Current Fellows
Caterina Benini
Caterina Benini is a post-doctoral researcher and adjunct professor at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. She is genuinely interested in all fields of private international law. Recently Ms. Benini has been working on the impact of national laws upon the functioning of EU private international law; the law applicable to choice of court agreements; climate change litigation; the intersection of domestic violence and international child abduction; the evolution of public policy vis-à-vis the recognition of punitive damages judgments.
Her website is available here.
Leontine Bruijnen
Leontine Bruijnen is an assistant professor in private (international) law at Maastricht University and a senior researcher in private international law at the University of Antwerp. She obtained her PhD from the University of Antwerp. Her doctoral thesis examined the recognition of kafala and child marriage for family law and migration law purposes in Belgium and Germany. Her current research explores the interaction between private international law and other legal domains, including family law, migration law, Islamic law, and children’s rights law.
Filip Dougan
Filip Dougan is a Teaching and Research Assistant at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana. His work focuses on Private International Law and Civil Procedural Law, with a particular interest in international family law. He completed his PhD in 2025 with a dissertation on cross-border property relations of couples. He is also active as a mentor to students in international moot court competitions and participates in several national and EU-funded research projects.
Victoria Garin
(c) European University Institute
Victoria Garin is a Ph.D. researcher at the European University Institute, specialising in private international law, EU law, legal theory, and the philosophy of law. Her research explores questions of legitimacy and justice in transnational legal contexts, with a particular focus on conflict of laws and its theoretical foundations. She examines how legal norms can be justified to those subject to them, especially across borders, and also engages with related issues in legal and political theory, EU law, and the implications of emerging technologies for legal reasoning.
María González Marimón
María González Marimón is an assistant professor of Private International Law at the University of Valencia. Her field of research is EU Private International Law in family matters. In particular, her main line of research is the protection of children’s rights and the best interest of the child principle in EU cross-border family proceedings. More broadly, she is interested in the situation of vulnerable persons involved in cross-border situations, studying Private International Law from a Human Rights approach.
Her website is available here.
Augustin Gridel
Augustin Gridel is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law of Nancy (Univ. Lorraine). He is specialized in financial law, company law and insolvency law, from a French, European and international perspective. In those areas, he is interested as much in international civil procedure as he is in the conflict of laws. He also investigates international conflict of authorities from a regulatory perspective.
Biset Sena Güneş
(c) Johanna Detering, MPI Hamburg
Biset Sena Güneş is a Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Centre of Expertise on Turkey at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg. She studied law at the University of Istanbul. She obtained her LL. M. from Queen Mary University of London and her doctorate from the University of Regensburg with a comparative law dissertation on international successions. Her research interests include international family and succession law, international civil procedural law, digitalisation and law, sustainability law and international contract law.
Her website is available here.
Carlos Santaló Goris
(c) Carlos Santaló Goris
Carlos Santaló Goris is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg. He completed his law degree at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. He subsequently obtained an LL.M. in European and International Law from the University of Saarland and an LL.M. in European Economic and Financial Criminal Law from the University of Luxembourg. Between 2018 and 2023 he worked as a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg while writing his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Luxembourg. His Ph.D. dissertation was devoted to the European Account Presentation Order and its application at the national level. Upon successfully defending his Ph.D., he worked as a lecturer at the European Institute of Public Administration. He rejoined the University of Luxembourg as a postdoctoral researcher in November 2024. His main area of research is cross-border civil judicial cooperation under EU law.
Torsten Kindt
(c) Frederic Hemler
Torsten Kindt is a senior research fellow at the Chair for Civil Law, International and European Commercial Law (Professor Moritz Renner) at the University of Mannheim. He studied law in Heidelberg, Cambridge and Stanford (LL.M.), and wrote his PhD-thesis on privately-made uniform model contracts in finance and their interrelations with the state-based legal system. His research focuses on the cross-border aspects of commercial, company and financial law, drawing inspiration from institutional economics, legal and economic sociology as well as private law theory.
