Alumni of HESP ReSET project on comparative constitutional law meet in Moscow at ILPP-MSU conference

On February 2-4, 2018 the Institute of Law and Public Policy (ILPP), a long-time project partner of the Department of Legal Studies organized an international conference “25 years of Evolution of Constitutionalism in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe” together with the Law School of “Lomonosov” Moscow State University.

The speakers of the conference included leading Russian and international constitutional scholars, as well as present and former judges of the European Court of Human Rights, the Russian Constitutional Court and the German Constitutional Court. Professor Uitz presented a paper on freedom of religion and the duty of state neutrality in European human rights law. Alumni of the Department’s comparative constitutional law program, Anita Soboleva (Higher Schools of Economics, Moscow) and Svetlana Tyulkina (University of New South Wales, Sydney) were also among the participants.

As a side event, the conference brought together a sizeable group of the alumni of the HESP ReSET project “Comparative Constitutional Law: Theory and Methodology in the Context of Constitutional Reforms” (2009-2012) convened by ILLP and the Department under the leadership of Professor Uitz and Olga Sidorovich, the director of ILPP. The project aimed to support teaching and research in comparative constitutional law at Russian and fSU universities through a series of seminars and summer schools.

Alumni of the project have embarked on highly successful academic careers: Aleksandra Troitskaya is now an associate professor of constitutional law at “Lomonosov” Moscow State University, Elena Markova is lecturer and head of the LLM program at the Faculty of Law, “Lomonosov” Moscow State University, Evgeniya Gerasimova is associate professor of international and European law at the “Immanuel Kant” Baltic Federal University, Aleksey Dolzhikov is associate professor of constitutional law at St Petersburg State University, Viktor Sidorov is associate professor of political science at Kazany Federal University, while Maxim Timofeyev is now associate professor at the European Humanities University (Vilnius). Tatiana Hramova is a senior lawyer, ILPP and Olga Valueva is an advisor of vice-rector for international affairs and a leading expert on international academic programmes at Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography.

The academic network of the project continues to thrive through such activities of ILPP as the Russia-wide constitutional law moot court, organized for the seventh time in 2018. The winning team of the law faculty of Ural State Law University defended its title under the academic guidance of Marina Sedyh, an alumna of the ReSET project.