed his LLM Degree in 2022. During the LLM Program, Kushagr worked as a Research Assistant to Professor Catharine MacKinnon, the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law, and as a Faculty Research Assistant at the Michigan Law Library. He also served on the board of the American Constitutional Law Society and as an Associate Editor for the Michigan Journal of International Law and the Michigan Journal of Law and Society.

Kushagr obtained his first degree in law from the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences. While in law school, he worked as a teaching assistant for Jurisprudence for two years and served as an Editor for the Journal of Indian Law and Society. Prior to coming to Michigan Law, Kushagr spent two years as an Associate in the Mergers and Acquisitions team of a law firm in India.

His current research focuses on the theory and constitutional structures which define Indian federalism. He is currently serving as an Executive Legal Content Editor for the Michigan Journal of Law and Society.

Fields of Academic Interest

Comparative Constitutional Law, Legal History, Legal and Political Theory and International Law. Kushagr is also interested in interdisciplinary approaches to legal research which combine methods and insights from disciplines such as anthropology, history and political science to the analysis of legal structures.

Dissertation Project

Kushagr’s dissertation project relates to recent constitutional changes in India which abrogated the autonomous status of Kashmir. Using Kashmir as an exemplar of an asymmetrically federal arrangement, the project looks to reexamine the political and constitutional theory which undergirds Indian federalism. Through a comparative analysis of similar structures in other countries, Kushagr’s dissertation aims to understand the role of federal structures in strengthening democratic decision making in plural societies.

Doctoral Committee

• Prof. Daniel Halberstam, Eric Stein Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School- Committee Chair.

Education

• University of Michigan Law School (LLM, 2022) 
• West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (B.A LL.B, 2019)

Languages

English, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri

Contact

Email: kushagrb@umich.edu 

Farshad Rahimi Dizgovin is a Michigan Grotius Fellow and an SJD candidate at the University of Michigan Law School. He has joined the Michigan Journal of International Law since July 2019. Farshad got his first degree in law from the University of Tabriz (Iran) in 2013. There he co-authored a treaty on international sale contracts, which is a standard reference book for master and PhD students in Iran. The second edition of the book was published in 2016.

Thereafter, he acquired a Master degree in International Business Transactions from the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law, where he was awarded a prestigious "global scholarship." In 2017, Farshad obtained his second master from the University of Michigan Law School, specializing in international investment and financial law. At Michigan, he was granted a famous Michigan Grotius Fellowship covering his tuition and living expenses.

Farshad has worked in both government and private sectors. He has worked for almost a year in the Securities and Exchange Organization of Iran as a legal counsel. He has also been a legal counsel at Parthian Investment Advisors where he was focused on projects in the capital market and international finance. At the same time, Farshad worked in Sabeti & Khatami law firm as a legal associate where he was engaged in complicated cases dealing with, among others, damages claim, doing due diligence in the context of foreign direct investment, and corporate-related issues.

He has extensively published in top tiers domestic and international law reviews, such as Virginia Journal of International Law, American Society of International Law Insights, Florida Journal of International Law, Uniform Law Review (Oxford), and Cambridge Journal of International Law (online). His most recent paper is forthcoming in the Journal of Securities Quarterly (Iran), which is expected to make a significant contribution to the development of the capital market in Iran.  

Fields of academic interest

Farshad’s areas of interest include financial law, investment law, international law, contract law, and arbitration.

Dissertation project

Farshad’s dissertation attempts an integrated remedial approach to balancing competing interests in investment law. He argues that the current literature unsatisfactorily seeks the balance only in the investor-state relationship because the legitimacy crisis does not arise only from the investor-state relationship. Instead, he puts forward that one must go beyond the investor-state relationship to include the investor-local community relationship, the host state-nationals, as well as the relationship between the host and home state in the balancing exercise. To achieve this, he plans to develop and propose an integrated contract model of remedies to international investment law in which the legal concepts are structured in three stages—that is, the jurisdictional stage, the merits stage and the liability stage.   

