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Postdoc researcher in European and Comparative Public Law
Nicolò P. Alessi is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law.
He was adjunct professor of Comparative Public Law, postdoc researcher at he University of Bern and the University of Aosta Valley, junior researcher at the Institute for comparative federalism at Eurac research and guest researcher at the Institute of federalism of Fribourg/Freiburg.
He holds a joint PhD in Law and European and International Law from the Universities of Verona and Fribourg/Freiburg (CH). His PhD thesis has been awarded the International Prize Giancarlo Doria for the best dissertation in Italian and Comparative Constitutional Law.
His main research interests are European and Comparative Constitutional Law, Diversity Accommodation, Minority Rights, Federalism, Gender Studies and Climate and Commons Governance. He is also an expert on the Aosta Valley’s legal system. He has authored numerous publications, including a monograph and an edited book, on these topic areas.
The project focuses on the accommodation of diversity within constitutional traditions, with special regard to the most innovative approaches and legal instruments of the Global North and Global South. This field of study, traditionally dominated by a Global North approach based on majority-minority and rights-based discourse, is undergoing significant evolutions.
At the same time, the project aims to assess the appropriateness of the existing “mainstream” theoretical tools and concepts – in particular minority and minority-related concepts as well as rights discourse – to grasp the ongoing evolution of this field of law. Based on this, the publications in the framework of this project propose a reconsideration of the traditional conceptual categories and the introduction of the concept “Law of Diversity” as a theoretical framework to grasp the ongoing developments in this area.
Among the models studied in this work, those that are referred to as emergent models for the accommodation of diversity appear to be particularly in need of theoretical recognition. To this end, the theory of federalism is used to serve a rather unexplored theoretical function. Federal theory is put forward as a theoretical instrument to frame and explain the emergent instruments for the accommodation of diversity, as well as provide practical solutions for their development.
What this project and intends to demonstrate is that the time is ripe to complement established categories and approaches of public law in the areas of diversity accommodation (and federalism).
N.P. Alessi, A Global Law of Diversity: Evolving Models and Concepts, Routledge, London-New York, 2025
N.P. Alessi, M. Trettel (eds.), Federalism and the Law of Diversity: The Theoretical Contribution of Federalism to the Explanation of Emergent Models for the Accommodation of Diversity, Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2025
The core of the project is the use of federalism as analytical device to frame and explain emergent governance phenomena that perform significant public functions and do not correspond to full-fledged subnational entities, beyond the traditional federal focus on territorial government. Cases analyzed in this project are: innovative and less institutionalized models for the accommodation of diversity, such as legal pluralism, non-territorial autonomy, and participatory democracy; forms of common pool resources governance, and especially the commons.
The creation of a theoretical framework of understanding is key to providing a solid ground upon which the consolidation and development of those governance systems may be built and better perform their important functions. While governance may be seen as a challenge to federal theory, it also has the potential of enriching it by stimulating its renovation. The emergence of governance may indeed be seen as an opportunity to revise federal theory to adapt it to the contemporary times. In this sense, this project endorses an alternative – promising – reading of federalism that builds on that scholarship that has recognized in federalism far bigger scope and application. This theoretical perspective not only is conducive to a better framing of governance but also leads to unleashing a rather unexplored analytical potential of federalism, which may reveal being its 21st century main function.
The main reason why this is proposed is that it may lead to practical benefits as it provides a common ground of understanding for countless practices regardless of contingencies that characterize the time and place in which these phenomena take place. Indeed, this project does not aim to provide an ontological account on what true federalism is. It instead considers that there is a commonality among numerous and manifold experiences of diffusion of power, and that this basic commonality can be called federalism. In turn, this pragmatically opens the door to analyze, explain and study all those phenomena through a federal lens. Thus, this project is not pure speculation to find the federal nature of some phenomena. Instead, it brings about new opportunities for understanding governance while at the same time renovating federal thought itself.
N.P. Alessi, M. Trettel (eds.), Federalism and the Law of Diversity: The Theoretical Contribution of Federalism to the Explanation of Emergent Models for the Accommodation of Diversity, Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2025
Post-growth research is an emergent interdisciplinary field of study revolving around the limits to economic growth and the shortcomings thereof in ensuring social and environmental justice. Research on doughnut and wellbeing economics, steady-state economics, and degrowth can be all considered part of post-growth studies.
All these strands of research share a common concern on the feasibility and the (social and environmental) benefits of continuous economic growth, and address it from various perspectives, among which the economic one is prominent.
The aim of this research focus is to investigate the role of law in reinforcing or contrasting a growth approach to wellbeing and to which extent economic growth has, in turn, conditioned legal developments in different areas of law. In addition, specific attention is drawn to the commons as autonomous socio-legal institutions that allow for governance of shared resources that is in line with ecological principles.
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Approfondissement en droit européen
Master of Law
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