Visiting Scholars

Joseph Damamme is currently completing a PhD at the Centre of European Law of the Université libre de Bruxelles under the supervision of Prof. Bribosia and Prof. Rorive (both affiliated at the ULB). The PhD deals with « The Enterprise Responsibility and the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in the Employment Market ». The research investigates on the question as to what extent do companies’ economic interests play a role with respect to the process of inclusion and how non-discrimination provides a useful tool to balance the interests at stake. It is fundamentally based on a comparative analysis between European Union and US law. Moreover, Joseph is a member of the Equality Law Clinic where he works on the elaboration of a Code of Good Practice on disability at the ULB with his PhD supervisors. He was a Visiting Researcher at UC Berkeley in 2017 (January – April 2017) under the supervision of Prof. Oppenheimer where he deepened his analysis on the duty of reasonable accommodation and volunteered at the Workers’ Berkeley Disability Clinic. He holds a LLM in European Law Practice (European Degree with studies completed in Rouen, France; Hannover, Germany; and Pune, India) and an Advanced Master in European Law (ULB).

Laura Van den Eynde is Doctor of the Science of the Law and works at the Center for Public Law of the Université libre de Bruxelles. After her law studies, she attended the European Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation in Venice (Italy) and also holds a degree from Stanford Law School which focused on socio-legal research. Her research analyses the relationships between civil society organisations and jurisdictions. She was a visiting research scholar in Berkeley in Autumn 2013.

Dorothea Staes has been a doctoral researcher at the law faculty of both the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Université Saint-Louis – Brussels (2012-2017). She defended her PhD in June 2017, entitled “When the European Court of Human Rights refers to External Instruments. Mapping and Justifications”. She has been a visiting scholar at Berkeley Law in the fall semester of 2014.

Currently, Dorothea is employed as a Blue Book Trainee at the European Commission in the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers, where she is working on non-discrimination and Roma coordination.

Dorothea studied law and international relations at the Universiteit Antwerpen, the Université Nice Sophia Antipolis and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. After obtaining a master’s degree in law (2008) and an advanced master’s in international relations and diplomacy (2010), she received a European master’s degree from the European Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation in Venice (2011). Dorothea also worked as an intern at the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva (2012).

Jozefien Van Caeneghem is a Belgian national. She holds a Masters’ degree in Law from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (2008), a LL.M in international and European Law from the Institute of European Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (2009), and an European Masters’ Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation from the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation at Universität Wien (2010). In December 2017, she obtained a PhD in Laws from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her doctoral dissertation focused on ethnic data collection and positive action measures for the Roma minority in Europe. During her PhD, she spent one year at the University of California, Berkeley, as a Hoover Foundation Brussels Fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation (09/2014-08/2015). Ms Van Caeneghem has more than seven years of research and project management experience and since 2011 has been closely involved in many human rights’ studies for the EU. Her main areas of expertise include racism and Roma inclusion, which she has obtained through her PhD research and related project work. Since 2012, she is a legal expert for Belgium in the FRA’s multi-disciplinary research network ‘FRANET’.

From February 2017 to July 2018, Ms Van Caeneghem worked as a legal advisor on various EU projects, including for DG Justice, DG Home, the European Parliament and the FRA. Prior to joining Milieu, Ms Van Caeneghem interned with Reprieve 2011 on issues related to the reintegration of former Guantanamo detainees in Europe. In 2011, Ms Van Caeneghem was an intern at the Permanent Mission of Belgium to the United Nations in New York, where she assisted Belgian diplomats on a variety of human rights’ topics. From September 2018 to May 2019, Ms Van Caeneghem will conduct post-doctoral research at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard Univeristy as a Fulbright scholar.

Sarah Ganty is an LL.M. candidate at Yale Law School (Fall 2018) and a Ph.D. candidate in law at the Center for European Law and the Perelman Center for Legal Philosophy (Faculty of Law) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) (Spring 2019). Her research focuses on immigrant integration in the European Union, discrimination against the poor, immigration law, refugee law, citizenship law, and comparative law more generally. In her Ph.D. dissertation, Sarah presents a theoretical framework for the integration process of European citizens and third-country nationals in EU law with an emphasis on how the concept of immigrant integration has evolved over time.

