Lecturers 2026
Prof. Dr. Andrej Lang is Professor of Public Law, especially Public Economic Law, at Chemnitz University of Technology. His research examines constitutional law, EU law and public international law from a theory-driven, comparative, and interdisciplinary perspective. His work focuses particularly on the legal structures of the European and international economic order, European constitutional and institutional law, the protection of fundamental and human rights, and, more broadly, the interaction between law and institutions. Andrej Lang studied law and political science at Freie Universität Berlin, Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris I), and New York University School of Law. He has conducted his research, among others, at Harvard, Yale, and New York University. In 2019, he earned a Ph.D. in Law from Freie Universität Berlin with a dissertation on the role of constitutional adjudication in multi-level structures and transnational judicial networks. In 2025, he completed his habilitation at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg with a study on forms of non-judicial rights review. He has published in leading journals such as the American Journal of International Law, European Journal of International Law, International Journal of Constitutional Law, and Common Market Law Review.
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Dr. Barry de Vries is a Research Associate at the Chair of Public Law and International Law at the Justus Liebig University Giessen and Associate Fellow at PRIF's research department International Institutions. He is specialized in International Law, especially International Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law, Arms Control Law and Human Rights Law. |
Eliška Zabaloueff Mocková works as a Caseworker for the Central Tracing Agency of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Previously, she worked as a Delegate for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Ukraine. In 2021 and 2022 she worked as a Human Rights Officer with the Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (United Nations) and until that as a lawyer at the Office of the Public Defender of Rights in the Czech Republic. She holds a master's degree in political science and in law (Charles University in Prague) and an LLM in humanitarian law and human rights (Geneva Academy). She is also pursuing a PhD in law at the Charles University in Prague.
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Dr. Ezequiel Heffes is a Senior Policy and Legal Advisor at Geneva Call, a humanitarian NGO that promotes respect of humanitarian norms by armed non-State actors. He holds an LLM in IHL and Human Rights from the Geneva Academy, and a law degree from the University of Buenos Aires School of Law. He is finishing his PhD at the University of Leiden. Prior to joining Geneva Call, he worked as a field and protection delegate and as a head of office for the ICRC in Colombia, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. His monograph on detention by armed groups under international law is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. He is also the co-editor of International Humanitarian law and Non-State Actors. Debates, law and Practice (Asser/Springer, 2020) and of Armed Groups and International Law. In the Shadowland of Legality and Illegality (Edward Elgar, Forthcoming). |
Farnaz Dezfouli Asl is a Researcher with the CBWNet Project at PRIF's Research Department International Security and a Doctoral Candidate in Public International Law at Justus Liebig University Gießen. She holds an LL.M in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights from the Geneva Graduate Institute. Her work explores the interplay between International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law, focusing on fact-finding and accountability. She has worked with the International Humanitarian Fact Finding Commission, OHCHR, and UNHCR at the intersection of international law, policy, and practice.
Dr. Jelena Palmenac is an international humanitarian lawyer with over 15 years’ experience in practicing humanitarian and human rights law in international criminal justice systems and humanitarian organisations. She currently serves as Coordinator and International Humanitarian Law/Armed Groups Expert for the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on Libya established pursuant to resolution 1973 (2011). From 2017 to 2021, Jelena also served as an international humanitarian law expert madated to provide legal advice to key humanitarian and diplomatic actors responding to armed conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa region. Her work focused on enhancing the protection of civilians in armed conflicts, including in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Libya.
Prior to her regional mandate, she served for almost 10 years at the Offices of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. There she was responsible for legal analysis of serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law in situations under the Prosecutor’s preliminary examination. During her time at the ICC, she was a member of the working groups on the Prosecutor’s Policy on Sexual and Gender-Based Crimes, and the Policy on Children.
Jelena holds a Ph.D. in law from the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva. Her book Unravelling Unlawful Confinement in Contemporary Armed Conflicts (Brill, 2021) has won the prestigious 2022 Francis Lieber Prize awarded by the American Society of International Law for an exceptional book in the field of the law of armed conflict.
Kristoffer Burck studied International Relations and Public Law at the University of Erfurt and the Kyung Hee University in Korea (Bachelor of Arts) and the interdisciplinary course Law and Politics of International Security at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (LLM). During his study he worked as a student assistant at the chair for Public Law, International Law and European Integration at the University of Erfurt and was a Research Associate in the Area of International und Transnational Criminal Law at the Public International Law and Policy Group. He finished various internenship, such as in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the T.M.C Asser Instituut und the PAX for Peace.
Since May 2022 he works as a Research Assistant in the Project CBWNet and does research under the lead of Professor Dr. Thilo Marauhn the national, regional, and international Normative regime for the prevention of chemical and biological weapons.
Dr. León Castellanos-Jankiewicz is Senior Researcher in International Law at the Asser Institute, and supervisor of the International Law Clinic on Access to Justice for Gun Violence at the University of Amsterdam Faculty of Law. His work focuses on the human rights implications of irresponsible arms trade and the history of public and private international law.
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Dr. Robert Heinsch is an Associate Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies of Leiden University, and is the Director of its Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum on International Humanitarian Law at Leiden University and the founder of the Leiden IHL clinic. From 1 April 2018 to 28 February 2019 he held the DAAD Guest Chair for International Humanitarian Law, International Criminal Law and Applied Legal Theory at the Institute of Peace and Armed Conflict (IFHV) of Bochum University in Germany. During his time at the IFHV he successfully created the Bochum IHL Clinic. He has published numerous articles in the field of international criminal law and international humanitarian law, including a monograph on the jurisprudence of the Yugoslavia and Rwanda War Crimes Tribunals and its impact on the development of IHL. Previously, he has worked as a Legal Advisor in the IHL Department of the Red Cross Headquarters in Berlin, and as a Legal Officer in the Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. |
Dr. Saba Pipia is a legal advisor at the Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Centre (Israel/Palestine) and a guest lecturer of IHL at the National Defence Academy of Georgia. He earned his PhD in Law from Tbilisi State University. During his doctoral and post-doctoral studies, Saba held research positions at the University of Groningen, the Max Planck Institute for Public International Law, Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, and Ghent University. His teaching and research areas include international humanitarian law, international criminal law, animal law, and environmental law. Saba is a legal expert at the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group for Ukraine. He has published several works both in Georgia and internationally and has received multiple scholarships, including those from the Georgian National Research Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, the U.S. Government(Fulbright Program), and the European Commission (Erasmus).
Sabrina Rewald, J.D., LL.M.,is a legal consultant specialised in international human rights, humanitarian, and criminal law and a co-founder of the international justice and technology non-profit organisation, Fenix Foundation. She previously served as a Research Associate and IHL Clinic Supervisor at Leiden University's Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum on International Humanitarian Law. Prior to shifting to international law Sabrina worked in civil litigation and as a solicitor in Ontario, Canada, as well as in reproductive and gender justice advocacy in the United States. Sabrina is a licensed attorney in Michigan, U.S. and Ontario, Canada and holds an advanced LL.M. in European and International Human Rights Law cum laude from Leiden University.
