Editorial Team

Dr Pablo Cortés is a Senior Lecturer at University of Leicester’s School of Law where he conducts research in the field of consumer law, civil procedure, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). He is currently on research leave (2014/16) while completing two projects: a European grant to research on online mediation and a Nuffield grant to evaluate consumer ADR schemes in the EU. He has been invited to expert meetings and advised the UNCITRAL, the European Commission, and the European Parliament. Pablo is a fellow of the National Centre for Technology and Dispute Resolutions (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) and in 2012 he was a Gould Research Fellow at Stanford University. He serves on the advisory board of NeutralNet and Youstice. He is also a member of the ODR Taskforce of the International Mediation Institute and a member of the ODR Advisory Group of the Civil Justice Council in the UK.

Maria Federica is an Italian advocate and trained mediator. She holds a PhD from SOAS and joined Sussex in January 2015. She has previously convened and lectured at SOAS, Queen Mary and UCL - University of London, and at the University of Shantou in the People’s Republic of China. Before undertaking her doctorate she worked for Save the Children Italy where she specialized in children’s rights. Her main research interests lie in issues relating to ADR, Access to Justice, Comparative Family Law, Children's rights, SOGI. She has published in those areas, and is the author of Pasolini’s Italian Premonitions: Same-Sex Unions and the Law in Comparative Perspective. Her research projects have been awarded funding by the EU Commission. Among others ,Litigious Love: Same-Sex Couples and Mediation in the European Union, involved a comparative analysis of the use of mediation for resolving intra-family disputes between same-sex partners. Another project, Bleeding Love: Raising Awareness on Domestic and Dating Violence Against Lesbians and Transwomen in the European Union,has investigated domestic and dating violence against lesbian, transgender and bisexual women in Italy. Along with Dr Peter Dunne (University of Bristol), Maria is currently undertaking SLSA-funded research, which explores the voice of trans children in England on the topic of reforms to the Gender Recognition Act 2004.