Role: Doctoral Candidate, Department of Law of the European University Institute
Florence, Italy

  Contact: alice.margaria@eui.eu

  Research Interests:
Human Rights

Alice Margaria is a PhD candidate at the Department of Law of the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). Her current research investigates how human rights tools have been employed to adjust outmoded legal concepts to evolving family forms and practices. More specifically, her doctoral thesis considers and critically analyses how the jurisprudential activity of the European Court of Human Rights has contributed to outlining the contours of the rights and responsibilities of fatherhood.

Prior to starting her doctoral studies, Margaria obtained an LL.M. with distinction in Human Rights at University College London (2009-2010). Her master’s dissertation focused on the implications of the legal institutionalisation of anonymous birth on the child’s right to know about his or her origins. The core arguments of her dissertation have been published in a journal-article: “Who and What is a Mother? Maternity, Responsibility and Liberty” (co-written with Prof. Michael Freeman, LL.M. supervisor) Theoretical Inquiries in Law 13(1) 2012, pp. 153-178.

Margaria is a reporter on Italy for Oxford Reports on International Law in Domestic Courts (‘ILDC’), a Oxford University Press online database which covers international law as applied in the domestic courts of around 70 different jurisdictions. Margaria’s recent ILDC reports include: Headnote, MML v Office of the Public Prosecutor at the Court of Appeal of Genoa and Office of the Public Prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, Dispute concerning single parent adoption, Italian Supreme Court of Cassation, 1st Civil Section, Decision No. 3572, 14 February 2011, OUP Reference: 1787, IT 2011 forthcoming 2012; Headnote, A v P and ors, Dispute concerning the legal status of the unborn child, Italian Supreme Court of Cassation, 3rd Civil Section, Decision No. 10741, 11 May 2009, OUP Reference: 1628, IT 2009 available at http://www.oxfordlawreports.com.

Margaria also obtained relevant field experience in Bosnia-Herzegovina and India. During her internship with UNICEF Bosnia-Herzegovina, she drafted the UNICEF Report on the Status of Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in BiH. In India, she became involved in the Child Rights and Women’s Justice Initiatives of a local human rights NGO through Public Interest Litigation, pro-bono legal aid, fact-finding missions and field-based research.  

During the first term of the academic year 2012/2013, Margaria will teach a course on Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights at the University of Passau (Germany). Moreover, she has been invited to be a Visiting Scholar at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lund (Sweden) in Fall 2012.

While at Emory, Margaria worked with Martha A. Fineman to explore the application of Feminist Legal Theory to the European human rights framework.