We have an active academic visitors program at the school that encourages scholars from across the globe to conduct research at our school.  Find out how you can apply.

2024 Visiting Research Fellows

Dr. Shlomo Michael Erdman, Judge

Dr. Shlomo Michael Erdman (LL.B., LL.M., Ph.D.) is a judge at the Krayot Magistrate's Court in Israel. Judge Erdman's areas of interest and expertise primarily focus on civil and constitutional law. 

Judge Erdman graduated from the Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University in 1994, where he also completed his master's degree in law in 1999. His master's thesis, titled "Constructive Trust", was supervised by Prof. Joshua Weissman. In 2013, he received his Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University, completing his doctoral dissertation titled "The Right to Claim Compensation or Restitution from the State - Constitutional Aspects" under the supervision of Prof. Ariel Bendor.

Judge Erdman has published two law books in Hebrew: Constructive Trust (2000) and The Constitutional Right to Sue the State for Compensation or Restitution (2019). 

He has also authored an article titled "The Constitutional Right to No-Fault Compensation to Eliminate the Unusual Burden and its Root in the Constitutional Right to Human Dignity", published in Yaakov Neeman Book, 447 (2023).

Additionally, a forthcoming article on the doctrine of Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment is expected to be included in a book honoring retired Supreme Court Justice Eliezer Rivlin.

Judge Erdman interned from 1994 to 1995 at the Haifa District Court and in a civil law firm. He subsequently practiced as a litigation lawyer in the field of civil litigation for over 20 years in private law firms. Notably, he served as the director of the civil litigation department in the office of former Minister of Finance and Justice Moshe Nissim and at the Northern District Attorney's Office before his appointment as a judge in 2016. Throughout his career as an attorney, Judge Erdman represented clients before all judicial instances, including the Supreme Court. 

As a judge, Judge Erdman currently handles all aspects of civil law adjudicated in the Magistrates' Court.


Virginia Berenice Niebla Zatarain

Virginia is Deputy Director of Research and Postgraduate Studies at the Technological Institute of Higher Studies of Los Cabos. Her previous positions include Head of the Computer Centers Department and Head of the Programming Department.

She has been distinguished as a Research Candidate of the National System of Researchers of the National Council of Science and Technology (CONAHCYT), and has participated in innovative projects, National Week of Science and Technology of CONACYT and CONAHCYT, the National Call for PROSOFT Projects of the Ministry of Economy and CONACYT, and the Course - Workshop Application and Technological Innovation of CONACYT, among others.

Her experience includes:

  • Collaborator of the Frontier Science of Digital Environments project through legal reasoning based on Artificial Intelligence”, with code G-772, issued in the Frontier Science 2023 call of the National Council of Humanities, Science and Technology.
  • International research visitor at the University of Amsterdam Vrije with the project "Frontier Science of Digital Environments through legal reasoning based on Artificial Intelligence", of the National Council of Humanities, Science and Technology.

Rodrigo Parra Salamanca

Rodrigo is a PhD student in the Law, Economics, and Business program at the University of Girona. He is also a researcher at the Cátedra de Cultura Jurídica. Rodrigo earned his law degree from the University of Chile and a master's degree in Legal Argumentation from the University of Alicante, Spain. His research focuses on private law, particularly contracts, and the philosophy of private law.

Rodrigo's doctoral research explores how contracts lose their effects, aiming to provide the best explanations for these phenomena using conceptual tools from the theory of law.

He has extensive experience as a dispute resolution lawyer in Chile, specializing in medical liability, contract law, and construction contracts.


Jesus Manuel Niebla Zatarain

Jesus Manuel Niebla Zatarain Ph D., Faculty of Law of Mazatlán, Autonomous University of Sinaloa (Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, UAS) holds  Bachelors Degrees in Law and Computer Science both from the Autonomous University of Sinaloa (UAS) campus Mazatlán.

He has a Master in Business Administration Tourist by the Los Cabos Study Center. PhD in Law from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. He was a CONACYT scholarship recipient – ​​Government of Baja California Sur 2013 and he was a member of the Young Researchers Program of UAS. His main research interest is the intersection between law and computer science, analyzing the impact of technology on the regulatory framework particularly from the perspective of artificial intelligence.

As part of this, he addresses smart contracts, intellectual property and personal data protection in his research.

He has been an academic research visitor in Mexico, the United Kingdom, Italy, Colombia and the Netherlands. He published his work in Mexico, South America and Europe. He has presented his work in more than 30 international conferences and workshops on Legal Informatics in Mexico, Europe and South America.

He has taught at the undergraduate level at the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur and at the Escuela Libre de Derecho, as a visiting professor. Has been Professor at Master's level in the LLM Innovation, Technology and Law of the University of Edinburgh as well as at the Autonomous University of Baja California in the Master in Information and Communication Technology Management.

He is a Full-Time Research Professor at the Faculty of Mazatlán Law dependent on the Autonomous University of Sinaloa and is assigned to the Research and Postgraduate Department of the same Faculty. He is a member of the National System of Researchers Level 1, President of the Sinaloa Chapter of the Mexican Academy of Computer Law and Member of the Sinaloan System of Researchers and Technologists (SSIT).  Technical Manager of the Science Project Border 2023 “Regulation of digital environments through legal reasoning based on artificial intelligence.”

He is the author of the book “Copyright on the Internet: An Artificial Intelligence-Based Approach” (in Spanish, “Derechos de autor en Internet: un enfoque basado en inteligencia artificial”).


Viktoria Dahmen Viktoria Dahmen

Viktoria Dahmen studied law at the University of Münster (Germany) and at the University of Naples Federico II (Italy). She is a teaching and research assistant and doctoral candidate at the University of Cologne. Her research interests lie in the field of comparative constitutional law with a focus on the protection of human rights. Her doctoral thesis deals with the reception of proportionality in Australian constitutional law from a German and comparative law perspective. 

 


Zalman Rothschild profil photoZalman Rothschild

Zalman Rothschild is incoming Assistant Professor of Law and Horn Family Distinguished Research Scholar in Law and Religion at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Previously, he was a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School. His research focuses on the First Amendment, anti-discrimination law, and law and religion. His scholarship has or will appear in Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, the Journal of Law and Religion, Columbia Law Review Forum, Yale Law Journal Forum, and several other academic publications, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books. His writing for popular audiences has appeared in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. In 2023, the Law and Religion Section of the Association of American Law Schools awarded Zalman the Harold Berman Award for Excellence in Scholarship.

Before becoming a Bigelow Fellow, Zalman served as a law clerk to Judge Jane Roth on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and practiced law for several years as a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss. During that time, Zalman was recognized by The American Lawyer in its "Litigator of the Week" profile for winning a Fourth Amendment appeal and securing the reversal of all convictions of his client (2021) and received the "On the Rise—Top 40 Young Lawyer" award from the American Bar Association (2022).

Zalman holds a JD, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School and a PhD in Religion from New York University.


Dr Yan Kai (Tony) ZhouDr Yan Kai (Tony) Zhou

Tony Zhou joined Queen Mary University of London as a Lecturer in Private Law in January 2023, researching primarily in private law theory (specifically on topics at the intersection of private law and moral philosophy). He also be teaches undergraduate tort law and land law. He completed his LLB at the University of Queensland, and his LLM and PhD at the University of Cambridge. In a past life, Tony worked for many years as a corporate tax lawyer at both Ashurst and PwC.