NEWS
14 December 2023
Dissemination: Our work was featured in the Slovenian Delo Znanost. Veronika Fikfak gave an interview presenting the major results of the HRNUDGE project and our future plans. The interview is available in Slovenian here.
23 November 2023
Team news: Veronika Fikfak has been awarded a new ERC grant to study inequality in how victims access international human rights courts. The funding to support BREAKtheBIAS project will enable us to expand our team and to build a partnership with the Institute of Criminology in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
21 November 2023
Team news: A new member has joined our team - Adarsh Prabhakaran. Adarsh is a computer scientist and he will be in charge of designing a new agent-based model to show how states behave in response to judgments of the ECtHR.
November 2023
Workshops: A busy November ahead for us: Ula Kos will present her new paper in Hannover (6-8 Nov) and Berlin (30 Nov). Together with her co-author Laurence Helfer, Veronika will travel to Berlin and Copenhagen (6-8 Nov) to present their article Automating Human Rights Adjudication. Veronika will also travel to Edinburgh and Glasgow to introduce the new UK Empirical Research Network of Law and Courts (28-29 Nov).
31 October 2023
Team news: Lora Izvorova recently submitted her PhD at the University of Cambridge. The dissertation examines Russia's lack of compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights. She will continue her academic career as a postdoctoral fellow at the London School of Economics.
29 October 2023
Publications: Aysel Küçüksu has got two new articles out on Danish compliance with judgments of the European Court of Human Rights: Proactive Prevention and Denmark in Strasbourg.
18 October 2023
Publication: Ula Kos had got a new article out contrasting responses by Hungary and Poland to the European Court of Human Rights decisions in rule of law human rights cases, Signalling in European Rule of Law Cases.
3 July 2023
Prize: Veronika Fikfak's article Against Settlement was awarded a Best Paper Prize (Best Mention) by the International Society of Public Law.
1 June 2023
Publication: Veronika Fikfak wrote a blog for the Constitution Unit commenting on the recent decision of the UK government to ignore interim measures imposed by the ECtHR in the context of migration. In the blog, she shows how amongst all available options the UK has chosen the most drastic one, revealing that the careful image of UK as a 'good complier' is only a myth.
2 March 2023
Podcast: Veronika appeared on Podcast series Uncovering Politics The Politics of the European Court of Human Rights recorded by the UCL School of Public Policy.
17 February 2023
Publication: Ula Kos has published a new article on Hungarian (non)compliance with ECtHR judgments. She specifically identifies new strategies that Hungary is using to avoid adverse human rights decisions. Her discoveries fill an important gap in rule of law debates relating to Hungary. Ula's paper can be found here.
16 February 2023
Publication: Katharina Luckner and Veronika Fikfak have published a new paper on how states imitate each other towards non-compliance. Using ABM modelling, we show that non-compliance is contagious and that compliance with a judgment is not an isolated event, but a result of dynamics where states look to and learn from each other.
13 January 2023
Team news: Klara Dahler-Larsen successfully defended her masters' thesis on the 'Consequences of the exclusion of the Russian Federation from the Council of Europe with regards to the execution of judgments.' The thesis is available on request.
1 January 2023
Team news: A new member has joined our team. Dilek Kurban who will conduct research on Turkish compliance with ECtHR judgments as part of the NUDGE project. Check out our 'Team page' for more information about Dilek.
15 November 2022
Dissemination: Aysel Küçüksu gave an interview to Democracy Reporting International providing input for their report about Danish elections and the Rule of Law. Aysel spoke about her research on Denmark's compliance with ECtHR judgments, also addressing specific areas like migration. You can read her thoughts here.
2-3 November 2022
Workshop: Veronika Fikfak gave a talk at the workshop celebrating 20 years of the UK's Human Rights Act. The programme is here. Her intervention will be published shortly on the UK Constitutional Law Association's blog.
7-8 October 2022
Workshop: Ula Kos participated at the ECPR Joint Global Politics of Law & Courts Workshop in Berlin.
5 October 2022
Publication: Aysel Küçüksu (together with Zuzanna Godzimirska and Salome Ravn) has published a new paper in the Nordic Journal of Human Rights on algorithmic decision-making in the ECtHR and need to consider victims' vulnerability. You can read the paper here.
3-4 October 2022
Conference: The NUDGE team presented at the iCourts 3.0 conference at the Royal Danish Academy. Veronika gave the keynote 'Automating Human Rights Adjudication - What Future for Human Rights', whilst Aysel Küçüksu and Ula Kos presented their paper 'Adding Nuance to Quantitative ECtHR Compliance Data through Qualitative Empirics: Implementation Networks and the Role of Civil Society Actors'.
14 September 2022
Conference: Katharina Luckner presented a paper on using ABM for modelling compliance at the ESSA Milan Conference.
8-9 September 2022
Workshop: Veronika Fikfak and Lora Izvorova gave talks at the Birmingham workshop on the Value(s) of the ECtHR. They spoke about their work on dignity in the ECtHR case law and in member states.
