Anna Cervi is a co-founder of the Italian Initiative for International Mediation (3IM) and a trained mediator registered with the Italian Ministry of Justice. With nearly 16 years of experience working with international organizations in conflict zones such as Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Darfur, she specializes in humanitarian diplomacy and sanctions research.
As an associate of the School of Development, Innovation and Change (SDIC) and a member of the Mediterranean Women Mediators Network, Anna has advised various organizations, including NRC, Oxfam, IFRC, and Caritas. Her policy-oriented studies include collaborations with the Carter Center, AWOS, OSCE, and the University of Verona, focusing on the sectoral impacts of sanctions amidst humanitarian crises—particularly in education, food security, energy, water, gender, and finance.
Anna has led research funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on humanitarian exemptions to unilateral sanctions. She holds two degrees in Development and Cooperation Studies from the University of Bologna and a Master of Science in Forced Migration from the University of Oxford.

Michael is a founding partner at BOEX law firm in Brussels, a law firm specialized in commerce, sanctions and dispute resolution. His practice focusses on regulatory sanctions compliance and dispute resolution.

He has broad experience advising clients across many sectors on all aspects of EU-US sanctions compliance and enforcement. His regulatory compliance practice advises among others on the auditing and development of internal compliance programmes, risk assessments, transactional due diligence and export controls, divestment operations and M&A’s, and derogation licensing under EU and US sanctions regimes.

Michael additionally has a particularly thorough expertise and academic background in handling international litigation and arbitration of commercial disputes, often involving a sanctions impact. He advises and represents clients on investment and commercial disputes before EU courts and in international arbitrations related to banking & finance, M&A’s and corporate disputes, shipping and distribution, agency and franchising, international sale and purchase of goods (CISG), construction and steel, and energy, oil and gas sectors. He has a particular focus on banking and finance and distribution, having advised widely on sanctions for financial institutions and export controls.

Michael’s practice is involved in cases at the forefront of sanctions developments. He regularly speaks at events and conferences on developments of EU sanctions and in arbitration. He is director of the Brussels Sanctions Institute (BSI) which regularly organises Brussels Sanctions Roundtables, and executive member of the European Dispute Resolution Society (EDRS) and he teaches sanctions compliance for financial institutions at Febelfin Academy in Brussels and is listed as arbitrator at several arbitral institutions across the globe.

Michael is a dual-qualified lawyer at the Bar of Brussels and New York. He holds a dual PhD from Ghent and Luxembourg University (2020) on ISDS and EU law, a Master of Laws from Ghent University (2013 – magna cum laude) and an LLM from Vanderbilt University (2014 – Dean’s List honors). He is fluent in Dutch, French and English.

Jan’s practice focuses on cross-border compliance and enforcement, multi-jurisdictional internal and government investigations, as well as international dispute resolution. He has significant multi-sectoral experience advising on compliance with economic sanctions and trade controls from both European Union (E.U.) and U.S. perspectives. His sanctions and trade controls practice covers the full spectrum of regulatory compliance and implementation and enforcement matters, including risk assessments, design and evaluation of sanctions and export control compliance programs, mergers & acquisitions, contractual negotiation and reviews, transaction due diligence, licensing, internal investigations, remediation and related disputes. Jan has particular experience with enhanced sanctions and export controls due diligence, particularly in the context of detecting and preventing circumvention risks.

Jan is a thought leader in EU sanctions. Jan speaks and writes frequently on subjects related to sanctions and export controls, anti-corruption compliance, and international law. He has been quoted and has appeared in several leading media on EU sanctions and trade controls topics. Jan is an Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)’s Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies (CFCS). He teaches EU sanctions at Sciences Po Law School and the European University Institute.

Heleen over de Linden studied Russian Language and Literature (1985-1991) and Tax Law (2000-2004) at the University of Amsterdam. Currently (2024) Heleen almost finalized her PhD thesis at the University of Groningen. The title of her thesis is: “EU sanctions against (former) foreign heads of state and politicians” subtitle: Fundamental rights protection on EU-, and national level”. Her promotor is professor Ramses Wessel and her co-promotor is Pim Geelhoed.

Heleen is working since 2006 as attorney-at-law in Amsterdam. Since 2014 she specialises in EU sanctions against Russia and the former autocratic regime of Ukraine. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Heleen published on a regular basis articles on the EU sanctions from both perspectives: EU and Russian. Since 24 February 2022, Heleen is asked on an almost daily basis by the Dutch (and international) media to comment on new sanction packages, circumvention and confiscation of frozen Russian assets. Heleen defends in Dutch courts clients who are suspected of sanctions evasion or who are using Russian frozen assets without the permission of the owner of the assets. At the European level, Heleen defends clients at the CJEU who are affected by the sectoral sanctions against Russia. Heleen hopes to defend her PhD thesis at the end of 2024 or beginning 2025.

Damien Spleeters is Director of Expeditionary Operations at Conflict Armament Research (CAR), an organisation investigating the diversion of weapons and war-enabling commodities around the world. As a field investigator, he has worked in many conflict-affected countries over the past ten years, such as Iraq, Libya, Mali, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. He is the co-author of over two dozen publications on Islamic State’s supply chains and on the components of Russian, Iranian, and North Korean weapons used in Ukraine.

Dr Jacopo ROBERTI DI SARSINA, LLM is a dual-qualified lawyer, admitted to practice in Italy (2011) and New York State (2014). Currently serving as a jurist at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT), he was previously a Member of the Legal Service of the Commission where he served in the RELEX and International Law Team as responsible inter alia for sanctions, the EU Blocking Statute, and the EU Common Security and Defence Policy.

Dr ROBERTI DI SARSINA has represented the European Commission in 20 cases before the Court of Justice of the European Union and international courts. His areas of expertise include sanctions, EU external relations, public international law, international criminal law, and transitional justice. He has extensive experience working with the International Criminal Court, in academia, and at both national and international law firms. Notably, he served as counsel to the Russian Federation in the Yukos Oil Company investment arbitration while at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton. He has published in the fields of transitional justice, human rights, and arbitration.

Dr ROBERTI DI SARSINA is a Subject-Matter Expert at the School of Law of the University of Bologna. He holds a PhD in Public International Law from the School of International Studies at the University of Trento, and an LLM in International Law from New York University School of Law. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Bologna School of Law.

Yifan Jia is a PhD candidate and visiting lecturer at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London, where she previous taught at the Department of War Studies and Department of Political Economy. Her PhD project is a socio-legal study on the legitimacy of global human rights sanctions regimes. She is a research associate at the Global Governance Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She has held research positions at Georgetown University and the Max Planck Institute.

