Dr Mariela de Amstalden

• 2015 PhD in International Economic Law, University of Lucerne, Faculty of Law, Lucerne (Switzerland)
• 2012 LL.M. in Intellectual Property Rights, VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
• 2009 MLaw in Transnational Legal Studies, University of Lucerne, Faculty of Law, Lucerne (Switzerland)

Prior to joining the University of Birmingham, Mariela de Amstalden was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Scottish Centre for IP and IT Law (SCRIPT), Edinburgh Law School, where she initiated work on the law of cell-cultivated technologies. Previous appointments include a lectureship in Public Law at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia and a Research Fellowship at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. She has been a visiting scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge and at the Institute for International Economic Law, Georgetown University. Alongside private practice experience in Switzerland with Schellenberg Wittmer and CMS Erlach Poncet in their dispute resolution departments located in Zurich, Mariela has consulted for the Swiss Department of Public Health and United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) on issues related to trade in foodstuffs and sustainable development law, respectively.

• Intellectual Property Law
• European Union Law
• International Trade Law and Policy
• Preferential Trade Agreements
• Global Competition Law.

• International Economic Law, including the law of the World Trade Organisation
• Intellectual Property Rights, particularly Trademarks and Patent Law
• Innovation Law, particularly emerging transformative technologies like cell-cultivation and artificial intelligence regulation
• Public International Law and International Dispute Settlement
• Comparative Law, including civil law

My research work focuses on intellectual property (IP) rights, technology and innovation law as well as global economic governance. In broad terms, this work examines the trajectories of emerging disruptive technologies, their legal and regulatory pathways and their socio-economi impact. While doing so, it engages in two main strands of inquiry, rooted in distinct but complementary methodological approaches. The first strand, Future Foods, examines the emerging field of cellular agriculture law. It tracks and maps the development of socio-legal frameworks applicable to cell-cultivation technologies as they are used in food innovation. More fundamentally, this work questions whether potentially unavoidable socio-technical scenarios emand a reconceptualisation of intellectual property that is mindful of human ingenuity as an infinite resource, as oppose to perpetuating a paradigm of exhaustion of rights. The second strand of inquiry, Future Flight, studies governance mechanisms for uncrewed aereal vehicles (UAVs) for civilian use, and its implications for the promotion of innovation through 'regulation by IP', asking about the role of agility in 'smart' governance, and the extent to which there is sufficient evidence about emerging novel phenomena, one that allocates a prominent role to regulatory bodies, as agents of socio-economic change, by engaging in 'regulatory activism'. Both interdisciplinary studies aim at contributing new perspectives in the study of the law and the multiple connections between law, technology and innovation, hoping to make an original and significant intervention in current debates about how to address pressing global challenges through legal scholarship, public policy and market economies. More details here.

My previous work addressed the evolution of new governance mechanisms to ensure that global food demands are met. The main research output resulted in a monograph published in the Series Studies on Global Economic Governance, edited by Prof. Thomas Cottier, and was titled ‘Global Food Governance: Implications of Food Safety and Quality Standards in International Trade Law’ (Berne:Peter Lang 2015). This work was premised in the assumption that the law of the World Trade Organisation has succeeded to varying extents in providing a multilateral framework for the development of new food regulatory practices. However, changing trends in the production and distribution of food products, as well as ongoing worldwide outbreaks of food-borne diseases, have questioned the effectiveness of the regulatory status quo. The result is a progressively complex network of food safety and quality standards influencing global trade that are seemingly unable to operate on a domestic and public level alone. I ultimately show how these newly developed food standards are international and private in nature, driven by the increasing globalisation of the food supply chain and the economic and political dominance of non-state actors. Although the use of different regulatory approaches, such as harmonisation, coordination and equivalence, could arguably warrant legal inclusivity, my work shows that the tension created by the public/private legal dichotomy under which these standards materially operate remains unresolved, and asks whether there is a need and for new legal and regulatory structures that guarantee the free flow of goods.