Doctoral committee

• Prof. Steven R. Ratner, Bruno Simma Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School - Committee Chair
• Prof. Julian D. Mortenson, University of Michigan Law School
• Prof. John A.E. Pottow, John Philip Dawson Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School

Education

• LLM, University of Michigan Law School, 2017
• LLM, International Business Transactions, University of Denver, Sturm College of Law, 2015
• LLB, University of Tabriz, 2013

Languages

• Azerbaijani (Native)
• Turkish (Native)
• Farsi (Native)
• English (professional)
• Arabic (reading)

Contact 

Email: frahimid@umich.edu

Raphaël is an SJD candidate at the University of Michigan Law School. He got his first degree in law from Sciences Po Law School in the Global Governance Studies concentration. He completed his LLM degree at the University of Michigan Law School in 2019.

Raphaël is currently working as a researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security, and Law in Freiburg in Breisgau, Germany, on the revision of an English-language edited volume on German constitutional law in a transnational perspective. From November 2021 to January 2022, he is also working as a référendaire for Judge Thomas von Danwitz at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg.

During his LLM year at Michigan and his first year as an SJD student, Raphaël helped found the Michigan European Law Organization (MELO) and was also involved with the Privacy and Technology Law Association (PTLA). As a research assistant for Prof. Daniel Halberstam, he conducted research on French constitutional law, more particularly on the French judiciary approach to constitutional and treaty-based judicial review during the 1940’s and 1950’s. Raphael also held a teaching assistant position at the Ross Business School, helping teach law to business students. Finally, he was also a Research Editor at the law school’s Journal of Law and Mobility, blogging on legal developments related to automated mobility in Europe.

Before coming to Michigan, Raphaël taught international law, quantitative methods and introduction to finance at the undergraduate level, at both the Sciences Po Paris University College and at Parsons – The New School in Paris.

Since 2016 Raphaël has been involved in various internet governance initiatives and organizations. After participating in the youth program of the European Dialogue on Internet Governance in 2017, he helped organize it in 2018, 2019 and 2020. In addition, he has contributed to the development of domain name policy at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) since 2017 in various leadership capacities within the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group.

Fields of academic interest

Data protection and privacy law, European Union law, international law, conflict of laws, information technology law and policy. 

Dissertation project

Raphael’s dissertation project analyzes the historical development of European data protection law, from the 1970’s to today, in an attempt to understand the constitutionalization process it is currently undergoing. His approach reveals that the structure of the European legal order, as well as a strong ideological undercurrent that has come to dominate data protection law globally, may be responsible for the current state of global data protection law.

Doctoral committee

• Prof. Daniel Halberstam, Eric Stein Collegiate Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty and Research, University of Michigan Law School - Committee Chair
• Prof. Don Herzog, Edson R. Sunderland Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
• Prof. Christopher McCrudden, Professor, School of Law, Queen's University Belfast; L. Bates Lea Global Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School

Education

• LLM, University of Michigan Law School, USA 2019
• Masters in Law (eq. JD), Sciences Po Law School, France 2017
• BA, Sciences Po University College (Menton campus, Middle Eastern Studies and Economics), France 2014

Languages

• French (native)
• Norwegian Nynorsk (professional)
• German
• Spanish (limited working)
• Arabic (reading)

Contact

Email: rabl@umich.edu 
Twitter: @rbl0112

Dr. Lorenzo Giovanni Luisetto is a Michigan International and Comparative Law Scholar and S.J.D. student at the University of Michigan Law School, where he also completed a research stay as a Michigan Grotius Research Scholar in 2020-2021.

Before joining Michigan Law, Lorenzo was a research fellow at the University of Trento, Faculty of Law, where he got his Ph.D. in Labor and Employment Law in May 2022.

In 2020 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and in 2018 he was a Visiting Researcher at the AFL-CIO General Counsel office in Washington D.C.

Lorenzo’s research interests revolve around labor markets, labor and employment Law, antitrust and regulation. He favors the adoption of the law & economics approach and the comparative law method.

Lorenzo’s current projects include measuring the presence and labor market outcomes of non-compete clauses in Italy; exploring the role of workers’ voice in redirecting pension plans investments toward a green economy; and an investigation into the role of employers’ associations in labor market competition. 

Fields of Academic Interest

Law & economics, comparative law, labor and employment law, antitrust and regulation.

Dissertation Project

Lorenzo will examine labor market power with a specific focus on occupational mobility issues, the institutional and legal factors that enable them, and potential remedies. The idea animating his research agenda is that the regulatory environment allows anticompetitive behavior in labor markets, and that while some of this may be reasonable given necessary tradeoffs that exist with other aims, there are policy options and legal remedies to reduce the negative consequences of these regulations.