Pr. Beaucillon holds a PhD from the European University Institute, Florence (2012) and was an Associate Professor at the Sorbonne Law School, Paris 1 University (2013-2018). Laureate of the French competition for the Agrégation Universitaire in Public Law, she joined the University of Lille in 2018 as a Full Professor in International and EU law at the University of Lille from 2018 to 2024 (100%, tenured). She is now Full Professor of Public Law at the Université Paris Est Créteil (UPEC). Her research spans public international law and the law of the European Union’s external action, with fifteen years expertise in the field of international sanctions. She is the author of numerous publications in this field and has both academic and practical experience in this area.

Bohdan Bernatskyi is a Research Fellow at the EUI, working on sanctions-related projects for the EU. His research focuses on the transformation of international sanctions and their interconnection with the rise of informal global governance. He also studies sanctions from a data-driven perspective and is the founder of Sanctions Finder, a platform for working with and researching sanctions data.

Thomas Biersteker is Gasteyger Professor Honoraire at the Geneva Graduate Institute and a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.

He has been working on sanctions issues for over 25 years, with a focus on the evaluation of United Nations sanctions. He previously taught at Yale University, the University of Southern California, and Brown University (all in the U.S.), and at Brown, he directed the Watson Institute for International Studies for 12 and a half years. His BA is from the University of Chicago, which awarded him its Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award in 2020, and his PhD is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lives in Switzerland, but spends part of the year in Washington, DC in the US.

Régis Bismuth is Professor of Law at Sciences Po Law School (Paris). His main research and teaching interests lie in public international law, international economic, monetary and financial law, and international adjudication. He is also the author of several publications in these fields and, more specifically, on economic sanctions, the extraterritoriality of law, anti-corruption, sovereign immunity, sovereign debt, State capitalism, WTO law, international investment law and arbitration, international standards, financial regulation, the responsibility of multinational corporations and the law of international organizations. Régis has advised States, public institutions, corporations and NGOs on matters of international law, and has also served as an expert before domestic and international courts and tribunals. In the field of economic sanctions, he has also been invited to several hearings of the French National Assembly and the French Senate to discuss legal issues relating to sanctions. He has recently co-edited: International Sanctions: Monetary and Financial Law Perspectives (Brill, 2024).

Dr Iryna Bogdanova is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg (UL), currently serving as the principal investigator of the KLEPTOTRACE project’s Working Package 4 – “Assessment of EU Sanctions for Targeting Highly Corrupt Regimes and Entities”.

Before joining the UL, Dr Bogdanova was a postdoctoral researcher at the World Trade Institute, University of Bern. Over the course of past years, Iryna has steadily published contributions analysing various aspects of economic statecraft and summarizing the most recent developments in this field. Her book Unilateral Sanctions in International Law and the Enforcement of Human Rights (Brill 2022) explores the legality of unilateral economic sanctions – that is, sanctions imposed by individual states without authorisation of the United Nations Security Council – under international law. Her research interests include collective and unilateral economic sanctions, their effectiveness and legality, international trade law and policy, regulation of international investments.

Chloé Brière is Professor of EU Law at the Centre for European Law of the Université libre de Bruxelles. Her research on sanctions includes a study realized for DG Fisma (publication pending) of the judicial actions for annulment and damages undertaken by Iranian banks to challenge the sanction regime adopted against Iran (2006 – 2016). She also addresses the sanctions adopted against Russia with a focus on those targeting persons suspected of being involved in the commission of core international crimes.

Antonio Bultrini holds a law degree from the University of Rome. He is an associate professor of international law at the University of Florence, where he teaches International Law, Human Rights and the Law of Armed Conflict. He formerly served at the Council of Europe, in Strasbourg, for over 13 years. He also teaches International Humanitarian Law for the Italian Air Force and he is a visiting professor at the Sant’Anna School, Pisa. As of 2020 he is a member of the Committee “Use of Force: Military Assistance on Request” of the International Law Association.

His research currently deals with international unilateral/plurilateral sanctions, the use of armed force in international relations and civil wars, the Taiwan question, and the protection of human rights at the universal level (particularly the UN Charter-based bodies).

Paul James Cardwell is Professor of Law and Vice Dean (Education) at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London since 2022. He was previously Professor of Law at Strathclyde and City, University of London and Strathclyde, Glasgow and Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader, University of Sheffield.

He is the Co-Editor in Chief of the leading interdisciplinary journal, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Honorary Fellow at the Europa Institute, Edinburgh. He has published widely on EU External Relations, and has examined the alignment of European non-EU members with EU sanctions law. He has given evidence on sanctions to the House of Commons and Senate of Canada.

Federico Casolari is Full professor of European Union Law at the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, where he teaches EU law and EU Constitutional Law, and Head of the Department of Legal Studies (Dean, School of Law). He currently serves as member of the Joint Managerial Committee of the China-EU School of Law (CESL), member of the National Biodiversity Future Centre and member of the Interuniversity Centre on the Law of Economic International Organizations. He is also member of the Centre for Digital Ethics (CedE) and of the International Research Centre on European Law (CIRDE) of the University of Bologna and tutor at the Collegio Superiore  of the same university (2016-2025). He is Director of the Master Programme in European Funds and Funding Projects Expert (MEFFE).

Elena Chachko is an Assistant Professor of Law at Berkeley Law School, working at the intersection of administrative law, foreign relations law and national security law. She researches on the geopolitical aspects of tech governance, how US domestic regulators incorporate international factors, emergency powers, and the rise of economic warfare in international relations. She has published extensively on the latter subject and has been frequently invited to speak and comment on related legal issues.

Her research has won several awards, including the 2020 Mike Lewis Prize for national security law scholarship, the Harvard Law School Irving Oberman constitutional law writing prize, and the Harvard Law School Mancini writing prize. She was previously the inaugural Rappaport Fellow at Harvard Law School. She also held fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, and the Harvard Weatherhead Center. She holds an SJD and LLM from Harvard Law School, and an LLB in law and international relations from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Philippe De Lombaerde is the Director of UNU-CRIS since January 2022. He is also Associate Professor of International Economics at Neoma Business School (Rouen) (currently on leave). Previously, he worked as Director a.i., Associate Director and Research Fellow at UNU-CRIS, Associate Professor of International Economics at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá), Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Antwerp, and as Researcher at the National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA) (Bangkok), among other appointments.

Philippe De Lombaerde (PhD, RWTH) studied economics, econometrics and political science at the universities of Ghent, Brussels, Antwerp and Aachen. He has been involved in policy research and consultancy projects for various governments and international organizations. Recent edited books include: The Political Economy of New Regionalisms in the Pacific Rim (Routledge, 2019) and the open access Handbook of Regional Cooperation and Integration (Edward Elgar, 2024).

