Alice Margaria is a Research Fellow in the the Law and Anthropology Department of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. She holds an LL.M. with distinction in Human Rights from University College London, an LL.M. in Comparative, European and International Laws, and a Ph.D. in Law from the European University Institute (Florence). Her doctoral thesis (forthcoming as a monograph, CUP 2018) provides a socio-legal analysis of the way fatherhood is understood, constructed, and redefined in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. Before joining the MPI, she also worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Fundamental Rights Laboratory (Turin, Italy). Her project was a comparative investigation of the role of judges in bridging the gap between the social reality and the legal existence of families created via assisted reproductive technologies.

Margaria has a track record of publications that focus on parenthood and assisted reproductive technologies, anonymous birth, and the child’s right to an identity, with a particular emphasis on the ECtHR jurisprudence. She has been a visiting scholar at various institutions, including Emory University, the University of Lund, and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Margaria has also worked with international and non-governmental organizations, including UNICEF’s Office of Research, OSCE, and Human Rights Law Network.

Her current research builds on her expertise in family law and human rights but adopts a new methodological perspective. By talking to the protagonists, Margaria’s project aims to shed light on the human stories behind ECtHR litigation pertaining to family life and cultural diversity.