Doctoral Committee 

• Prof. JJ Prescott, Henry King Ransom Professor of Law and Professor of Economics, University of Michigan Law School – committee chair

Education

• University of Trento, Faculty of Law, Ph.D. in Labor and Employment Law, 2022 (November 2018 – May 2022)  
• University of Trento, Faculty of Law, Master’s Degree in Law, 2018 (October 2013 – June 2018)

Languages

Italian, English

Contact

Email:  lorluis@umich.edu

Julia Orphão Magalhães is a Michigan International and Comparative Law Scholar and an S.J.D. student at the University of Michigan Law School, where she also completed an LL.M. in 2021-2022.

Before joining Michigan Law, Julia pursued a Masters in Gender Studies at the London School of Economics in 2020-2021.

In 2018, she got her first Law degree from the Fundação Getúlio Vargas Law School in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she was part of the Feminist Student Collective and also worked as a research assistant for different professors. During her studies, she spent a semester as a visiting student at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, where she conducted research on public and regulatory law. 

Before going back to Academia, Julia worked as a law clerk and junior associate for Trench, Rossi & Watanabe, associated with Baker Mackenzie, where she handled trademark, patent, data privacy and copyright matters for the São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro offices. She was also a summer associate for Gouvea Vieira at the Paris office in 2016.

Fields of Academic Interest

Julia’s research interests include feminist legal theory, LGBTQ+ rights, international constitutional law and democratic theory.

Dissertation Project

Julia’s research will compare how the Supreme Court and the Congress in Brazil have been dealing with LGBTQ+ rights over the past three decades. Her main goal is to analyze how both institutions have adopted opposite positions regarding such minorities after the re-democratization of the country, and how the polarization of these entities affects democracy.

Doctoral Committee 

• Prof. Don Herzog, Edson R. Sunderland Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School – Committee Chair

Education

• University of Michigan Law School (LL.M., 2021-2022)
• London School of Economics (Master in Gender Studies, 2020-2021
• Fundação Getúlio Vargas Law School (Bachelor of Law, 2018)
• Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Erasmus Exchange, 2017)

Languages

Portuguese, English, Spanish, French

Contact

Email: jorphaom@umich.edu 

Mohanad is a Michigan Grotius Fellow and an S.J.D. student at the University of Michigan Law School.

Mohanad is a lawyer and Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in Israel. Mohanad graduated in 2015 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he earned his dual degree (LL.B./B.A.) in Law and Accounting. In 2014, the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University awarded Mohanad the prestigious Wolf Prize, granted each year to two law students who have distinguished themselves academically and socially.

In 2019, Mohanad was awarded the Fulbright scholarship, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, to pursue the Tax LL.M. degree at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., which he finished in 2020 with a Distinction (Honors) and recognized in the Dean’s List. Georgetown University Law Center awarded Mohanad the Thomas Bradbury Chetwood, S.J. plaque for achieving the highest academic average in the Tax LL.M. class (First In Class).

As a law student at the Hebrew University, Mohanad was elected as Chairman of the Ambitions Forum, the Arab Law Students Association at the Hebrew University. Upon finishing his studies, Mohanad worked for one year at the tax department of Meitar Law Offices, one of Israel’s largest international law firms. Then he worked for two and a half years as a senior tax associate in the Tel Aviv office of the global firm PwC. His work at both firms focused on providing tax consultancy services to several international and domestic companies. In this framework, he has learned how tax laws and tax incentives may influence corporate operations and strategic decisions. In addition, Mohanad has also served as a teaching assistant in the “Tax Laws”, “International Taxation” and “Tax Policy” courses taught at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. Taken together, Mohanad’s academic and professional work have provided deep insight into how tax policies can facilitate economic and social change and how such policies could affect the drivers for different corporate decisions.

Tom Temprosa is a Michigan Grotius Fellow and an SJD candidate at the University of Michigan Law School where he also completed his LLM degree in 2017 as a DeWitt Scholar. During his LLM year, he was awarded The Jon Henry Kouba Prize for Best Student Paper (International Peace and Security Winner) and a Certificate of Merit for Impact of Human Rights on International Law under Prof./Judge Bruno Simma. He was also a Salzburg Cutler Fellow, representing the law school in an international law global seminar. In the same year, he got the S. James Anaya Award for Excellence in International Legal Scholarship. In 2015, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs elected him as a Pacific Fellow.