For a complete list of publications and paper downloads, please see his author page on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Philippe_De_Lombaerde

Nicola D. Coniglio (Ph.D. in Economics, University of Glasgow, UK) is Full Professor in Economic Policy at the University of Bari (Italy). He conducts teaching and research activities in the following areas: international trade, factor mobility, industrial policy in developing countries, human capital and development, the economics of migration, urban and regional economics. Nicola is an international expert for the United Nation Industrial Development Organization (Vienna Headquarters) and cooperates with several colleagues based at international and national institutions.
He has published several papers in international refereed journals and has extensive teaching experience in international post-graduate courses. He is the director of the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme in “Economics of Globalisation and European Integration” which is run by a consortiumof European and non-European Universities. He was awarded with the EPAINOS prize for the best paper presented at the European Regional Science Association meetings in 2003 and 2004.

Elaine Fahey is Professor of EU Law at the City Law School, City St. Georges, University of London and Deputy Head of Department (academic programmes).

Elaine Fahey’s research interests span external relations, sanctions, the relationship between EU law and global governance, trade, transatlantic relations, and the study of law beyond the State. She is an expert evaluator for Horizon Europe on Global Governance. She has led a range of EU and internationally funded EU external relations projects. Elaine Fahey has held an Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Chair in Law & Transatlantic Relations (2019-2022). She was co-investigator in the Marie Curie ITN on EU and Transatlantic Investment and Trade (‘EUTIP’) (2017-2021) MSCA ITN Grant No. 72191 and lead PI in the ESRC-funded FIC UK-EU-Japan SSH Connections grant, TRILATTRADE (2019-2020), in addition to other national and international awards and funds on EU external relations law.

Tobias Gehrke is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), based in the Berlin office. He leads ECFR’s geoeconomics initiative. His areas of focus include economic security, European economic strategy, and great power competition in the global economy. Before joining ECFR, he was a research fellow with the Egmont Royal Institute in Brussels from, where he covered geoeconomics. He has also been a visiting fellow at the National University of Singapore, the University of Nottingham, and the American German Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC. He holds a PhD in political science from Ghent University.

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Francesco Giumelli is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Department of International Relations and International Organization (IRIO) of the University of Groningen. He is the Chair of the Cost Action Globalization, Illicit Trade, Security and Sustainability (GLITSS) and he is the Director of the research theme Development, Security and Justice under the Agricola School for Sustainable Development at the University of Groningen.

Francesco is member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Illicit Economies and Development (JIED) and of the Central European Journal of International Security Studies (CEJISS). His research features in the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC). He also served as Deputy Head of Department in Groningen from 2017 to 2023 and he co-coordinated the BA programme in International Relations and International Organization from 2014 to 2017, as Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute and as Fellow at the Kroc Institute of Notre Dame University.

He is the author of International Sanctions (Mulino 2023), The Success of Sanctions: Lessons Learned from the EU Experience (Routledge, 2013) and Coercing, Constraining and Signalling: Explaining UN and EU Sanctions After the Cold War (ECPR Press, 2011). He published on sanctions, private military, and security companies in the Journal of Common Market Studies, International Affairs, International Relations and International Peacekeeping. Beyond his work on sanctions, he studies issues concerning the role of private actors in security governance and illicit trade. He graduated in Political Science at the University of Bologna and holds a Ph.D in Political Science from the Institute for Humanities and the Social Sciences (formerly the Italian Institute of Human Sciences at the University of Florence). His doctoral thesis focused on international sanctions of international organizations.

Anne Hamonic is Senior lecturer in public law at the University of Rennes (France), Member of IODE (Institut de l’Ouest : Droit et Europe) – UMR CNRS 6262 and co-responsible for the Master’s degree in European Law. Specialising in European Union law, her research and teaching focus on the European Union’s external action, in particular the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defense Policy. She also works on the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice.

Christopher A. Hartwell is currently Professor of International Business Policy and Head of the International Management Institute at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) School of Management and Law, Professor of International Management at Kozminski University in Poland, Visiting Professor at Tashkent State University of Law, and former President of the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE) in Warsaw. A leading scholar on the evolution of economic institutions. Prof. Hartwell’s interests are in institutional development, especially the interplay between financial institutions and other political and economic institutions. Over his career, Professor Hartwell has advised governments in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Armenia, Russia, Poland, Tonga, Kosovo, and numerous other countries around the world, and has produced several pieces of research for the European Parliament, DG Trade, and DG Regio.

Prof. Hartwell holds a PhD in Economics from the Warsaw School of Economics, a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard, a BA in Political Science and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and his habilitation from Kozminski.

Alexandra Hofer is an assistant professor in public international law at Utrecht University. Prior to joining Utrecht University, she completed her PhD, which was an interdisciplinary study on unilateral sanctions as a means to enforce obligations erga omnes, at Ghent University under the supervision of Prof Tom Ruys.

She has published widely on unilateral sanctions in international law and international relations, and is frequently invited to speak on the topic. Her work has been published in, inter alia, the Chinese Journal of International Law, the Journal of Conflict and Security Law, the Nordic Journal of International Law, the Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies, International Peacekeeping, the Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals, and in AJIL Unbound.

She also has a strong interest in the use of force and the law of armed conflict, as well as in sociological and psychological approaches to international law, and the peaceful settlement of disputes.

Dr Kushtrim Istrefi is Assistant Professor of Human Rights Law and Public International Law and co-directs the Research Platform on Peace, Security and Human Rights at Utrecht University. He is a substitute member of the Venice Commission.
Kushtrim Istrefi has published on UN targeted sanctions, and how European courts engage with them. Currently he is researching on sanctions against Russia. He also has a general interest in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and its intersection with international law and security. He has published on a wide range of topics related to human rights during peace, emergency and wartime, sanctions, counter-terrorism, statehood, accession to international organisations, issues of jurisdiction, sources of international law, and judicial activism. Kushtrim serves on the editorial board of the European Convention on Human Rights Law Review and the ECHR Blog, and is a member of Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) and the Utrecht Centre for Accountability and Liability Law (Ucall).
Before joininig Utrecht University, Kushtrim taught at the University of Amsterdam, Leiden University, the VU University Amsterdam, the Riga Graduate School of Law and the University of Prishtina. He was a visiting fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law of Cambridge University, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies of Leiden University, the Max Planck Institute for International Law and the European Court of Human Rights. He holds a PhD from the University of Graz, LLM from the Riga Graduate School of Law and LLB from South East European University.
Next to academic work, Kushtrim has been involved in litigation of high-profile cases. He served co-counsel in Stichting Mothers of Srebrenica v the Netherlands and Subašic and Others v the Netherlands before the European Court of Human Righs, and currently provides legal advice in Müllner v. Austria, a leading climate change case before the ECtHR. He has successfully litigated the first case of enforced disappearance before the EULEX Human Rights Review Panel, contributed to a third-party intervention before the Strasbourg Court in the ‘Academics for Peace’ case and submitted an amicus curiae brief, at the invitation of the Kosovo Constitutional Court, in the case concerning the Association of Serb Majority Municipalities.
Kushtrim has advised States and non-State actors on issues related to peace, human rights and international law. Since May 2022 he serves as (external) chief legal advisor to Kosovo Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the accession of Kosovo to the Council of Europe. Furthermore, as a Senior Peace Fellow with Public International Law and Policy Group (a global pro bono law firm based in Washington DC) he has been involved in different peace projects in relation to Ukraine, Southern Cameroons, and Nagorno Karabakh.

