Welcome to the Bonavero Institute's Research Visitors for Michaelmas Term 2026

Christopher Roberts is an Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on the evolution of public law, human and workers’ rights, labour coercion and the nature of the state in the British Empire and on the international level, with a particular focus on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

While at the Institute, he will be working on a book on the history of the idea of development in the British Empire between the late nineteenth century and the Second World War, and related labour law reforms. 

Clive Baldwin is Senior Legal Advisor for the legal and policy office at Human Rights Watch, where he has been working on issues of international law since 2007. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Baldwin was a practicing lawyer in London for the human rights law firm, Bindman and Partners, and worked on European human rights litigation at the AIRE Centre.

While at the Institute, he will be conducting research in his personal capacity, independently of his work with Human Rights Watch. He will be examining atrocities committed under British imperial rule from 1800 to the present day, and why none have been prosecuted as crimes. 

Ryan Liss is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. His research focuses on public international law (including international human rights law, international criminal law, and international humanitarian law) and criminal law, examining the ways in which human rights construct and constrain state power in both areas. 

During his time at the Bonavero Institute, Liss will be working on his forthcoming book on the history and theory of international criminal law, which is under contract with Oxford University Press. 

Justice Preston is the Chief Judge of the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales. Prior to being appointed in November 2005, he was a senior counsel practising primarily in New South Wales in environmental, planning, administrative and property law. He has lectured in post-graduate environmental law for over 30 years. He is the author of Australia’s first book on environmental litigation and 176 articles, book chapters and reviews on environmental law, administrative and criminal law. 

While at the Institute, he will be researching the correlative duties to the right to a healthy environment, including a right to a safe and stable climate. 

Ahmed Rashwan is a judge at the North Cairo Court of First Instance, where he sits in the civil circuits. Before his appointment to the bench, he spent more than six years as a public prosecutor, serving in several district offices in Cairo and in the Supreme Financial Crimes Prosecution at the Office of the Prosecutor General. His interests span human rights law, constitutional law and theory, law and religion, Middle Eastern legal history, jurisprudence, and criminal law. 

While at the Institute, he will examine the rule under which Egyptian courts apply Islamic law, by default, to divorce between Christians of different denominations, and the questions of judicial interpretation, constitutional rights, and non-discrimination on grounds of religion it raises. 

Dr. Ulaş Karan serves as an associate professor of constitutional law at Istanbul Bilgi University's Faculty of Law. His scholarly work is on constitutional law and the safeguarding of fundamental rights, emphasising equality and non-discrimination, as well as freedom of expression, assembly, and association, alongside the rights of marginalised groups. Utilising both comparative and international viewpoints, his research investigates the reception, resistance, and transformation of standards established by the European Court of Human Rights and other regional and United Nations entities within national legal frameworks, with Turkey as a focal point. 

At the Institute, he will be conducting research on competition law and constitutional protections.