About Us
Chair
The Clinic is chaired by Dr. Constantin Stefanou, Director of Taught Programmes and Director of the Sir William Dale Centre for Legislative Studies, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.
See Dr Stefanou's profile here.
Directors
Dr Maria Mousmouti is currently Associate Research Fellow at the IALS, University of London. Maria is a Greek and South African citizen. She holds a degree in law (Law Faculty, University of Athens), has a post-graduate degree in comparative social security law (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium) and a broad specialisation in different aspects of legislating and quality of legislation. She has followed specialised courses on regulatory impact assessments (College of Europe, Regulatory Impact Assessment Course), Legislative Drafting (Legislative Drafting Course, Sir William Dale Centre) and has worked extensively on projects aiming to make legislation simpler and more accessible, introducing evidence-based methods in legislating and reducing bureaucracy-related costs. Her PhD research focuses on the effectiveness of legislation and the ways in which it can be promoted, particularly with regard to human rights legislation.
Maria is a lawyer called before the Bar of Athens since 2000 and has served as Research Associate to the (late) Member of European Parliament Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dimitris Th. Tsatsos (2002-2004). She has been cooperating with the Centre for European Constitutional Law ( www.cecl.gr ), a research center based in Athens (Greece), since 1999, having worked there as project manager (1999-2002), as Director of International Projects (2002-2007) and as Executive Director (2007- present).
Her work throughout the years essentially consists in supporting, documenting and assisting reform initiatives through research and capacity-building in areas related to judicial independence, public administration reform, constitutional reform, human rights and quality of regulatory systems and legislation. She has actively worked in more than 20 countries in Southern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. Her most recent projects include the codification of legislation on gender equality in Greece (on-going), designing a system for assessing the impacts of legislation on gender (on-going), adapting the (EU) methodology for measuring administrative burdens to the peculiarities of the Greek legal order (Greece, 2010), drafting legislation to support the education reforms of the Ministry of Education (Greece, 2011), mapping the legislative drafting process in Syria (Damascus, 2010), conducting research for supporting reforms to enhance judicial independence in Azerbaijan (Baku, 2011), assessing the compliance of Greek legislation with the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities and drafting a bill to ensure its effective transposition (Greece, 2012). Maria is fluent in Greek, English, French, Spanish and has basic knowledge of German.
email: maria.mousmouti@sas.ac.uk
See Dr Mousmouti's profile here.
Volunteer Drafters
Our pool of volunteer drafters comes from the IALS current and graduate student community. Students are generally mature lawyers or drafters, often with considerable drafting experience within their own jurisdiction.