Dr. Tristan Kohl is an Associate Professor at the University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics & Business (FEB) and Fellow of the FEB Research Institute (FEBRI). His research field is international economics, with expertise in empirical studies of international trade. His research interests include trade policies such as those covered in Free Trade Agreements, economic sanctions, and the World Trade Organization. He has expertise in using the gravity equation of international trade to quantify how changes in trade policies influence economic outcomes such as international trade and welfare. Dr. Kohl recently obtained funding for an interdisciplinary PhD project on measuring the economic outcomes of sanctions. His research has been published in, among others, the Journal of International Economics, Review of World Economics, Review of International Economics, and The World Economy.

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Matthijs Leusen is a third-year interdisciplinary PhD candidate at the University of Groningen. His research focuses on the political and economic effectiveness of sanctions, with a particular interest in how the economic impacts of sanctions affect their political success. He previously obtained a BSc in Public Administration and an MSc in Economics and Governance from Leiden University.

Yuliya Miadzvetskaya is a doctoral researcher at the European Law Centre at ULB where she conducts research on EU restrictive measures enacted in the context of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Prior to this she worked at the University of Tübingen, the German Marshall Fund of the US, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, the College of Europe, and the legal service of the European Parliament. Yuliya holds an LL.M in European Law from the College of Europe.

Felipe Rodríguez Silvestre is a doctoral researcher at the Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute since September 2020. He studied law at Universidad de Chile (2016, cum laude) and holds a Master of Laws degree in Advanced Studies in Public International Law from Leiden University (2018, cum laude).

Before joining Ghent University, Felipe worked as a legal officer of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile in the dispute between Chile and Bolivia before the International Court of Justice, “Obligation to negotiate access to the Pacific Ocean” (2014-2018). Additionally, in the last couple of years he served as a legal advisor of the Office of Legal Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile and as an academic of the Public International Law Department of Universidad de Chile.

Felipe is currently working on a project funded by the FWO (Research Foundation – Flanders) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Tom Ruys. His doctoral research focuses on the legality of secondary sanctions under international law and the remedies available for third states recipients of such sanctions.

Anna Sebestyén is a PhD candidate at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) and a junior research fellow at HUN-REN CERS Institute of World Economics in Budapest. Her PhD research focuses on the role of coherence in the imposition of EU restrictive measures towards Sub-Saharan African countries. The research examines the emerging internal challenges and impediments related to coherence within the EU’s sanctions’ practice in the Africa-EU context.

Anna holds a Master’s degree in International Relations and European development policy from ELTE. Her broader areas of research are EU foreign policy (CFSP), EU sanctions, and EU-Africa relations.

Gaia Zoboli is a PhD candidate and Lecturer in the Department of International Law at Maastricht University. Her doctoral research explores the legal implications of considering unilateral sectoral sanctions as a form of economic warfare under international law, framing these measures within jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and their normative intersection.
Gaia holds an LL.M. in Public International Law with a specialisation in Conflict & Security from Utrecht University (cum laude). Prior to joining Maastricht University, she worked as a research intern at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut.
Her academic interests include sanctions, the use of force, international humanitarian law and the law of neutrality.

Maryia Zharylouskaya is a PhD candidate and junior researcher at Mykolas Romeris University (Lithuania). Her PhD research focuses on the issues of State responsibility for jus cogens norms violations, third States’ reactions under regime of aggravated State responsibility and erga omnes obligations, legal basis for freezing and confiscation of financial assets of a responsible State and affiliated persons.

Maryia holds two Master’s degrees: one in International and EU Law from the European Humanities University (Lithuania), and another in Legal Regulation of Foreign Economic Activities from Belarusian State University.

Her broader areas of research are State and individual criminal responsibility, sanctions, legal aspect of international relations with Russia, Belarus and post-Soviet region.

From 2011 to 2022, she practiced business law in Belarus. Since 2020, she has worked as a human rights lawyer, focusing on labour rights violations in Belarus through engagement with the UN, the ILO, and other international legal mechanisms. She also teaches International Criminal Law and Labour Law at European Humanities University.

Dr. Sascha Lohmann is a Visiting Fellow at The Americas Division of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. Previously, he was a Non-Resident Lloyd and Lilian Vasey Fellow at the Pacific Institute, a Fritz Thyssen Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (Harvard University), a Transatlantic Research Fellow at the Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt Foundation/Institute for European Integration (University of Hamburg), an American-German Situation Room Fellow at The German Marshall Fund of the United States/American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (Johns Hopkins University), as well as a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution. His research focus is on U.S. EU and UN sanctions as well as export controls, a topic on which he has published widely, advised policy-makers in Germany as well as the EU, and appeared in German and international news media. A political scientist by training, he graduated with a diploma from Free University Berlin, and completed a PhD at Goethe University Frankfurt.

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Luigi Lonardo has been a Lecturer in EU law at the School of Law of University College Cork since 2020. Since 2022, he has been Acting Director at the Centre of European Integration at this University and Programme director for the Bachelor of Civil Law and French at University College Cork. Since 2018, he has also been part of the adjunct faculty at Sciences Po Paris, School of International Affairs. He was previously lecturer at the Dickson Poon School of Law of King’s College London (2018-2019). Luigi Lonard holds a PhD in EU law from Dickson Poon School of Law King’s College London (2020).

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Dr Jaan Masso (male) is the programme manager of the Master’s Programme in Quantitative Economics and Associate Professor of Applied Econometrics at the University of Tartu (UT). He has also worked as a visiting researcher at Eesti Pank (Central Bank of Estonia). He holds a PhD in Economics from the UT since 2005. His main research areas are labour economics (labour demand, wages, labour market flows, labour market of scientists, firm demographics, matched employer-employee data), international labour migration, foreign direct investments (own firm and spill-over effects, employment and wage effects), innovations (impact on productivity, innovation in services sector), international trade (export dynamics at firm-market-product level), research policy. He has participated in various national and international research projects (EU, ILO, OECD, World Bank). His publications include articles in the Journal of Comparative Economics, European Journal of Industrial Relations, Eastern European Economics, Economics of Transition, Services Industries Journal, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, International Business Review, Review of World Economics etc. His empirical research uses a wide set of individual- and firm-level datasets. Under Jaan Masso’s co-supervision, eight PhD students have defended their dissertations, and he is currently supervising four PhD students.

