The Institute for Transnational Law is pleased to announced the arrival of the 2021-2022 MD Anderson Fellows in Transnational Law. The Fellows include Fulbright students from Honduras, India, Nepal, and Ukraine. They also include a German judge. The MD Anderson Fellows Program is made possible through generous funding from the MD Anderson Foundation.
Research Fellows
Rafael Jerez Moreno is a Fulbright grantee from Honduras. He received his first law degree from the National Autonomous University of Honduras. He currently serves as a researcher at the Observatory of Political Reforms in Latin America. He has published a number of articles and books on human rights, democracy, and transparency. At Texas Law, he is completing an LL.M. in Latin American and International Law.
Apurba KC is a lawyer from Nepal, currently pursuing an LL.M. in US Law for Foreign Lawyers, with a Fulbright Scholarship. Her interests lay in supporting employees and migrant worker access protections under labor and employment law; enabling local government to fulfill their mandate relevant to this effect. Before attending Texas Law, she worked at People Forum for Human Rights, where she provided legal aid to returnee Nepali migrant workers in accessing remedies against wage theft, fraud, and other adverse impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic; and liaised with Nepali embassies in destination countries for the same.
Having completed four legal internships, Kseniia Kolontai started her full-time legal career at the Kyiv office of Baker McKenzie law firm, specializing in zoning, real estate, and environmental issues. As a Baker McKenzie Associate, she took part in the World Bank project supporting the development of Ukrainian legislation on monitoring, reporting, and verification of GHG emissions. After that, as a Senior Legal Counsel of the Association of Gas Producers of Ukraine, she participated in the development of numerous draft legal acts related to oil and gas production. At Texas Law, she is pursuing an LL.M. in Global Energy and Environmental Law. She is also honored with the Fulbright Award and Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation Scholarship for the 2021-2022 academic year.
Abdul Wadud Al Aman is an LL.M. candidate at the University of Texas School of Law, where he is studying Human Rights and Comparative Constitutional Law. Prior to this, he has been a lawyer in the Indian state of Assam for 10 years. He has worked extensively to defend Indian citizens who have been arbitrarily denationalized. In 2019, he co-founded an organization called Justice and Liberty Initiative, which petitioned the Indian Supreme Court to release more than 350 detainees from detention centers. Through his LL.M., he wants to explore how citizenship is treated in different constitutional settings.
Foreign Judge Fellow
After passing her second Exam in December 2009, Petra Wollwert started working at the district court of Cologne in April 2010. During her three-year period of being a probationary judge, she worked at the district court of Cologne, but also at the local court of Cologne. During that time, she dealt with condominium ownership disputes, traffic law disputes, construction disputes, and general civil law claims. She received my life tenure in May 2013 and decided to stay at the local court of Cologne. Since than she worked for another three years in the field of traffic law disputes and general civil law claims. From 2016 to 2019, she was a criminal judge, focusing on traffic offenses and traffic law infractions. Starting 2020 until the beginning of the LL.M. in US Law for Foreign Lawyers, she worked in the field of guardianship law.