1-3 September 2022
Conferences: September was a busy month for all of us on NUDGE. We presented at the International Empirical Legal Studies Conference in Amsterdam. The programme is here. In more detail:
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Aysel Küçüksu and Ula Kos presented their paper 'Adding Nuance to Quantitative ECtHR Compliance Data through Qualitative Empirics: Implementation Networks and the Role of Civil Society Actors'.
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Katharina Luckner presented ‘Beyond Courts: Does (information on) Strategic Litigation Affect Climate Change Policy Attitudes?’
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Veronika Fikfak presented her paper on 'The Promises and Perils of ECHR Hudoc databases’.
In addition, Veronika also co-organised a workshop 'Connecting social practices to legal outcomes' (as part of the ESIL Interest Group on Social Sciences).
1 September 2022
Team news: A new member has joined our team. Thorbjørn Waal Lundsgaard who will undertake his PhD at Copenhagen University as part of the NUDGE project. Thorbjørn will focus on Nordic countries and on identifying the structures and processes that facilitate compliance and implementation of human rights decisions. Check out our 'Team page' for more information about Thorbjørn.
11 August 2022
Publication: Our paper on applications of agent-based modelling in international legal research by Katharina Luckner and Veronika Fikfak is now out at CEUR-WS. In it, we show how ABM could be used to model states' compliance practices.
10 August 2022
Publication: Our paper Language and Persuasion: Human Dignity before the European Court of Human Rights by Veronika Fikfak and Lora Izvorova is now out on open access. The paper shows that the European Court of Human Rights uses terminology of dignity strategically to compel states to change their behaviour. But do they do so? We answer the question on the case of Russia. The full paper can be found here.
14 July 2022
Publication: Our new country report on Hungary is out! In it, we show how Hungary strategically avoids confrontation with the European Court of Human Rights by taking advantage of friendly settlements and thus minimising the need to make any concrete human rights changes in its own domestic system. The report can be found here.
21 June 2022
Conference: We have been invited to present our work at the European Implementation Network Conference on Systemic Non-Implementation of ECtHR judgments in Strasbourg this week. Aysel Küçüksu and Ula Kos will be talking about our work on how NGOs and national human rights institutes play a crucial role in facilitating compliance. The programme of the event is attached. For how your NGO can help, please see our contribution here.
15 June 2022
Podcast: Aysel appeared on Podcast series Voices in Vulnerability recorded by the Vulnerability and the Human Condition Center at the University of Atlanta.
24 May 2022
Workshop: We organised a panel as part of SocSimFest to discuss the potential application of agent based modelling in international law. The programme is attached. A paper on the uses of ABM in international law will follow shortly.
13 April 2022
Symposium: Our Symposium on Bias in International Law is now openly available in the German Law Journal. You can read the introduction, along with great articles from Moshe Hirsch, Benedikt Pirker and Izabela Skoczen, Jonathan Kolieb, Runar Lie, Evangelina Nissoti, Eva van der Zee, and Ezgi Yildiz and Umut Yüksel.
12 April 2022
Publication: We have a new paper out - Language and Persuasion: Human Dignity before the European Court of Human Rights - by Veronika Fikfak and Lora Izvorova. The full paper can be found here.
22 March 2022
Publication: We have a new paper out - Sanctioning to Change State Behaviour - by Niccolò Ridi and Veronika Fikfak. The full paper can be found here.
15 March 2022
Event: Aysel and Veronika will be presenting the results of the study of Denmark's compliance with ECtHR judgments at the Danish Institute of Human Rights. A paper of the full analysis will follow shortly; a taster of our argument can be found in Aysel's piece published in the Politiken on 3 March (in Danish).
Call for Ideas - March 2022
Call for ideas: We are organising a panel as part of SocSimFest to discuss the potential application of agent based modelling in international law. We are currently seeking ideas from scholars identifying international legal questions or puzzles that would benefit from an ABM approach. Call for ideas is here.
February 2022
Collaboration: We are part of a new network entitled BRAIN, which stands for Behavioural Research Approaches in International Law Network. BRAIN brings together academics and practitioners applying behavioural approaches to international law. Our aim is to become a resource of support for scholars as well as a focal point for policy makers interested in this research. BRAIN's website is here.
February 2022
Publication: Our Symposium on Bias in International Law is coming out in the German Law Journal. We look forward to presenting it more thoroughly in February. You can read the introduction co-authored by Veronika Fikfak, Daniel Peat and Eva van der Zee here.
January 2022
Collaboration: We are collaborating with Compliance Politics and International Investment Disputes project, based at Pluricourts, University of Oslo and funded by the Research Council of Norway. Read more about the project here.
Call for papers - deadline 7 January 2022
Conference: Veronika Fikfak, together with Mikołaj Barczentewicz, are organising a new stream at this year's UK SLSA called Uncovering Silent Voices with socio-legal approaches. The conference will be held at York University in April. The call for papers can be found here, the deadline is 7 January 2022.