His website is available here.
Markus Lieberknecht
Markus Lieberknecht is an assistant professor of private law and civil procedure law in the age of digital transformation at the University of Osnabrück, Germany. Aside from these areas, his research focuses on private international law. In particular, he is interested in international clvil procedure law, international company law, business & human rights and cross-border private enforcement of EU tech regulation.
His website is available here.
Aygun Mammadzada
Aygun Mammadzada is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the Institute of International Shipping and Trade Law (IISTL), Swansea Law School, United Kingdom. Anchored in private international law as her principal area of interest, her research and teaching cover international business, trade and maritime law, international commercial dispute resolution (including arbitration), and emerging technologies. Her PhD, fully funded by the University of Southampton, examined party autonomy under the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements 2005 in comparison with the Brussels Recast Regulation and the New York Arbitration Convention, with particular attention to post-Brexit implications. She is a qualified lawyer, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and member of the expert working groups of the European Association of Private International Law and the Hague Conference on the Digital Assets and Jurisdiction Projects.
For more information see her institutional profile here.
Benedikt Schmitz
Benedikt Schmitz is an Assistant Professor of Private International Law and Comparative Contract Law at the University of Groningen. He coordinates the Weaker Economic Agents and (Un)Known Economic Risks in Private International Law (WEAKER PIL) research line, focusing on the position of weaker businesses in both substantive and private international law. His research interests also include cross-border consumer alternative dispute resolution, the theoretical limits of party autonomy, and the interaction between EU law harmonisation and private international law.
His personal website can be found here and the research line website here.
Alix Schulz
Alix Schulz is a Senior Research Fellow at the Chair of Private Law, Private International Law, and Comparative Law (Professor Anatol Dutta) at LMU Munich. She studied in Freiburg, Helsinki, and Oxford and earned her PhD at Heidelberg University with a thesis on gender self-determination in private international law. Her research focuses on private international law, family law, and equality law, with a particular interest in their interdisciplinary and human rights foundations.
Her website is available here.
Benjamin Saunier
Benjamin Saunier is a teaching and research associate at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. His fields of research cover international jurisdiction in civil and commercial matters, private international law and inheritance law.
Antonia Sommerfeld
Antonia Sommerfeld is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg (Germany), and a lecturer at the University of Hamburg. Her main fields of research lie in the area of Private International Law and Private Law with a special focus on Contracts, Commercial Law, Sustainability and Circular Economy.
Her website is available here.
Matthäus Uitz
(c) Patrick Hofmann
Matthäus Uitz, LL.B., M.Sc., LL.M. (Yale) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Commercial and Corporate Law of the University of Vienna. Previously, he cooperated with the Yale Solomon Center for Health Law & Policy and the Syracuse University College of Law, clerked for the Supreme Court of the Republic of Austria, advised the Austrian Consumer Association and worked for several law firms. Furthermore, he serves as the Assistant Editor of the Yearbook of Private International Law (Swiss Institute of Comparative Law) and contributes to the General Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law.
His website is available here.
Tine Van Hof
Tine Van Hof is a Guest Professor of (International) Family Law and a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law of the University of Antwerp (Belgium). She holds a PhD from the same University with the title: “Conflicts between the fields of private international law and children’s rights law. The case of international child abduction.” Her research interests include private international law, family law, children’s rights law and especially the interconnection between them.
Her website is available here.
Charlotte Wendland
(c) Norbert Klekotko
Charlotte Wendland is a senior research associate at the Chair for Private Law, Private International Law and Comparative Law of Professor Anatol Dutta at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. She studied law in Hamburg and Oxford and wrote her PhD-thesis on the qualification of certain will substitutes in European Private International Law under the supervision of Professor Peter Mankowski. Her research focuses on International Succession Law and International Family Law.
Her website is available here.