Tom Temprosa is a faculty member of the Ateneo de Manila University Law School and a lecturer at the Far Eastern University Institute of Law in the Philippines. Aside from teaching, prior to coming to Michigan, he has worked for the UN and the Philippine government. He was Legal Adviser to the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines and was designated its legal counsel before the Philippine Supreme Court. In the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in different capacities from 2009 to 2013, he dealt with legal issues of refugee protection, statelessness, and internal displacement in man-made conflict and natural disaster situations. He has worked in other branches of the Philippine government: as Director for Legislation at the Office of the Majority Leader in the Senate, where he was involved with several parliamentary and law reform initiatives, and as an attorney (law clerk) at the Commission on Elections. He also engages in litigation and law firm practice.

He has led and published an ASEAN-wide research on the state of the rule of law amidst ASEAN integration. He co-wrote a book on disaster-related displacement and chapters on human security and internal displacement, judicial training, and violence, exploitation and discrimination against women and children. His works are published in the Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law (forthcoming), Michigan Journal of International Law (online), Asian Journal of International Law, Ateneo Law Journal, Philippine Law Journal, Quilted Sightings, and Asian Yearbook of International Law. He is a recipient of the DILA Prize for Young Scholars by the Foundation for the Development of International Law in Asia for his work on the interface of international law in the Philippine court.

Fields of academic interest

International law, human rights, forced migration and refugee law, statelessness, humanitarian law, rule of law, and election and administrative law.

Dissertation project

Tom Temprosa aims to develop a framework to address the problem of standards of proof in the investigations of UN commissions of inquiry and fact-finding missions with Prof. Steven R. Ratner, who has extensive experience with UN fact-finding missions, as adviser.

Doctoral committee

• Prof. Steven R. Ratner, Bruno Simma Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School - Committee Chair
• Prof. Bruno Simma, Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
• Prof. Christine Chinkin, Emeritus Professor, Department of Law, The London School of Economics and Political Science

Education

• LLM, University of Michigan Law School, DeWitt Scholar, 2017
• JD, Ateneo de Manila University Law School, Honors (Silver Medal for Academic Excellence), Saint Thomas More Merit Scholar, 2010
• BA in Journalism, University of the Philippines Diliman, cum laude, 2006

Contact 

Email:  temprosa@umich.edu

Hannah is a Michigan Grotius Fellow and an SJD student at the University of Michigan Law School. She obtained her first law degree at KU Leuven (Belgium). During her studies, Hannah completed two legal exchange programs conducting comparative law in different foreign languages. At Michigan, Hannah was awarded the Joris Fellowship, participated in the Program for International Law and Development, and acquired the Certificate of Pro Bono Service for her work with the Gender Violence Project and the Rohingya Human Rights Documentation Project. 

Before joining Michigan Law in 2018, Hannah worked in the government sector. As a legal advisor at the Belgian Institute for Equality of Women and Men, she handled complex gender equality issues, advising both victims and the government. Together with the Deputy Director of the Institute, Hannah published an article analyzing the Belgian anti-sexism law from the Institute's experiences. While working at the Institute, Hannah first noticed the legal vacuum around sexist hate speech.

Fields of academic interest

Hannah's areas of interest include international and comparative law, human rights law, and equality law. 

Dissertation project

Hannah's research focuses on (online) sexist hate speech. Her dissertation project aims to put forward a framework for defining sexist hate speech and legally approaching it. An important component of her research work is a comparative analysis of the U.S. and E.U. legal framework on freedom of speech and sexual harassment.  

Doctoral committee

• Prof. Don Herzog, Edson R. Sunderland Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School – Committee Chair
• Prof. Catharine A. Mackinnon, James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
• Prof. Christopher McCrudden, Professor, School of Law, Queen's University Belfast; L. Bates Lea Global Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School

Education

• University of Michigan Law School (LLM, 2019)
• KU Leuven (Master of Law - Specialisation in Private and Commercial Law, 2017; Bachelor of Law, 2015)
• Université Libre de Bruxelles (Erasmus Belgica Exchange, June 2017)
• Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (Erasmus Exchange, February 2016)

Languages

• Dutch
• English
• French
• German

Contact 

Email:  hvandijc@umich.edu