Visiting Fellows
About
The visiting fellows programme is designed to facilitate intellectual exchange between our members and the wider academic community. The scheme accommodates junior scholars who wish to spend a period of time in Lucerne pursuing work that overlaps with or otherwise complements scholarly activities currently being pursued at the institute. During their stay, fellows enjoy access to our specialist resources, and are invited to share and develop their ideas under the supervision of one or more of our faculty.
Tailored to PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers, the programme is open to all working critically, theoretically and innovatively at the intersections between law, the humanities and the social sciences. A leading aim of the scheme is to foster conversations that cut across borders both geographic and disciplinary. We strongly believe that the academic and international diversity of our fellows greatly enriches the intellectual life of the institute.
Fellowship at a Glance
Visiting fellows are provided with workspace at the university, some administrative support, a fixed stipend for accommodation and living costs, and economy travel to and from Lucerne.
During the period of their visit, fellows are invited to contribute fully to the intellectual life of the institute by participating in our programme of workshops, seminars, reading groups and colloquia. They are encouraged to interact with all our members, including our own PhD and postdoctoral researchers, and are invited to take advantage of activities on offer across the university.
It is expected that fellows are resident in Lucerne for the duration of their stay. Upon completion of their visit, fellows are requested to submit a short report of their experiences.
Self-Funded Fellowships
Applications for self-funded fellowships at the institute are accepted and assessed on a rolling basis. The scheme runs in parallel to the funded visiting fellows programme and is open to PhD candidates and postdocs who wish to make a genuine contribution to the research environment at the institute. Please note that our ability to accommodate self-funded fellows is dependent on the availability of resources at any given time.
Enquiries
Enquiries about possibilities for visiting the institute as a fellow are welcome at all times. Please contact Dr. Steven Howe (steven.howe@unilu.ch).
Fellows 2025

Sabarish Suresh is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. He works on law and humanities, legal history, constitutional law, and critical theory. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the Law and History Review, the International Journal of Law in Context, Law, Culture and the Humanities, Law and Literature, the Elgar Research Handbook in Law and Literature, the Cambridge Handbook of Law, Literature, and Postcolonialism, and Seminar. Sabarish is currently working on a book, tentatively titled Cartojuridism: Law, Cartography, and Jurisdiction in Colonial India, which will present a historical examination of how cartography and law were intricately linked in colonial India. In addition to the book project on cartography, Sabarish is working on another book, based on his doctoral thesis, titled The Trauma of the Indian Constitution: Partition and Repetition, forthcoming with the Edinburgh University Press.
Sabarish earned his JSD at the Benjamin N Cardozo School of Law, New York, with a thesis that was awarded the 2023 Julien Mezey Dissertation Prize by the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities (LCH) and the 2022 Jacob Burns Medal by Cardozo Law. He has held visiting positions at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Frankfurt, and the National Law School of India University, Bangalore.

Alessandro Volpi is a researcher in legal and political philosophy, with an approach that focuses on the intersections of these disciplines. His current research examines the relationship between constitutionalism and populism in contemporary democracies through the lens of modern political and legal thought. During the research period at lucernaiuris, he will focus on the relevance of Carl Schmitt's political theology and constitutional theory in understanding the foundational elements of the constitutional vision of populism. This work is grounded in the idea that the tensions arising from populist phenomena in contemporary democracies are deeply rooted in the structure of modern political and legal systems. This perspective also informed his doctoral research, which examined the political ontology and conceptual framework of Ernesto Laclau’s post-foundational theory of populism and 'the political'.
Alessandro earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Philosophy from the University of Bologna, during which he spent a semester at the Complutense University of Madrid. He completed his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Law at the University of Salerno and was a Visiting Ph.D. Student at the University of Freiburg (Germany). In 2024, he held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies in Naples.
Applications 2026
The next application round for 2026 fellowships will open in July 2025. Please check back for further details.
Previous Fellows
2024: Veronica Pecile, Lana K. Gotvan
2023: Cody Rei-Anderson, Péter Techet
2022: Lisa Stuckey, Cristiano Moita
2021: Laura Knöpfel, Nicole Karam (postponed due to covid)
2020: Alexander Damianos, Fernando Tagle
2019: Paolo Do, Laura Petersen, Amadou Sow
2018: Michael Monterossi, Justine Poon
2017: Matthew Birkhold, Tze Ping Lim
2016: Jan Broulik, Georg Grünstäudl
2015: Kyriaki Pavlidou
2014: Mariavittoria Catanzariti
2013: Alberto Ghibellini