Visiting Professorships Spring Semester 2026

Prof. Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov is Professor of Law, Head of the BIU Lab for Law, Data-Science and Digital Ethics and co-director of the dual degree program in law and political science at Bar Ilan University Faculty of Law. He serves as General Editor of the international journal The Theory and Practice of Legislation, member of the Executive Board of the International Association of Legislation and Co-Chair of the Israeli Association of Legislation. He also serves as member of the Executive Board of the University’s Data-Science Institute and Senior Fellow at the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on Digital Governance (DIGOV).

Before joining Bar Ilan, Prof. Bar-Siman-Tov was an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School in New York. He has previously served as a senior law clerk for Justice Dorit Beinisch at the Supreme Court of Israel, and as research assistant to Professor Menahem Elon, former deputy Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel. Prof. Bar-Siman-Tov obtained his J.S.D. and LL.M. (summa cum laude - James Kent Scholar) from Columbia Law School, where he was Fulbright Scholar, Fischman Scholar, and Morris Fellow. He received his LL.B., magna cum laude, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Prof. Bar-Siman-Tov received multiple awards, including, among others, the Giandomenico Majone Prize, awarded by the European Consortium for Political Research’s Standing Group on Regulatory Governance; the Gorney Prize for Outstanding Research in Public Law, awarded by the Israeli Association of Public Law; the Cheshin Prize for Academic Excellence in Law; the Rector Prize for Scientific Innovation; and the University Award for Excellence in Teaching. He also received numerous research grants, including, inter alia, from the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (GIF); the Israel Science Foundation (ISF); the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST); the Volkswagen Foundation; the Israel Institute; the National Institute for Health Policy Research; and the Fulbright program. Prof. Bar-Siman-Tov was also named one of the Most Inspiring Professors in Israel by The National Union of Israeli Students.

Prof. Bar-Siman-Tov's research areas include legisprudence, parliamentary studies, legislation and regulation; constitutional law and constitutional theory; and law and data science/ artificial intelligence. His scholarship has been published, inter alia, in the Georgetown Law Journal; Boston University Law Review; William & Marry Law Review; Political Studies; American Journal of Comparative Law; International Journal of Constitutional Law; and Regulation & Governance. He also edited two books, most recenly "Comparative Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Omnibus Legislation" (Springer Nature's Legisprudence Library, 2021), and four special issues.

Prof. Tommaso Beggio is Associate Professor (Professore Associato) of Roman Law and Ancient Legal Systems at the Faculty of Law of the University of Trento, and in 2024 he obtained the Habilitation as Full Professor (Professore Ordinario). After receiving his PhD in Law (Dr. iur.) from the University of Pavia in 2012 (doctoral dissertation: "Aspetti del cosiddetto Senatus consultum de sumptibus ludorum gladiatorum minuendis"), he held a position as a postdoctoral researcher (2013–2017) in the European Research Council (ERC)–funded project Reinventing the Foundations of European Legal Culture, 1934–1964 (Principal Investigator: Professor Dr. Kaius Tuori) at the University of Helsinki. Within this research project, he conducted a study on the legal historian Paul Koschaker and on the role of Roman law under National Socialism and in Europe after the end of the Second World War. During the project, he spent a one‑year research stay (2015–2016) at the University of Heidelberg.

In 2018, he was selected— as the only jurist of his cohort — by the Rita Levi Montalcini Programme ("Rientro dei Cervelli") – art. 4 of the 2016 Call (D.M. 19 December 2016 No. 992). His research project "Per un nuovo studio della fenomenologia della pena capitale nel mondo romano / A New Study on the Phenomenology of Capital Punishment in the Roman World" (project number: 40103233) was funded for three years by this programme. At the same time, within the framework of this programme, he obtained a position as Ricercatore at the Faculty of Law of the University of Trento.

On 11 November 2020, he received the Habilitation as Associate Professor (Professore Associato) of Roman Law and Ancient Legal Systems (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale – settore concorsuale 12/H1 Diritto romano e Diritti dell’Antichità) with unanimous approval, and he was appointed to the Chair of Roman Law and Ancient Legal Systems at the Faculty of Law of the University of Trento. On 7 March 2025, he also received the Habilitation as Full Professor (Professore Ordinario) of Roman Law and Ancient Legal Systems, again unanimously.

Since 2011, he has spent annual research stays in Germany, especially at the Universities of Heidelberg, Cologne, Mainz, and Marburg.

His research interests include Roman law and its legacy in European legal history, Roman criminal law, Roman civil and criminal procedure, legal epigraphy, and the history of scholarship on Roman law.

He has published three monographs:
"Paul Koschaker (1879–1951). Rediscovering the Roman Foundations of European Legal Tradition", Heidelberg 2018;
"Contributo allo studio della ‘servitus poenae’", Bari 2020;
"Auctoramentum e traditio gladiatorum. Profili privatistici della gladiatura nell’antica Roma", Naples 2024.

He is the editor of the following volumes:
"Methodenfragen der Romanistik im Wandel. Paul Koschakers Vermächtnis 80 Jahre nach seiner Krisenschrift", Tübingen 2020, edited together with Dr. Aleksander Grebieniow;
"Crimini e pene nell'evoluzione politico-istituzionale dell'antica Roma. Atti del convegno internazionale di diritto romano. Trento 5–6 giugno 2019", Bari 2023, edited together with Prof. Dr. Massimo Miglietta and Dr. Dr. Filippo Bonin;
"The Teaching of Roman Law in the 20th Century: Challenges and Perspectives", online, 2024, edited together with Prof. Dr. Paul du Plessis;
"Lo studio dei papiri nei rivolgimenti metodologici della romanistica tra il 1860 e il 1960", Naples 2024, edited together with Prof. Dr. Christian Baldus, Dr. Dr. Filippo Bonin, and Prof. Dr. Massimo Miglietta;
"La repressione criminale tra Roma e le province", edited together with Dr. Dr. Filippo Bonin and Prof. Dr. Massimo Miglietta;
"Emilio Betti e il mondo culturale di lingua tedesca", in press, edited together with Prof. Dr. Cristina Vano.

Prof. Katharina Pistor has taught at Columbia Law School in New York since 2001. Her teaching and research focus on financial and corporate law, as well as on the role of law in social and economic development. After concentrating early in her career on the transformation of formerly socialist countries, she increasingly turned her attention to the legal foundations of capitalist economic systems. Her publications include "The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality" (Suhrkamp, 2020) and "The Law of Capitalism and How to Transform It" (Yale University Press, 2025).

Prof. Olaf Zenker is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Department for Anthropology and Philosophy at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. His research focuses on political and legal anthropology with a particular emphasis on justice, inequality, land reform, the rule of law, normative pluralities, postliberal affordances, postcolonial statehood, and bureaucracy in South Africa and other regions shaped by profound social change. He has conducted long-term ethnographic research in South Africa as well as in Northern Ireland and Germany, examining how contested political values, institutional frameworks, and legal practices shape contemporary forms of governance and belonging.

His recent publications include Reckoning with Law in Excess: Mobilization, Confrontation, Refusal (Cambridge University Press, 2025), Beyond Expropriation Without Compensation: Law, Land Reform and Redistributive Justice in South Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2024), and The Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology (Oxford University Press, 2022). He has also recently co-edited the special issues Justice in the Anthropocene (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie | Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology, 2024) and Collaborations and Contestations in Publicly Engaged Anthropologies (Public Anthropologist, 2023).

At Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, he is the convenor of the annual ANTON WHILHEM AMO LECTURES, and the editor of the eponymous open-access series (Universitätsverlag Halle-Wittenberg).