Scientific Advisory Board

Paulus Albertus Blokker holds a Ph.D. from the European University Institute. Currently, he is full professor in Political Sociology, department of Sociology and Economic Law, University of Bologna. Until 2018, he was associate professor and Jean Monnet Chair in European Political Sociology, and programme director of the MA programme Sociology in European Context, at the Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University, Prague. Paul Blokker graduated in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam (1997).

His research interests include the sociology of constitutional law and of human rights, constitutional change, constitutional and political imaginaries, civic participation, and populism, in particular (but not only) in the context of East-Central Europe. He is a member of the International Editorial Board of the European Journal of Social Theory, co-editor of International Journal of Social Imaginaries (Brill), co-editor in the book series Imagianries and Imagination (SUNY Press), and member of the International Editorial Board for Partecipazione e Conflitto/Participation and Conflict (FrancoAngeli).

Giuseppe Martinico is a Full Professor of Comparative Public Law at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, where he also serves as co-director of the Sant’Anna Legal Studies programme. Prior to joining the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies he was García Pelayo Fellow at the Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales (CEPC), Madrid, and Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence.

He is also a member of the International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL) and the ICON Society, among others. He is a Member of the International Advisory Board of the Centre for Constitutions in Context of the University of Warwick.

Christina Murray is currently living in Oxford, UK. She is Professor Emeritus at the University of Cape Town and a visiting fellow at Kellogg College, Oxford. From 2014 to 2024, she served as a senior member of the Mediation Support Standby Team of the United Nations’ Department of Political and Peacemaking Affairs with a focus on constitutions and power-sharing. In this position she provided support to peace-making and constitution-making processes in many countries, including Sudan and South Sudan, Yemen, Papua New Guinea (in relation to Bougainville), The Gambia, Tunisia, Libya, Chile and Somalia.

Prof Murray's first experience in constitution-making was as a member of the panel of seven experts that advised the South African Constitutional Assembly in drafting South Africa's 'final' Constitution between 1994 and 1996. After that, she advised a number of South African government departments on the implementation of the new system of multi-level government and worked with South Africa's national Parliament and many of its nine provincial legislatures. Between February 2009 and October 2010, Christina Murray served as a member of the Kenyan Committee of Experts appointed by the Kenyan Parliament to draft a new Constitution of Kenya. That Constitution became law in Kenya on 27 August 2010. In 2012, she served as a member of the Constitution Commission of Fiji.

Prof Murray has taught and written on human rights law (particularly relating to gender equality, violence against women, constitutional rights for women and African customary law), international law, and constitutional law (including systems of government, multilevel government, fiscal federalism and traditional leadership).

Erin Ryan is the Elizabeth C. and Clyde W. Atkinson Professor and Associate Dean for Environmental Programs at the Florida State University College of Law, overseeing the FSU Center for Environmental, Energy, and Land Use Law. She specializes in federalism, environmental and natural resources law, water law, property and land use, and negotiation, and was recognized in 2022 with a university-wide teaching award for Innovation in Teaching. In the fall of 2026, she joins the faculty at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

Ryan has presented widely in the United States, Europe, and Asia, including the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, the National Association of Attorneys General, the United States Forest Service, and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. She has advised National Sea Grant multilevel governance studies involving Chesapeake Bay and consulted with multiple institutions on developing sustainability programs. She is the author of over fifty scholarly works and twenty-five others, including Federalism and the Tug of War Within (Oxford, 2012). She has lectured at leading universities and government agencies in China, India, Japan, Vietnam, Israel, England, Northern Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, and Australia.

Ryan is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and has practiced environmental, land use, and local government law in San Francisco. She began her academic career at the College of William & Mary in 2004, joined the faculty at the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis & Clark College in 2011, and moved to Florida State in 2015. Ryan served as a Fulbright Scholar in China, where she taught American law, studied Chinese governance, and lectured throughout the country. In 2019, she was selected as a Research Fellow by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich and spent the summer in residence there. Prior to law school, Ryan served as a U.S. Forest Service ranger on the Mono Lake District of the Inyo National Forest, east of Yosemite National Park. She graduated from Harvard College with a degree in East Asian Languages and Civilizations and received a Master’s degree in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University.