Plenary Speakers

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Jens M. Scherpe

Jens M. Scherpe

Aalborg University; Nordic Centre for Comparative and International Family Law (NorFam)

Jens is Professor of Comparative Law at Aalborg University, founding director of the Nordic Centre for Comparative and International Family Law (NorFam), Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape and an Academic Door Tenant at Queen Elizabeth Building, London. Until August 2022, he was Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Cambridge where he also founded the Cambridge Family Law Centre. He has held visiting positions i.a. at universities in Sydney, Auckland, London, Vienna, Barcelona, Padua, Leuven, Louvain-la-Neuve, Hong Kong and Melbourne.

Jens is the editor of the International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family and book series editor of the ‘Elgar Comparative Family Law Series’. In2025 he was appointed as independent expert to the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on Access to Origins and has advised law reform bodies in England, Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

Michelle Cottier

Michelle Cottier

University of Geneva

Michelle Cottier is Full Professor and Vice-Dean for Research at the Faculty of law at the University of Geneva.

Her fields of specialization include Swiss and comparative family law, sociology of law, interdisciplinarity in law, and the study of gender, sexuality and law.

Michelle Cottier has been principal investigator for the projects funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation “The practice of family law during the Covid-19 pandemic: digital justice and gender inequalities” (2023-2026), “The negotiation of divorce agreements and gender (in)equality in Switzerland (2019-2023) and “Integrity, autonomy and participation in child protection: How do children and parents experience the proceedings of Child and Adult Protection Authorities? (2018-2022).

She is the Swiss expert and member of the Coordinating Group of FL-EUR Family Law in Europe: Academic Network, a member of the expert group for the review of Swiss parentage law commissioned by the Swiss Federal Office of Justice, co-editor of the Swiss journal specialized in family law “FamPra.ch and of the German Journal of Law and Society”.

Formerly she has been an Assistant Professor at the University of Basel, a Visiting Professor at Humboldt University in Berlin and a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School as well as at the Universities of Kent, Cardiff, Keele and Utrecht.

Ellen Gordon-Bouvier

Ellen Gordon-Bouvier

Exeter University

Ellen Gordon-Bouvier is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Exeter University in the UK. Her research interests are in family law, family property, financial consequences of relationships, and domestic abuse (particularly economic abuse) and she has published widely on these topics. Ellen’s work often applies a critical theoretical lens, which includes her work on legal conceptions of ‘relational vulnerability’. Ellen’s more recent work questions how the legal system should deal with financial consequences of domestic abuse, including coerced debt. Ellen also has a background of working as a solicitor (practising lawyer) specialising in family law.
Marie-Hélène Peter-Spiess

Marie-Hélène Peter-Spiess

University of Zurich

Dr. iur. Marie-Hélène Peter-Spiess is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Zurich, as well as a research associate at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge and at Georgetown University, Washington DC, and has served as a lecturer at the University of Geneva and at Sciences Po Paris (Reims campus). Marie-Hélène studied law at the Universities of Fribourg and Zurich, and at the East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai. She was also admitted to the bar in Geneva, where she practiced as an attorney-at-law prior to her academic activities.
In her talk, Marie-Hélène will present a chapter that Alice Margaria, Professor of Law at the University of Zurich, and she cowrote: Alice Margaria and Marie-Hélène Peter-Spiess (2026). Care entlang eines Spektrums: Vaterschaft in der Rechtsprechung des EGMR. In: Michelle Cottier/Kirsten Scheiwe/Caroline Voithofer (eds), Handbuch Sorgearbeit, Sorgebeziehungen und das Recht. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-72879-6_15
Prof. Dr. iur. Alice Margaria is Assistant Professor in Law and Reproduction at the Faculty of Law, University of Zurich, Switzerland, where she also co-directs the interdisciplinary research programme Human Reproduction Reloaded. Her research lies at the intersection of family law, legal gender studies, human rights law, and law and anthropology. She has published widely on parenthood, reproduction, and care, with a particular focus on fatherhood and queer families. Her work combines doctrinal analysis with qualitative empirical research to examine what law does to families and the extent to which it recognises—or fails to recognise—their lived experiences.
Nazlı Selek

Nazlı Selek

NSN LAW FIRM

She is one of the founding partners of NSN LAW FIRM. She has been practicing maritime law since 1995. She is a gradute of Istanbul University, Faculty of Law and completed her LLM in Yeditepe University in Istanbul. Her LLM thesis is “ Salvage under Turkish Commercial Code” and such thesis has been published as a book. Her areas of expertise in maritime law consists of marine pollutions, salvage and wreck removals, fires on board, charter party disputes, cargo claims and crew claims. She has handled major casualties occurred at the Bosphorus, Dardanelles, Izmir and Iskenderun. She is currently performing her PhD in Piri Reis University on “ Pollutions arising from vessel fuels”.

She is a member of Turkish Maritime Lawyers Association, a member of the executive committee of WISTA INTERNATIONAL and WILAT / CILT.