Professor Marta Pertegás Sender

Marta Pertegás (Lic. Iur. Barcelona; LL.M. and Ph.D. Leuven; Dr. h.c. Lund) holds professorial positions at the Faculties of Law of Maastricht University (The Netherlands) and the University of Antwerp (Belgium). Since 2021, she is an Adjunct Professor at IE Madrid (Spain).  

At Maastricht University, she currently serves as one of the two Directors of M-EPLI (Maastricht European Private Law Institute). She has extensively researched, lectured, and published on international dispute resolution, the private International Law of the European Union, and the work of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. Her recent publications are available here. Through projects commissioned by the European Commission, such as FAMIMOVE or PAX, she aims to raise awareness of uniform private international law and foster transnational exchanges beyond academia.  

Prof. Pertegás was a member of the Bar of Barcelona and Brussels between 1998 and 2008 and worked as of counsel for Brussels-based law firms, in combination with her academic positions. She also served as a Diplomat-Lawyer at the Hague Conference on Private International Law between 2008 and 2017.

Professor Susan Rutten

Prof. Susan Rutten (1960) is Professor of Islamic Family Law in a European Context at Maastricht University, Faculty of Law (the Netherlands). She has developed long-term research expertise in the area of Islamic Family Law and family issues amongst ethnic and religious minorities in the Netherlands and Europe. In this field, she coordinated various research projects. More specific, her research focusses on religious and cultural diversity in the field of marriage (i.a. religious marriages and child marriages), divorce, issues surrounding children and Islamic family law, including transnational family law and including human rights. She is the Chair of the Association for the Study of Islamic Law and Law of the Middle East (RIMO) in the Netherlands, member of the Dutch State Committee for Private International Law, and in the past has acted as a substitute Judge at the Court of Appeal (Family Law Chamber) in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (the Netherlands).

Professor Thalia Kruger

Thalia Kruger is a professor of private international law at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. She teaches private international law, international family law, and international commercial transactions. She also teaches at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and is a senior research associate at the University of Johannesburg. Her research interests cover the places of weak or marginalised groups in international family law, international procedural law and international contracts. She is a member of the Research Group Law and Development, which allows her to regard private international law from the perspectives of public international law and human rights. She is participating and has participated in several European research projects in the fields of private international law, including on international child abduction, international parenthood and international procedural law. She is a co-organiser of Pax, a moot court on private international law for students. She has acted as expert for legislation in progress at the European Commission and the European Parliament and as a consultant for the Hague Conference on Private International Law. She has also advised the Belgian legislator, and cooperates with the Belgian Council for Justice on the publication of case law.

Professor Orsolya Szeibert

Orsolya Szeibert is Professor of Law at Eötvös Lorand (ELTE) University in Budapest (Hungary). She is currently Chair Professor of Civil Law Department of Faculty of Law. Her main research field is family law and children’s rights. She is the professional leader of the LLM course on family law, LLM course on children’s rights (ELTE) and has been involved in several international, European and national family law projects (among others Hungarian expert of CEFL, Hungarian Member of Academic Network on Family Law in Europe – FL-EUR). She is expert member of the Child Rights NGO Coalition on the Rights of the Child which was founded on the initiative of the UNICEF National Committee for Hungary in 2015 and editor of both the most prestigious Hungarian legal journal (Jurisprudential Bulletin) and the only Hungarian journal on family law (Family Law Review). She contributed to EU project such as C.L.A.S.S.4EU (JUST-JTRA-EJTR-AG-2016) and FAMIMOVE (JUST-2022-JCOO) and won a Jean Monnet teaching Module in 2024 on Children’s Rights in EU Law and Policies.

Professor Ellen Desmet

Ellen Desmet complemented her law studies (KU Leuven) with a master in Cultures and Development Studies (KU Leuven) and a master in Development Cooperation (Ghent University). She holds a PhD in Law from the KU Leuven (2010) and previously held positions at the Children’s Rights Knowledge Centre, the Law and Development Research Group of the University of Antwerp and the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University. 

Ellen Desmet is an Associate Professor of Migration Law at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University, where she founded the Migration Law Research Group (MigrLaw). Her research is situated at the intersection of migration law, human rights and legal anthropology, with a focus on asylum and family reunification.

She serves as co-chair of the Human Rights Research Network (HRRN), chair of the Belgian Refugee Council – NANSEN, and steering board member of the Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR). She is editor of the International Encyclopaedia for Migration Law, and affiliated to the Human Rights Centre (HRC), the consortium Crime, Criminology and Criminal Policy (CCCP) and the Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute (GRILI).

Professor Ulf Maunsbach

Ulf Maunsbach is professor of private international law at Lund University (Sweden) and in that capacity he is head of private international law at the faculty, with a responsibility to engage in research, PhD supervision and teaching on bachelor and advanced level in all areas of private international law. During recent years he has been engaged in several cross-European research activities within the area of international family law (including FAMIMOVE 2.0) and is now engaged in the FAMIMOVE 3.0 project to contribute to the goals and objectives of this project.

Lina Rönndahl

Lina Rönndahl is a lawyer specializing in family law and has many years of experience in assisting clients in legal matters relating to the various stages of family life. Her work includes, among other things, custody, residence and access, division of property, divorce and inheritance law. During her studies at Lund University, she worked as a legal assistant, which has given her a strong foundation in both legal theory and practical application. During recent years, she has also been engaged in several cross-European research activities within the area of international family law (including EU Fams II and FAMIMOVE 2.0) and she is now engaged in the FAMIMOVE 3.0 project.

Professor Carlos Esplugues Mota

Carlos Esplugues Mota (LLM Harvard, MSc Edinburgh, PhD Valencia) is a Professor of Private International Law at the University of Valencia (Spain). Former president of the Spanish Association of Professors of International Law, he serves as Spain’s delegate to UNCITRAL’s WGII and is a member of various legislative committees in the EU. With over 600 publications in the fields of Private International Law and International Trade Law he is one of the leading authors on those topics in Spain and Latin America.

Assistant Professor Maria González Marimón

María González Marimón is an assistant professor of Private International Law at the University of Valencia. Her field of research is EU Private International Law in family matters. In particular, her main line of research is the protection of children’s rights and the best interest of the child principle in EU cross-border family proceedings. More broadly, she is interested in the situation of vulnerable persons involved in cross-border situations, studying Private International Law from a Human Rights approach.

Professor Fabienne Jault-Seseke

She is a Law Professor at the University of Paris Saclay (Versailles Saint-Quentin). Since 2021 she is Senior Member of the Institut universitaire de France. Her research focuses on Private International Law and Migration Law. She authored numerous publications in these fields. She coordinated two Studies for the European Parliament related to Private International Law and Migration of Children: Children on the Move a Private International Law aspect (2017). She is Member of the GEDIP (European Group for Private International Law) where she coordinates the Project on Codification. She is vice-President of the French Branch of the ILA (International Law Association).