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New director of the Institute for European Global Studies and a new professor of private law
The University Council has appointed Professor Corey Ross professor of European Global Studies and the new director of the University of Basel's Institute for European Global Studies, while Professor Cordula Lötscher is to become professor of private law.
20 December 2022
Professor Corey Ross will take up his role as professor of European Global Studies at the University of Basel on June 1, 2023. The University Council has also appointed him director of the Institute for European Global Studies. Ross is currently professor of modern history at the University of Birmingham, deputy head of the College of Arts and Law and director of the Commodities of Empire Network, a research project by the British Academy.
He obtained his doctorate from University College London in 1998, having previously studied history at the University of Maryland, the Free University of Berlin and the Eastern Mennonite College in Virginia. His academic career initially focused on researching German history in the 20th century and the history of the media and society in 19th and 20th century Europe. He has spent the last 15 years or so studying European and global environmental history and the history of imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The 53-year-old has dual US and UK citizenship, and in addition to English also speaks fluent German and French.
Professor of private law
The University Council has also appointed Professor Cordula Lötscher professor of private law. Lötscher studied law at the University of Basel and in Paris, and obtained her doctorate at the University of Basel in 2016 with a dissertation entitled “Die Prozessstandschaft im schweizerischen Zivilprozess” (Procedural autonomy in Swiss civil proceedings). Her dissertation was awarded the Professor Walther Hug Prize and the Faculty Prize from the University of Basel’s Faculty of Law. She will take up her position on August 1, 2023.
Lötscher, herself originally from Basel, has been assistant professor with tenure track for civil procedure and civil law at the University of Lucerne since August 2022. She has been an assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Basel since 2014. In addition, she has been a part-time judge at the Basel-Stadt Court of Appeal since 2016 and a part-time federal judge at the Swiss Federal Supreme Court since 2017. She has been a licensed attorney since 2013.
Her research deals with issues of civil procedure law and substantive civil law – inheritance and property law in particular. Further focal points include family law, personal law and debt enforcement and bankruptcy law. Cordula Lötscher’s research focus is on the interfaces between substantive law and procedural law, the enforcement of civil legal rights and the impact of digitalization on civil and civil procedural law.
A promotion
Professor Oliver Nachtwey will be promoted to full professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences from February 1, 2023. He has been associate professor of social structural analysis at the Department of Social Sciences since 2017.
Four adjunct professorships
The University Council has approved the decision made previously by the Senate to appoint four adjunct professors in the Faculty of Medicine: Professor Christine Bernsmeier will be appointed adjunct professor of gastroenterology, specializing in hepatology. Professor Michael Osthoff is to become adjunct professor of internal medicine, Professor Friedrich Martin Wurst of psychiatry and psychotherapy and Professor Mathias Zürcher of anesthesiology.
