Ivo Gruev

Biography

Ivo’s research, funded by a Grand Union Scholarship (by the Economic and Social Research Council) and Merton College, focuses on the rights-protecting function of judicial review in post-authoritarian societies. His project looks at how newly created constitutional courts protect human rights, focusing on individual access to constitutional adjudication. In particular, he is studying the intricacies of the Bulgarian Constitutional Court against the background of the drafting of the 1991 (post-communist) Bulgarian Constitution in its historical and regional context. 

Ivo is the Convenor of the Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) network and former Chairperson of Oxford Pro Bono Publico (OPBP). He was the inaugural President of the Grand Union Scholars Association. He holds a law degree from the Humboldt University of Berlin and a Diploma in Legal Studies from Oxford with specialisation in European Union law, public international law, and jurisprudence. In 2015, he completed the Magister Juris at Balliol College Oxford, focusing on comparative equality law, international criminal law, and law in society.

Ivo has teaching experience in human rights law, jurisprudence, public international law, EU law and legal sociology and anthropology. He has taught for the Stanford University Bing Overseas Studies Program and the Washington International Studies Council in Oxford, and is the senior tutor on the Oxford Scholastica Academy summer school. 

He has clerked for the International Criminal Court on the Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo case, and has worked for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in New York, as a legal consultant to the German Parliament, and as a research assistant at the Humboldt University. Prior to his graduation from Humboldt, Ivo has completed an internship at the 'International Legal Cooperation and European Questions' Directorate of the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice.