The Paul M. Hebert Law Center will welcome four new faculty members starting in the Fall 2018 semesters — Lisa Avalos, Nicholas Bryner, Lécia Vicente, and Madalyn Wasilczuk.
Lisa Avalos
Avalos previously served as Assistant Professor of Law at Arkansas. She earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law. She also holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology from Northwestern University, and a B.A. in psychology from Northwestern University.
Avalos’s research focuses on international human rights with an emphasis on women’s human rights, gender-based violence, and sexual violence. She works with international nongovernmental organizations to develop policy solutions that address persistent human rights violations such as rape, child marriage, forced marriage, and honor-based violence. Her teaching interests include criminal law, international human rights, and gender-based violence.
Prior to joining the University of Arkansas faculty, Avalos spent two years at Georgetown University Law Center, teaching in the legal research and writing program and developing a practicum course on Gender-based Violence and Human Rights. Prior to that, she worked as an associate in the corporate departments of McDermott, Will & Emery (New York) and Neal, Gerber, & Eisenberg (Chicago).
Her publications include Prosecuting Victims While Rapists Run Free: the Consequences of Police Failure to Investigate Sex Crimes in Britain and the United States (forthcoming in the Michigan Journal of Gender and Law, Spring 2016); Female Genital Mutilation and Designer Vaginas in Britain: Crafting an Effective Legal and Policy Framework, 48 Vand. J. Transnat’l Law 621 (2015), and Ending Female Genital Mutilation and Child Marriage in Tanzania, co-authored with Naima Farrell, Rebecca Stellato, & Marc Werner, 38 Fordham Internat’l L. J. 639 (2015).
Nicholas Bryner
Bryner was an Emmett/Frankel Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law for 2016-18. He served as Visiting Associate Professor and Environmental Law Fellow at George Washington University Law School (August 2014-June 2016) where he co-taught courses on environmental and natural resources law.
Bryner received his B.A. magna cum laude in Political Science from the University of Utah, with minors in Latin American Studies and Chemistry. He also earned joint degrees (J.D. / M.A.) in law and Latin American and Hemispheric Studies from The George Washington University Law School and Elliott School of International Affairs. At GW, Bryner was elected to the Order of Coif, received the Pro Bono Service Award and the Patton Boggs Foundation Public Policy Fellowship, and was a Presidential Merit Scholar. In addition, he served as an Articles Editor for The George Washington Law Review.
Bryner has written several articles on environmental, energy, and natural resources law, including: “People of the Sun: Leveraging Electricity Reform to Promote Renewable Energy and Climate Change Mitigation in Mexico,” Natural Resources Journal (forthcoming 2016); “Public Interests and Private Land: The Ecological Function of Property in Brazil,” Virginia Environmental Law Journal (2016); and “Brazil’s Green Court: Environmental Law in the Superior Tribunal de Justiça (High Court of Brazil),” Pace Environmental Law Review(2012). He has also co-edited the volumes on Decision Making in Environmental Law and Environmental Compliance and Enforcement in Edward Elgar’s Encyclopedia of Environmental Law series. Bryner has spoken at major conferences in the United States and Brazil, in Portuguese and English, on topics including Brazilian environmental law, environmental human rights, and international environmental law. He is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law and served as program coordinator for the 1st IUCN World Environmental Law Congress in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in April 2016.
Lécia Vicente
Vicente teaches in the areas of business law and civil law. Prior to joining LSU Law, she was an affiliate with Fordham Corporate Law Center at the Fordham University School of Law, a postdoctoral research associate and lecturer in Business Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
Vicente earned her Ph.D. and Master of Laws in Comparative, European and International Laws from the European University Institute and her BA in Law from the Catholic University of Portugal. She carried on her postdoctoral training as a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Prior to that, Vicente was a practicing lawyer at international law firms where she worked on corporate, contract, real estate and civil procedure laws of Portugal and other Lusophone countries such as Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil. She held visiting research positions at the Commercial Law Department of the Faculty of Law of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, the University of Illinois College of Law, the Fordham University Law School, the Institute of International Economic Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Helsinki, and the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon.
Additionally, she has been a pro Bono Adviser and Head of Delegation of the African Union at the United Nations High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development under the Auspices of United Nations Economic and Social Council and at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit for the adoption of the Post-2015 development agenda.
Her work is mostly interdisciplinary and her main areas of interest are business law, civil law, corporate and comparative corporate law, contract law, law and economics, corporate and contract governance, history of corporations, and legal theory.
Madalyn Wasilczuk
Wasilczuk previously worked as a Clinical Teaching Fellow in the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, where she worked with the International Human Rights Clinic and the Death Penalty Project.
Prior to joining the Center, Wasilczuk worked as an Assistant Defender at The Defender Association of Philadelphia, where she litigated all stages of misdemeanor and felony cases and juvenile delinquency proceedings. In addition to domestic criminal defense work, at International Justice Mission in Nairobi, Kenya, she represented individuals facing illegal detention and assisted child victims of sexual assault.
Wasilczuk has also worked with New York University School of Law’s Global Justice Clinic and Federal Defender Clinic, Open Society Justice Initiative, and the Metropolitan Public Defender of Nashville & Davidson County. Through her work, she has provided legal, policy, and advocacy support to criminal defendants, protestors, and whistleblowers around the world.
Wasilczuk holds a B.A. from American University, summa cum laude, and a J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she received the Leonard J. Schreier Memorial Prize in Ethics. She is admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania