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Erica Moret is a specialist on sanctions, global peace and security, and humanitarian affairs, with a DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford and 20 years’ experience working at the interface of academia and policymaking. She is currently Senior Researcher at the Graduate Institute’s Global Governance Centre where she is co-founder and co-managing researcher of the Sanctions and Sustainable Peace Hub and the Geneva International Sanctions Network. She teaches Masters courses and supervises theses on sanctions at the Graduate Institute and also at Sciences-Po’s Paris School of International Affairs, where she is Visiting Lecturer. She has designed and delivered the first sanctions training course for humanitarian actors, via Polisync, Swiss Centre for International Policy Engagement, and she forms part of the core teaching team on sanctions at IHEID with the UN Secretariat. She serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Global Security Studies and consults as an independent expert to the UN, EU and humanitarian organisations on sanctions. Her experience designing and running multi-stakeholder initiatives includes coordinating major stakeholder consultations for the Swiss Government and European Union on areas such as Syria, Afghanistan, sanctions, financial inclusion, humanitarian fund transfers and humanitarian access. These initiatives required close collaboration with the UN, U.S. and EU Governments, the World Bank, the banking and “tech-for-good” sectors and INGOs.

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Roberto Nisticò is Associate Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics and Statistics (DiSES) of the University of Naples Federico II. He is also affiliated with the Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF) in Naples, the CESifo Network in Munich, the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, the Health Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) at the University of York, and the Household in Conflict Network (HiCN) in Berlin. He obtained a PhD in Economics from the University of Essex in 2014. His research spans the fields of development, labor and political economics. Roberto’s work appeared in top-field economic journals such as Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics, The Journal of Law and Economics, The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, Economic Policy, Demography, Public Choice, among others. His research projects have been funded by EEA, EIEF, Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR), Unicredit, UNU-WIDER, VISITINPS, among others. He was awarded the Etta Chiuri Prize by the Italian Society of Public Economics for best paper written by authors under 40 in 2017.

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Anna Pau is postdoctoral research fellow at Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, Department of Legal Studies since January 2024. Anna obtained her PhD from the University of Pisa, Law Department in 2023. She conducts her research in the disciplinary field of European Union law, with a particular focus on the Union’s external relations, especially the principle of consistency and respect for and promotion of international law. She has also published on topics such as EU restrictive measures, EU emergency law, energy security, solidarity, and EU diplomacy. During her doctoral studies, she was part of two Jean Monnet research projects (EUDIPLO and EUCTER) as a team member at the University of Pisa. Anna obtained her Master’s degree in 2019 from the University of Siena, with a thesis in public international law.

Sara Poli is Full Professor of European law at the University of Pisa since 2018 where she teaches EU law and the law of EU external relations. She has 17 years of working experience in the academia; she is a member of the EUDIPLO and of the EUCTER Jean Monnet networks; in 2013 she was awarded a Jean Monnet Chair. Her works have been published in leading EU law journals. She has carried out research in several areas of EU law. Her most recent book is L’azione esterna dell’Unione Europea (2021), co-edited with E. Bartoloni. She has also authored or authored or co-edited books on EU restrictive measures, the European Neighbourhood Policy and the EU Management of Global Emergencies and the external dimension of the area of freedom security and justice. She has published on restrictive measures (both on the case-law and the sanction regimes) since 2016.

Before working for the University of Pisa, she has worked in the law department of the University of Trieste, Rome Torn Vergata, University of Southampton (UK), and the College of Europe. She was awarded various fellowships, including the Robert Schuman -Fulbright fellowship, Marie Curie Fellowship at the EUI (Florence) and DAAD fellowship. She is currently visiting professor at the EUI (2023).

Dr Clara PORTELA teaches Political Science at the Law School of the University of Valencia, having previously served as a professor at Singapore Management University and as a research fellow with the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) in Paris. Her research focuses on multilateral sanctions, arms control and EU foreign policy. She holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence and an MA from the Free University of Berlin. She is the recipient of the THESEUS Award for Promising Research on European Integration. Clara Portela was the inaugural Konrad Adenauer Visiting Scholar at Carleton University’s Centre for European Studies in Ottawa, Canada. Previously, she has been a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, SciencesPo Grenoble, SciencesPo Lyon, SciencesPo Paris, Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo and the University of Innsbruck. She has consulted for the European Commission, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry of Japan, and civil society organisations like Transparency International, Democracy Reporting, Civil Forum for Asset Recovery and Small Arms Survey. Recently, she advised the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) on the criminalisation of sanctions violations (SOC 739 procedure).

Cécile Rapoport is a full professor of public Law. She is specialized in EU law. Her research focuses on External Relations of the EU. She published and edited (and co-edited) many publications in English and French in EU law. In 2021-2022, she was a visiting Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. For five years she conducted a research project on “The EU and the circulation of legal norms” within l’Institut universitaire de France (2017-2022). As a key staff member of a Jean Monnet Research Network associating the University of Rennes together with University of Bologna and King’s College London, she co-supervised more specifically the activities conducted by the University of Rennes. She is the co-director of the Master in EU law at the University of Rennes, teaches several courses and seminars in EU law, and supervises PhDs and Master Thesis in EU law.

Kinga Redłowska is the Head of the Centre for Finance and Security at RUSI Europe, where she leads research at the intersection of illicit finance, sanctions, and economic security. With over two decades of experience in public affairs and international cooperation, she specialises in EU sanctions implementation, legal frameworks, and financial crime policy across Europe.

Kinga has spearheaded numerous EU-focused initiatives, including the Sanctions Implementation, Facilitation and Monitoring Network (SIFMANet), active across EU member states. The network convened high-level roundtables and produced 38 policy reports to support national enforcement and cross-border coordination of EU sanctions. She also directed the Collaboration, Research and Analysis Against the Financing of Terrorism (CRAAFT) project, funded by the Internal Security Fund at DG HOME, and led Supervising and Monitoring Ukraine’s Reconstruction Funds (SMURF), aimed at boosting financial transparency in Ukraine.

Her sanctions work involves regular collaboration with EU institutions, national competent authorities, and transatlantic partners. She has developed and delivered technical training on Russia sanctions compliance, risk management, and public-private cooperation to more than 200 professionals from financial institutions and regulators in the EU, Japan, South Africa, and Armenia.

Kinga is the co-founder and Chair of the Advisory Board of the Ukrainian think tank, the Center for Financial Integrity. Previously, she was Programme Director at the Institute for Eastern Studies in Warsaw, where she facilitated high-level dialogue on European economic cooperation at the prestigious Economic Forum.
Her recent publications include the SIFMANet Yerevan, Bucharest, and Helsinki Reports (2024–2025) and Strengthening Ukraine’s Fight Against Financial Crime (2025). Kinga earned a PhD in International Relations from the University of Warsaw and is a member of RUSI’s UK and Maritime Sanctions Taskforces.

Cedric Ryngaert is Professor of Public International Law at Utrecht University. He studied law at Leuven University (2001) and defended his PhD on jurisdiction in international law at the same university (2007). In 2007, he joined Utrecht University as a lecturer. Since 2014 he is chair of public international law. He was a laureate of the Henri Rolin prize for international law (2012), and obtained research grants from NWO as well as the European Research Council. Cedric is a member of the editorial boards of the Utrecht Law Review and the Netherlands International Law Review. He is the author of a large number of publications, which focus on jurisdiction, immunities, and non-state actors.

Dr. Petr Stejskal is lecturer in international law at the Palacký University, Olomouc, where he obtained his Ph.D. He holds LL.M. from University of Amsterdam. He is a member of the Centre for International Humanitarian and Operational Law. He also works as a part-time officer-lawyer at the Trade Policy Division, Department of Autonomous Measures and Economic Resilience of the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade. He worked as an intern at the permanent missions of the Czech Republic to the UN in Geneva and New York or as a visiting researcher at the University of Johannesburg, University of Vienna or Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. His main research areas are the protection of foreign investments in armed conflicts, law of international countermeasures and foreign investment screening (experience from Czech national practice). He is regularly invited by the media to provide international law perspective to current developments. He also cooperates with the Czech Armed forces on the selected aspects of the law of armed conflict.

Tobias Stoll studied law and political sciences in Hamburg, Lausanne and Bonn and is a qualified German lawyer. After his studies, he joined the Walther-Schücking-Institute for International Law at the University of Kiel as a junior researcher, where he earned his doctorate in 1993. From 1994 onwards, he served as a senior research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign Public and International Law at Heidelberg and received his habilitation by the Heidelberg faculty in 2001. In the same year, Tobias was appointed Professor for Public and Public International Law at the University of Göttingen and became a Director of the Institute for International Law and European Law, where he heads the Department for International Economic and Environmental Law. From 2018 to 2022, he held the Jean Monnet Chair for European Union and Global Sustainable Development Through Law. In 2022, he was appointed to the EU’s pool of arbitrators and trade and sustainable development (TSD) experts.

Mirko Sossai is Full Professor of International Law at the Law Department of Roma Tre University, Italy, where he also teaches Law of International Organizations. He served as co-rapporteur of the Study Group of the International Law Association (ILA) on UN Sanctions and International Law. He is currently co-rapporteur of the ILA Committee on Urbanisation and International Law.

His research interests on sanctions include regional sanctions and their interplay, sanctions against central bank assets, and the concept of “specially affected States” in the context of international responsibility.

Alexandr Svetlicinii is an Associate Professor of Global Legal Studies at the University of Macau, Faculty of Law, where he also serves as the Programme Coordinator for the Master of International Business Law programme. He holds a PhD in Law from the European University Institute and an LL.M in International Business Law from the Central European University. Svetlicinii has published extensively in the fields of competition law and international economic law. His recent works include the monograph Chinese State Owned Enterprises and EU Merger Control (Routledge, 2021) and the edited volume The EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment: Towards a Binding Investment Liberalisation (Springer, 2024). Svetlicinii served as a consultant for the European Commission, international organizations (OECD, World Bank), and governments including competition authorities and sector regulators on matters of competition law enforcement and merger control and acted as a Non-Governmental Advisor in the International Competition Network. His work on sanctions focuses primarily on their extraterritorial enforcement (including blocking statutes) and the specifics of China’s emerging sanctions policy.

Viktor Szép is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Groningen (RUG). He is interested in the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and sanctions. Between September 2021 and February 2023, Viktor was postdoctoral researcher at RUG working as a member of the interdisciplinary H2020 ENGAGE project. In that project, 13 academic institutions and think tanks have worked together to find ways to enhance EU external actions, including sanctions. Prior to joining RUG, he worked for various prestigious Hungarian academic institutions between 2015 and 2021 and conducted research mostly on EU sanctions policy. Viktor Szép has a mixed academic background: he has a PhD degree in Law and a Master’s Degree in European Studies. In his research, he tries to combine traditional legal approaches with other social science methods.

Dr Isabelle Van Damme is Professor of International Economic Law and Director of Studies at the World Trade Institute and the University of Bern, and of counsel at Van Bael & Bellis. She also serves as the Executive Vice-President of the Society of International Economic Law and teaches EU trade law and policy at the College of Europe in Bruges. Her research interests focus on trade and national security, and the administration and enforcement mechanism in place for compliance with EU/Member States’ sanctions and export control legislation.

Previously, Isabelle was a Partner at Van Bael & Bellis, with a practice covering WTO law, EU law and public international law. She represented States and individuals before various courts and tribunals, including the CJEU, FTA panels, WTO panels and the Appellate Body. In the area of trade law, she represented WTO Members before WTO panels and the Appellate Body in dispute settlement proceedings involving export quotas and duties, accession protocols, export licensing, technical barriers to trade, transit restrictions, administration and review of trade measures, general exceptions and the essential security exception, minimum export pricing, discriminatory taxation and customs valuation. Notably, she represented Ukraine in WT/DS512, a dispute with Russia regarding transit restrictions which resulted in the first WTO panel proceeding in which the essential security clause under Article XXI of the GATT 1994 was interpreted and applied.

Her experience of acting and advising as counsel in cases before the Court of Justice of the European Union includes cases relating to Brexit, EU tobacco legislation, the retroactive application of trade remedies, sanctions, access to documents, EU staff regulations, and cases involving the relevance under EU law of the status of disputed territories under international law.

She has advised many companies on compliance with EU and UK sanctions legislation and EU and Member States’ export control and FDI screening legislation. That advice ranged from designing complex, multi-jurisdictional M&A deals in compliance with that sanctions legislation, to developing internal compliance programmes and assisting with license applications. A particular focus of her sanctions and export control practice focused on the financial sector (esp. transactions involving CSDs) and the fertilisers and semi-conductors sectors. She has also served as a sanctions and export control expert in commercial arbitration proceedings.

Isabelle previously worked as a référendaire in the chambers of Advocate General Sharpston at the CJEU, where she assisted the Advocate General in several Grand Chamber cases involving targeted sanctions. She has also worked at a Geneva-based firm specialised in WTO law and taught at the University of Cambridge.

Her main publications include a monograph on Treaty Interpretation by the WTO Appellate Body (OUP) and A Commentary on the WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement (CUP). She was also a co-editor of the first and second editions of The Oxford Handbook of International Trade Law (OUP). Recent and forthcoming publications relevant to sanctions and national security include: ‘National security’ in D. Bethlehem, D. McRae, R. Neufeld and I. Van Damme (eds), The Oxford Handbook of International Trade Law, second edition (Oxford University Press, 2022), chapter 27 and ‘The administration and enforcement of EU sanctions revisited’ in I. Govaere, S. Garben and E. Spaventa (eds), The Impact of War (in Ukraine) on the EU (Hart, forthcoming) (with A. Matthaiou).

She holds degrees from the University of Ghent (Bachelor of Law, Master of Laws), Georgetown University Law Center (LL.M.) and the University of Cambridge (Ph.D. in Law).

