David Trubek

David Trubek is Voss-Bascom Professor of Law and Dean of International Studies Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Senior Global Fellow at the FGV Law School, Sao Paulo. He has worked on globalization, law and lawyers and currently is studying resistance to authoritarianism in several countries.

Fabio de Sa e Silva

Fabio de Sa e Silva is Associate Professor of International Studies and the Wick Cary Professor of Brazilian Studies at the University of Oklahoma and an affiliated fellow of Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession. Currently, Fabio is one of the conveners of the Project on Autocratic Legalism (PAL), an LSA International Research Collaborative that is designing comparative research on how rising autocrats in Brazil, India, and South Africa use law to amass power and what can be done to stop their moves.

Leigha Crout

Leigha Crout is a Rule of Law Fellow at Stanford Law School and a William H. Hastie Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Her work on constitutional law, theory, and authoritarianism in China has been published in several books and law reviews as well as the popular press. She received her J.D. and LL.M. magna cum laude from Notre Dame Law School and her masters from Cornell University, and is a PhD candidate at King’s College London.

Wisconsin webpage

Mohsin Alam Bhat

Mohsin Bhat is a Lecturer in Law (Assistant Professor) at Queen Mary University of London and focusses broadly on constitutional law and minority rights from socio-legal perspectives. His current interest is in studying the implications of democratic decline for minority citizenship and the rule of law, in India and comparatively. His recent papers on the subject have analyzed how ethno-nationalist authoritarianism in India involves embedding majoritarianism in everyday socio-legal practices, and how its institutionalisation has resulted in insidious legitimisation of systematic extra-legal state violence against the country’s minorities. He is actively involved in civil liberties work in India, including as an editor of the Article 14 and the co-founder of the legal aid initiative Parichay.

QMUL faculty page

Natasha Lindstaedt

Natasha Lindstaedt is a Professor of Government at the University of Essex where she teaches on Authoritarianism, Democracy, State Failure, Violent Non-State Actors and Development. Her most recent research focuses on authoritarian regimes, democratic backsliding and authoritarian nostalgia.

Octavio Ferraz

Professor Octavio Ferraz is a Professor of Law. He holds an LLB and MPhil in Law (University of São Paulo), an MA in Medical Ethics & Law (King's College London, prize Benjamin Geijsen) and a PhD in Law (University College London). Before joining King's he was a senior research officer to the UN special rapporteur for the right to health, Professor Paul Hunt, at the University of Essex, and then moved to Warwick Law School, where he was an Assistant and then an Associate Professor for 8 years. Before moving to academia, he practiced law in Sao Paulo, Brazil, mostly in the fields of corporate public law and medical law for over ten years. He is still a member of the Brazilian Bar and contributes regularly to the Brazilian press.

Raquel Pimenta

Raquel Pimenta is Professor of Law at the FGV Law School (Sao Paulo), where she co-directs the Center for Law and Political Economy (NUDEP) where she leads the Project on Autocratic Legalism (PAL) and the research consortium “Politicians, Policies and Reproduction of Wealth”. She holds a PhD in Economic Law and Political Economy from the University of Sao Paulo (USP) Law School, and she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to research at Yale Law School.

Richard Abel

Richard Abel will publish (with Routledge) three books on autocracy and resistance in the US in early 2024: How Autocrats Seek Power; How Autocrats Abuse Power; and How Autocrats Attack Expertise. He is preparing a fourth book (also Routledge) for publication in 2025: How Autocrats Are Held Accountable.

Sofia Bordin Rolim

PhD candidate at the Fundação Getulio Vargas São Paulo School of Law. Researcher at the Center for Law and Political Economy (NUDEP/FGV).