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Sannimari Veini studied law at the University of Turku, Finland, and graduated with an LL.M. degree in 2021. During her studies, Sannimari specialized in public international law and wrote her Master’s thesis with the title “Redrawing the Red Line: Researching Possibilities of International Law to Secure Accountability for the Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria Through Individual Criminal Responsibility”. Later, Sannimari worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Public Law and International Law at the University of Giessen and was an Associated Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and the CBWNet project. Sannimari is currently also an Emerging Expert of the Forum on the Arms Trade and is based in Finland. Sannimari’s main research interests include issues of arms control and disarmament, and the interaction of these fields with other fields of international law, mainly international criminal and humanitarian law, and politics. She is especially focused on chemical weapons and questions surrounding different avenues of accountability for their use, and she has taught various subjects, including international criminal and humanitarian law. |
| Thilo Marauhn is a German expert on international law. He holds the Chair for Public Law and International Law at the Justus Liebig University Giessen and heads the research group on international law at the Leibniz Institute Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung / Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). Educated at the Universities of Mannheim, Wales (Aberystwyth, U.K.), Bonn and Heidelberg, Professor Marauhn holds a law degree (state exam, equivalent to J.D., Heidelberg), a Postgraduate Diploma in International Law and Relations (Wales), an M.Phil. in International Relations (Wales), and a Dr. iur. utr. (Heidelberg). He earned his venia legendi in public law, international and European law from the University of Frankfurt/Main. Marauhn has been a visiting professor at various universities, including the University of Lapland (Rovaniemi, Finland), the University of Bergen (Norway), the University of Warwick (UK) and the University of Wisconsin – Madison Law School (US). Since 2001, he has held a permanent visiting professorship in Constitutional Theory at the Law Faculty of the University of Lucerne (Switzerland). Since 1995, Marauhn has been a member of Germany’s National IHL (International Humanitarian Law) Committee and its chairman since 2014. From 2008 onwards, Marauhn has been a member of the Advisory Board of the German Foreign Office on the United Nations. In 2011, he was elected as a member of the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC) for the term from 2012 to 2016. Marauhn was re-elected in 2016. In 2015, he was elected First Vice-President and later President (2017) of the Fact-Finding Commission. Since 2005, he has been the academic director of the “International Summer University” of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen. From 2009 onwards, Marauhn has been the co-director of the “US-German Summer School in International and Comparative Law”, currently together with professors Anuj Desai (University of Wisconsin) and Edward Fallone (Marquette University). From 2009 to 2013 and from 2017 until 2019, Marauhn served as an elected member of the Senate of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen. In 2016, he was a visiting scholar in the research group “The International Rule of Law – Rise or Decline?” in Berlin. In 2018, Marauhn was a visiting scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law and at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge (UK). |
Dr. Vaios Koutroulis is a professor of public international law at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He has given numerous lectures, including in training courses for members of the armed forces, humanitarian aid workers and other professionals, on issues relating to international humanitarian law and international criminal law. He has several publications to his credit on international humanitarian law, international criminal law and jus contra bellum . Vaios Koutroulis is a member of the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, the only permanent treaty-based body dealing with compliance with the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their First Additional Protocol. As a practitioner, he was a member of Belgium's legal team in the case of Questions Relating to the Obligation to Prosecute or Extradite ( Belgium v. Senegal) in 2012 and counsel for Belgium in the recent (2024) Advisory Proceedings on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, both before the International Court of Justice. He has also consulted the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on international criminal law issues relating to the Ljubljana - The Hague Convention on International Cooperation in the Investigation and Prosecution of Crimes of Genocide, Crimes against Humanity, War Crimes and Other International Crimes. He participated in the negotiation of the Convention, as chairman of one of the three main working groups of the Ljubljana Diplomatic Conference.
Vanessa Vuille is a PhD candidate and graduate assistant in public international law at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her research focuses on the participation of universities in the arms sector. Vanessa Vuille specializes in international law, arms, peace and security. She worked as an associate human rights officer with the United Nations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia, as a legal adviser for the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in Switzerland, and as an intern at the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. She was also admitted to the bar of Geneva as an attorney.
Dr. Vera Strobel is a research assistant at the Chair for Public Law and Public International Law of Prof. Dr. Thilo Marauhn at JLU Giessen and a legal trainee at the regional court Giessen. She has completed her PhD in 2025 and published it as the book “Enforcing International Humanitarian Law via Individual Rights”. For her PhD project she received a scholarship by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. She completed her First Legal State Examination in February 2020 as one of the best graduates of her faculty. During her studies she spent an academic year at the Université de Montpellier in France.