Finally, she is included in the European Union’s “List of Candidates for Appointment as Arbitrators and TSD Experts”.

Maruša T. Veber is Assistant Professor and Research Associate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana, where she also obtained her PhD (summa cum laude). She was recently a visiting scholar at the University of Auckland Law School in the course of her postdoctoral project on the topic ‘Seizure of State-owned and Private Property under International Law: Mapping the Applicable Legal Rules and Identifying Conditions that Frame and Limit Seizure of Frozen Assets in the Context of the Situation in Ukraine (2023-2025)’ funded by the Slovenian National Research Agency. Previously she was a junior visiting fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva (Switzerland), a visiting scholar at the University of Hull Law School (United Kingdom) and a researcher at the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS) in Bruges (Belgium). She is a rapporteur at the Oxford International Organizations database, a member of the editorial board of the Ljubljana Law Review (LLR), a member of the European Society of International Law (interest group: international organization) and a member of the Slovene branch of the International Law Association. She is a recipient of the award of the United Nations Association of Slovenia for an outstanding PhD Thesis and the Award for Young Jurist of the Year awarded by the Association of Slovenian Jurists’ Societies. She was also awarded a Fulbright Visiting (Post-Doctoral) Scholar scholarship to visit the George Washington University Law School in 2025. She regularly publishes her work with national and international publishers, is involved in various international and national projects and acts as a consultant on international law and European law matters.

Judith Vorrath is a Senior Associate in the International Security Division of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. She has published widely on peace and security in sub-Saharan Africa including on transnational organized crime in the context of armed conflict and fragility as well as on the UN peace and security architecture. More recently, she has been focusing on UN sanctions, particularly their implementation as well as links and responses to illicit economies. Previously she has been a post-doc fellow at SWP, at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington D.C. and the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris. Judith holds a Doctor of Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) where she pursued her studies at the Center for Security Studies and as part of an NCCR research project focusing on post-war transitions in the African Great Lakes Region.

Ramses Wessel is Professor of European Law and Vice-Dean at the University of Groningen. He teaches and publishes on various dimensions of European law, with a focus on the interface between EU law and international and domestic law, EU External Relations Law, EU Common Foreign, Security and Defence Policy and the Law of International Organizations. He is a fellow of the University’s Research Group on Sanctions and Academic Director of the European Law in a Global Context LLM. Ramses Wessel holds an LLM in International and European Law from the University of Groningen and a PhD in Law from Utrecht University, where he also taught for several years. Before returning to Groningen, he was Professor of International and European Law and Governance at the University of Twente. Ramses Wessel held visiting professorships at, inter alia, Florence, Rome, Sevilla, Genève, Trier, Leiden, Bologna, and Cagliari. He is an editor of various international journals and participates in a number of (EU-funded) international research projects.

Peter Van Elsuwege is Professor of EU law and Jean Monnet Chair at Ghent University, where he is co-director of the Ghent European Law Institute (GELI). He is also visiting professor at the College of Europe and board member of the Centre for the Law of EU External Relations (CLEER) at the Asser Institute in The Hague. His research activities essentially focus on the law of EU external relations and EU citizenship. Specific attention is devoted to the legal framework of the relations between the European Union and its East European neighbours. He published extensively in leading law journals such as Common Market Law Review, European Law Review, European Constitutional Law Review and others.

Celia Challet is Assistant Professor in Law at the Université Catholique de Lille (European School of Political Science). Her research focuses on EU restrictive measures and their judicial review, particularly in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Celia holds a PhD in law from Ghent University (2025). Prior to joining the MINOS network as Research coordinator, she was Assistant to the Director of European Legal Studies at the College of Europe. Celia holds a Master’s degree in European business Law from the University of Paris Panthéon-Assas (2018), and an LL.M. in European Law from the College of Europe (2019).

Iana Ovsiannikova is a PhD Fellow at the Department of Political Science at Ghent University with UNU-CRIS label. Iana’s research focuses on the EU’s horizontal sanctions regimes, in particular, the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime. Within the scope of her doctoral research, Iana explores the rationale for the norm selection for designating an individual or an entity involved in human rights violations. She will also delve into the question of efficiency of this sanctions regime.

Iana obtained her MA degree in EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies at the College of Europe where she performed comparative research on the EU and UK sanctions policies after Brexit on the case study of Belarus. Previously Iana worked as a communication intern at UNU-CRIS. In the past two years, Iana worked as an expert and project manager at a development cooperation consultancy based in Brussels, working on EU-funded projects on transitional justice and media support in Africa.

Nicolas Angelet is a professor of international law at Ghent University and the Université libre de Bruxelles. He is a member of the Brussels Bar and an associate tenant of Doughty Street Chambers, London, practicing public international law. Nicolas has been working on sanctions as an academic and as a practitioner since the 1990s. He has appeared as counsel and expert before UN bodies, international courts, and domestic courts in sanction-related matters, in particular on the interplay between sanctions and individual rights.

Prof. Dr. Sven Biscop read political sciences and obtained his PhD at Ghent University, where today he is a professor, lecturing on the grand strategy of the European Union and the other great powers, and on Belgian foreign and defence policy. In addition, he is the Director of the Europe in the World Programme at the Egmont – Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels, the think-tank associated with the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Sven is an Associate Member of the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences of Belgium, and an Honorary Fellow of the European Security and Defence College (ESDC), an EU agency where he lectures for diplomats, military and officials from all EU Member States. He is also a regular speaker at the Royal Military Academy in Brussels and at the People’s University of China in Beijing, where he is a Senior Research Fellow.

Fabienne Bossuyt is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at Ghent University and co-coordinator of the Ghent Institute for International and European Studies (GIES). She holds a PhD from Aston University and Ghent University. She is senior lecturer in the MA Programme in EU Studies and the MA Programme in Global Studies. She is also co-director of the Eureast Platform of Ghent University.

Her main area of expertise is the EU’s foreign policy and external relations, and in particular the EU’s relations with Eastern Europe and Eurasia. At GIES, she has been extensively developing the group’s research focus on the EU’s relations with Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In doing so, she has gradually introduced a comparative approach, whereby she started conducting comparisons of the EU’s policies towards these countries with the policies of other prominent actors in the region, especially Russia and China. This research agenda has translated into numerous peer-reviewed international publications, as well as the acquisition of several grants for research projects, including BOF, FWO, Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe.

Dr. Joyce De Coninck is an FWO post-doctoral researcher affiliated with Ghent University (Belgium), an adjunct professor of EU law at NYU Law School (U.S.) and incoming Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute (Italy). She is currently working on developing a model of relational human rights responsibility, to effectively apportion human rights responsibility stemming from hybrid forms of cooperation involving state actors and non-state actors such as international organizations and private entities, in addition to conducting research on planetary justice.

