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.
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.
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.
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.