Blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law

Introducing the 2022 ICONnect Columnists

David Landau, Florida State University College of Law

The editors of ICONnect are very pleased to announce our new slate of columnists for 2022, whose work has already started appearing on the blog: Mariana Velasco-Rivera, Maartje De Visser, Shamshad Pasarlay, and Bryan Dennis G. Tiojanco. We are certain that they will provide a diverse and fascinating set of voices for our readers, representing a range of regional and substantive areas of focus.

We would also like to give thanks and express appreciation for our outgoing 2021 columnists — Mara Malagodi, Berihun Adugna Gebeye, Armi Bayot, Juliano Zaiden Benvindo. We are grateful to each of these terrific scholars for agreeing to serve as columnists last year, and we know you will agree that they added an extraordinary amount to the blog.

The format of the columns is the same as in prior years. The goal is to provide ICONnect with regular contributors who have a distinctive voice and unique perspective on public law. Columns, while scholarly in accordance with the tone of the blog and about the same length as a normal blog post, are a bit more “op-ed” in nature than standard posts. Each columnist will produce one column roughly every two months.

Although we expect that many of our readers already know their work, we append brief bios for each of our new columnists below. Please join us in welcoming them to ICONnect!

Mariana Velasco-Rivera is an Assistant Professor in Law at the National University of Ireland Maynooth (Maynooth University). Before joining Maynooth University, Mariana was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Chair of Comparative Constitutionalism held by Professor Ran Hirschl at the University of Göttingen, Germany (2019-2021) and an Emile Noël Fellow at NYU School of Law (2020-2021). She holds a JSD and an LLM from Yale Law School. Mariana’s research interests are in the field of public law, specifically, constitutional law, comparative constitutional law and constitutional theory. In her research, she explores the relationship between constitutionalism, constitutional design and democracy and how political norms and practices shape legal institutions. Her past, current and forthcoming work has appeared in top law journals and publishing houses such as the International Journal of Constitutional Law, Cambridge University Press and Hart. Mariana is also a Co-Editor of the IACL Blog.

Maartje De Visser is an Associate Professor of Law at the Yong Pung How School of Law and Office of Core Curriculum, SMU (Singapore). She received her PhD from Tilburg University, and also holds an MJur from Oxford University and an LL from Maastricht University. Her research is centred around two broad themes: constitutional engagement by courts and non-judicial actors; and transnational judicial dialogues and networking. She further has an abiding interest in studying the operationalisation of global constitutional norms at the national level, as well as in comparative methodology and pedagogy. Maartje is the author of Constitutional Review in Europe – A Comparative Analysis (Hart Publishing, 2014) and her work has appeared in several international journals, including Global Constitutionalism, the American Journal of Comparative Law and the Asian Journal of Law and Society, as well as in numerous edited volumes. Maartje is a member of the editorial board of the Hart Studies in Constitutional Theory series and of the European Yearbook of Constitutional Law. She is a founding co-chair of the Singapore Chapter of ICON-S. 

Shamshad Pasarlay is a consultant at the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law. Previously, he was a lecturer at Herat University School of Law and Political Science in Afghanistan and a visiting research fellow at the Center for Asian Legal Studies, National University of Singapore. He teaches and researches in the areas of constitutionalism, law and religion; institutional engineering in divided societies; Islamic law and courts; and Islamic constitutionalism with a focus on Afghanistan. His publications have appeared in several peer-reviewed journals including the Asian Journal of Comparative Law, Michigan State International Law Journal, Washington International Law Journal, Australian Journal of Asian Law, and Ynonsei Law Journal. He was also the founding member of the Afghanistan Constitutional Studies Institute. He received his BA in Islamic studies from Kabul University and an LLM and PhD in comparative constitutionalism from the University of Washington School of Law. Shamshad has been a regular contributor to I-CONNect blog since 2014.

Bryan Dennis G. Tiojanco is a project associate professor of transnational law at the University of Tokyo and an academic fellow at the National University of Singapore Centre for Asian Legal Studies. He holds JSD (2018) and LLM (2014) degrees from Yale Law School and a JD (cum laude, 2009) from the University of the Philippines.

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