Ferdi De Ville is associate professor in European political economy at the Ghent Institute for International and European Studies (GIES) at Ghent University. His main areas of expertise are the European Union’s trade and industrial policies. He is interested in sanctions (or related restrictive measures) in the European Union’s traditional and new trade instruments, including the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP+), the Anti-Coercion Instrument, export restrictions and inbound and outbound investment screening.

Inge Govaere is Professor of EU Law and Director of the Ghent European Law Institute (G.E.L.I.). She is also the Director of the European Legal Studies Department at the College of Europe in Bruges.

She obtained her PhD at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence (Italy). Inge Govaere was  Fulbright Scholar in Residence at Cornell University (Ithaca NY, USA) and has been a visiting professor or given conferences and guest lectures at many universities worldwide, among others Columbia University (N.Y., USA), Yale University (C.T., USA),  Curtin University (Perth, Australia), University of Sao Paolo (Brazil),  Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II, France), University of Geneva (Geneva, Switzerland), Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (Munich, Germany), World Trade Institute (Bern, Switzerland), European University Institute (EUI) (Firenze, Italy), and Cambridge University (UK).

Her academic interests vary from EU external relations law to Rule of Law in the EU, Internal Market and EU intellectual property rights. She published over 20 (a.o. co-edited) books on EU law, lately “The Division of Competences between the European Union and its Member States: Reflections on the Past, Present and Future”, Oxford: Hart Publishing (2017, paperback 2020); “The EU Better Regulation Agenda”, Oxford: Hart Publishing (2018, paperback 2020); “The Interface Between EU and International Law: Contemporary Reflections”, Oxford: Hart Publishing (2019, paperback 2020); “Critical Reflections on Constitutional Democracy in the European Union”, Oxford: Hart Publishing (2019,  paperback 2021); “EU External Relations Post-Lisbon: The Law and Practice of Facultative Mixity”, Brill (2020); “Internal Market 2.0”, Oxford: Hart Publishing (2020 paperback 2022). Her current research  looks into the emergence of an ‘open strategic autonomy paradox’ , which becomes apparent when considering the increased use of EU unilateral measures and incremental sanctions policies from a constitutional law perspective.

She is co-President of the Belgian Association for EU Law (BEDER) and a member of the Expert Panel assisting the EU Commission in the selection of candidates to perform the duties of members of international investment courts and tribunals and of rosters or other international courts (‘the Panel’) (Commission Decision (EU) 2021/1711 of 23 September 2021, O.J. L 339/123).

Inge Govaere was elected as  member of the  Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts/Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten (KVAB) in 2016.

Bruno Merlevede is Professor of Economics and European Integration at the Department of Economics at Ghent University. His research focuses mainly on the empirical analysis of the performance of firms and multinational networks in response to shocks and policies. He works among others with the National Bank of Belgium on the effect of sanctions on Belgian firms’ performance. His research has been published in a.o. the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Applied Econometrics, World Development, and Review of World Economics. His research has been funded by BOF, FWO, the National Bank of Belgium, and the Flemish and the Belgian government.

Glenn Rayp is full professor in International Economics at Ghent University. He studied philosophy in Ghent and economics in Brussels. He obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Antwerp. Since 2017, he is professorial research fellow at the United Nations University (Institute of Comparative Regional Integration Studies). His fields of expertise and main research interests are international trade and its impact on firm productivity and labour conditions in the industrialised countries, the impact and effectiveness of regional integration, and international trade and migration policy.

Prof. dr. Tom Ruys is a professor of international law at Ghent University where he founded the Ghent-Rolin Jaequemyns International Law Institute (GRILI). In October 2023, he suspended his position at Ghent University to join the Office of Legal Affairs (OLA) at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. Tom was a member of the Brussels bar from 2009 until 2023 (attorney of counsel with Stibbe Law Firm).

Tom studied  law and international relations at the universities of Ghent (Master of Laws, 2003; Ba. Political science, 2004), Nottingham (LLM Public international Law, 2004) and Leuven (Master of Conflict and Sustainable peace studies, 2008).He was a visiting researcher at Yale Law School in 2008, a visiting fellow at the Cambridge Lauterpacht Centre in 2016 and a visiting professor at the University of Vienna in 2018. He holds a doctoral degree from the university of Leuven (2009).

Tom’s research covers a variety of fields within the domain of public international law, including, the law on the use of force, the law of armed conflict, international dispute settlement, State responsibility, immunities and sanctions law.

He previously taught the general international law course at Ghent University as well as advanced courses on the peaceful settlement of disputes and the law of armed conflict, and supervised the law of armed conflict moot court course.

Tom was previously awarded the Francis Lieber Prize (2015 article prize and 2011 book prize) as well as the Francis Deák Prize of the American Society of International Law. He is the author of several publications, including the monograph ‘Armed Attack’ and Article 51 of the UN Charter: evolutions in customary law and practice’ (Cambridge Series in International and Comparative Law, 2010). His writings have appeared inter alia in the American Journal of International Law, the British Yearbook of International Law, the Chinese Journal of International Law, the European Journal of International Law and the International and Comparative Law Quarterly.

Tom Ruys was co-rapporteur of the International Law Association’s Committee on the Use of Force (Military Assistance on Request – 2018-2023) and a member of the International Law Association’s Study Group on Sanctions. He is co-founder and former co-editor-in-chief of the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law (JUFIL, Routledge). He is vice-director of the Military Law and Law of War Review and a member of the editorial board of the Revue belge de droit international. He was vice-president of the Belgian Society of International Law from 2017 to 2022.

Anemoon Soete obtained her PhD in law in 2021. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Ghent University. Her research focuses on public international law and more specifically on environmental law, climate law, sustainable development, human rights, law of the sea and the law on statehood.

Thijs Van de Graaf is an Associate Professor of International Relations at Ghent University, where he obtained his PhD in 2012. He is also affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, the Colorado School of Mines, and the United Nations University. In 2011, he was a visiting researcher at Princeton University. Thijs Van de Graaf specializes in global energy politics, particularly in the oil and gas markets, climate policy, hydrogen, critical materials, and the geopolitical effects of the energy transition. His latest book, Global Energy Politics, was published in 2020. He was also the lead author of three reports on the geopolitics of the energy transition for the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

Dawid Walentek is a postdoctoral researcher at the Ghent Institute of International and European Studies. His work focuses on conflict and cooperation in international relations, with a particular focus on economic sanctions. In his current project, Dawid studies the micro-dynamics of sanctions and investigates the relation between individual preferences and economic coercion. Dawid’s work appeared in journals such as West European Politics, International Interactions and Journal of European Public Policy. Prior to joining Ghent University, Dawid was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Warsaw and the University of Amsterdam. Dawid completed his PhD in Political Economy at the University of Amsterdam in 2020.

For his work on economic sanctions, Dawid received the START Award in 2022 from the Polish Foundation for Science and the Best Graduate Paper Award in 2019 from the European International Studies Associations.