Academic Visitors
Dr. Bita Amani is a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law and a Visiting Research Fellow with the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre. She is a Professor at the Faculty of Law at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada and adjunct faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School (Toronto), where she is also an affiliated researcher with the IP Osgoode Intellectual Property and Technology Program. She is a member of the Global Expert Network on Copyright User Rights. Bita is a founding member of the pan-university research group Feminist Legal Studies Queen’s (FLSQ) and has served as its Co-Director since inception, holding an annual International Women’s Day conference for over a decade (https://femlaw.queensu.ca). She teaches courses in intellectual property, information privacy, and feminist legal studies (workshop), and is currently working on various equality focused projects including as they pertain to intellectual property, tech governance, national and international law, domestic public policy, and public interests.
Publications include “AI and Equality by Design” (2021) and “Implementing Triage-Bot: Supporting the Current Practice for Triage Nurses” (with Kim Sears et al, 2024), as well as the following books: State Agency and the Patenting of Life in International Law: Merchants and Missionaries in a Global Society, (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009); Trademarks and Unfair Competition - Cases and Commentary on Canadian and International Law Second Edition (Toronto: Carswell, 2014, with Carys Craig); and The Elgar Companion to Intellectual Property and the Sustainable Development Goals, (Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2024, with Profs. Caroline B. Ncube and Matthew Rimmer (eds)) – including her chapter on SDG 10 (reduced inequalities within and among countries), “Some More Equal than Others: Critical Contexts for the (False) Promises of Intellectual Property Rights”.
Dr. Amani has served as consultant to the Ontario Advisory Committee on New Predictive Genetic Technologies as a member of the Subcommittee on Gene Patenting (2001); to the provincial government on the e-Laws project for the Ministry of the Attorney General (Ontario) Office of the Legislative Counsel (OLC), as editor and annotations editor for the online delivery of access to laws; and served briefly as a legislative drafter with the OLC. She is called to the Bar of Ontario (2000). Bita welcomes the opportunity to discuss impactful research for transformative change with colleagues and students from across disciplines.
Professor Dr. Cyrill Rigamonti
Professor Cyrill Rigamonti is a tenured professor at the University of Bern, where he teaches intellectual property and competition law, and also serves as Chair of the Department for Economic Law and as Faculty Director of the Center for the Law of Innovation and Competition (CLIC). He is also the President of the Swiss Copyright Tribunal.
Professor Rigamonti is a graduate of Harvard Law School (S.J.D.), Georgetown University Law Center (LL.M.), and the University of Zurich (J.D./Ph.D.) and is admitted to practice in New York and Switzerland. He also earned a habilitation from the University of Bern. He was the first legal scholar to be awarded the Prix Jubilé from the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences. His writing has also earned him the Mancini and Addison Brown prizes from Harvard Law School.
Professor Suthersanen holds a Chair in Global Intellectual Property Law. Uma gained her degrees in law from the National University of Singapore (LL.B) and Queen Mary University of London (LL.M and PhD). Having begun her academic career at Queen Mary (Herchel Smith Research Fellow & Financial Times Law & Tax Fellowship), she was the Director of Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute (2021-2024), following her Deputy Directorship. (2019-2021). She was a member for the Law Unit of Assessment (sub-panel 18) for the national Research Excellence Framework, REF 2021. Professor Suthersanen has served as a consultant and given evidence to international and regional bodies including WIPO, UNESCO, UNCTAD, European Parliament, European Commission, and the Governments of Israel and Singapore.
Her current research is focussing on synoptic and interdisciplinary aspects of intellectual property law and policy as a whole, with a focus on traditional knowledge.