Mentoring the Next Generation of Legal Scholars
I am grateful to the University of Rome Tor Vergata for inviting me once again as Visiting Professor and, this year, for the first time within its PhD Program. For the second consecutive year, I have the privilege of spending part of the summer semester in Rome, where I have been based since early May and will remain until the end of June.
This experience also offers an opportunity to reflect on the continuity of my collaboration with Tor Vergata over the past summer. Last year, I had the pleasure of teaching two courses: Uniform Private Law and Global Law: Actors, Architectures, and Mechanisms, in the undergraduate degree program taught entirely in English engaging with nearly 90 students from different countries, academic backgrounds, and legal traditions.
Together, we explored a wide range of themes, including the evolving Lex Mercatoria, the CISG, UNCITRAL instruments, the UNIDROIT Principles, the U.S. Uniform Commercial Code, the European Union’s internal market and external action, the role of judicial and doctrinal formants in shaping legal harmonization, as well as case studies in competition law, intellectual property, company law, commercial law, environmental law, and energy law. We also examined the influence of international organizations such as the United Nations, WTO, UNESCO, and WIPO, alongside broader questions of law and development, legal pluralism, Global North–Global South relations, South–South cooperation, and the legal implications of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
This year, my focus has shifted primarily toward doctoral education and academic mentoring. During this period, I am teaching doctoral seminars, mentoring and advising approximately twenty PhD candidates, and supporting them in the development of their research projects, conference presentations, and academic publications. The discussions have covered an extraordinarily diverse range of topics, reflecting both the richness of contemporary legal scholarship and the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of legal research.
Pictured here are the seven first-year PhD candidates participating in the program. It has been a pleasure to engage with such talented and motivated young scholars and to accompany them as they refine their research questions, methodological approaches, and broader academic trajectories.
One of the most rewarding aspects of working with doctoral students is the opportunity to discover how emerging scholars are approaching some of the most significant legal challenges of our time.
Over the past days, I have been reviewing research proposals and meeting individually with PhD candidates whose projects span an extraordinarily wide range of topics: artificial intelligence and health data protection, whistleblowing, sustainable finance and ESG governance, competition law, labor mobility within the European Union, smart working and AI, administrative liability, cultural heritage governance, digital inheritance, insurance law, reverse factoring, public resource allocation, and many others.
What strikes me most is not only the diversity of subjects, but also the increasing interconnectedness of legal fields. Questions that once belonged primarily to private law, administrative law, labor law, competition law, or constitutional law now frequently overlap with technology, sustainability, governance, human rights, and global regulatory developments.
My goal during these seminars is not simply to assist students in refining research questions, identifying comparative and international dimensions of their work, and learning how to communicate complex legal ideas effectively to broader academic audiences.
Research today increasingly requires crossing disciplinary, national, and methodological boundaries. Working with doctoral students at this stage of their academic journey is therefore both a responsibility and a privilege.
I am very much looking forward to the discussions that will continue over the coming weeks.
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Paolo Davide Farah, Paolo Farah