In 2010, Sarah graduated with a master’s degree in law from the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL). Afterwards, she worked as a lawyer at the bar of Brussels and was also a teaching assistant on the Faculty of Law at UCL. Sarah is part of various Belgian non-profit organizations for human rights, women’s rights, and migrants’ rights, and works closely with the Equality Law Clinic.

In the spring of 2015, Sarah was a visiting scholar at Berkeley Law School under the supervision of Prof. David Oppenheimer. She worked on the theoretical framework of her Ph.D. and on the question of discrimination on the grounds of poverty in the U.S. and Europe. She completed coursework (as an auditor) in anti-discrimination law, social justice, and race and American jurisprudence.

Isabelle Rorive is professor at the Law Faculty and at the Institute for European Studies of the ULB (Université libre de Bruxelles) where she teaches comparative law, non-discrimination law, legal methods and contemporary issues in mobilising fundamental rights. Since 2012, Isabelle Rorive has been the director of the Perelman Centre for Legal Philosophy. In 2014, she founded the Equality Law Clinic with Emmanuelle Bribosia with whom she is currently the Equity Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor for the diversity policy of the ULB. Isabelle Rorive pursues many of her research projects in a European or international setting. Since 2006, she has worked as an expert for what is now called the European Equality Law Network where she is part of the senior committee. In 2018, she co-edited two books: Governing Diversity. Migrant Integration and Multiculturalism in North America and Europe (ed. Université de Bruxelles), Human Rights Tectonics. Global Dynamics of Integration and Fragmentation (Intersentia, Cambridge). Isabelle Rorive has a Master degree in Law (ULB, 1994), a Master of Studies in Legal Research (University of Oxford, 1998) and a PhD in Comparative Jurisprudence (ULB, 2000). Isabelle Rorive was invited in UC, Berkeley in 2011 and 2013. In 2014, she hosted in Brussels, with Emmanuelle Bribosia, the third international conference of the Berkeley Comparative Anti-Discrimination Law Study Group, entitled «Global Challenges and New Perspectives on Equality law.»

Emmanuelle Bribosia is a full-time professor teaching European Law and Human Rights Law at Université Libre de Bruxelles – ULB (Institute for European Studies-Faculty of Law). She graduated in law (1994 – with1st Class Honours) and obtained her PhD in Law (2000, with the highest distinction – the Alice Seghers prize) at the ULB. She coordinates the Advanced Master in European Law (Master de specialisation en droit européen) and is the director of the Centre for European Law, since 2007 (Law Faculty – Institute for European Studies – Université Libre de Bruxelles – ULB). Her research activities focus on the International and European Human rights protection as well as on equality and non-discrimination law, with an emphasis on the interdisciplinary approach of these research themes. Integrated in several networks of excellence, Emmanuelle Bribosia conducts a lot of her research activity in the framework of international projects. She is also member of the European Network of legal experts in gender equality and non-discrimination and of the Berkeley Comparative Anti-Discrimination Law Study Group. In 2014, she co-founded, with Isabelle Rorive, the Equality Law Clinic based at the Perelman Centre for Legal Philosophy and at the Centre for European Law.

She went to Berkeley several times (2011 and 2013). The first time, during the fall 2011 semester, she was invited as a visiting Professor at Berkeley Law. Together with Prof. Isabelle Rorive. They delivered a lecture on « Accommodating Cultural and Religious Diversity in Europe » for faculty and students, sponsored by the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice; they jointly made a presentation on « How to address conflicts between the right to equality and other fundamental rights ? A view from Europe » within the framework of the faculty Comparative Anti-Discrimination Law Study Group; they conferred with several faculty and research scholars. In particular, it was then decided, with Prof. Oppenheimer, that ULB would be hosting and organizing the Third International Conference of the Berkeley Comparative Anti-discrimination Law Study Group in 2014 (https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/berkeley-comparative-equality-anti-discrimination-law-study-group/conference-programs/2014-brussels-conference/).

Marijke De Pauw is currently working as a legal and policy officer at Unia, the Inter-federal Centre for Equal Opportunities in Belgium. She is part of the CRPD department, an independent mechanism appointed under Article 33.2 of the CRPD to promote, protect and monitor implementation of the Convention. In addition, she is an associate postdoctoral researcher at the Fundamental Rights and Constitutionalism Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Dr. De Pauw holds a doctoral degree in law from the VUB and Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles. Dr. De Pauw visited Berkeley as a doctoral researcher in the Spring semester of 2015. During her stay, she completed her comparative research on age discrimination.