Welcome to four new academics in the School of Law

Dr Conor Casey

Conor joins the School of Law as a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Public Law and Legal Theory. 

Prior to his appointment, he was a Lecturer at the University of Liverpool and a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Conor completed an LLB at Trinity College, Dublin, an LLM at Yale Law School, and a PhD at Trinity College, Dublin.  

Conor’s research specialises in administrative law, constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, and legal theory.  

His work has been featured in the American Journal of Jurisprudence, Edinburgh Law Review, European Constitutional Law Review, International Journal of Constitutional Law, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Maryland Law Review, Modern Law Review, Law and Literature and Public Law. 

Conor’s work has been cited by the Irish Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and High Court; by the Oireachtas Justice Committee; by the United States Court of Appeals; and the House of Lords’ Constitution Committee and Attorney General’s Office. 

Dr Feja Lesniewska

Feja joins Surrey School of Law from UCL where she was a researcher on law, policy regulation and standards on circular economy and mineral-based construction materials.

Her research focuses on law and economics, the environment and, more recently, digital technology. Feja has published extensively especially on forests and law, particularly on climate change, biodiversity and rights (human, indigenous and nature). 

Feja is a transdisciplinary legal scholar who collaborates with academics from engineering, earth system and computer sciences to international relations and development studies. She has also undertaken field work in Central and West Africa, China and Russia as well as the EU and the UN.

She has previously held research posts at UCL working on digital technologies and critical infrastructure, as well as at Queen Mary, University of London, where she researched the sustainability and ethical issues of smart energy systems.

While at the School of Law in Surrey Feja is keen to develop her research along with colleagues on environmental law, climate change, digital technologies and circular economy, as part of a broader goal of understanding how law can frame a transition to a just and sustainable future for all. 

Dr Sebastian Lewis

Sebastian completed his DPhil in Law at the University of Oxford. He is a qualified lawyer in Chile and holds a Master of Laws (LLM) at Harvard Law School, where he worked in the Harvard International Law Journal and the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. He has been a visiting researcher at King’s College London and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law.

His areas of research include jurisprudence, legal reasoning, public law, and comparative public law. Sebastian is particularly interested in the philosophical foundations of legal systems, the nature of legal sources, the demands of the rule of law on public officials, and different approaches to the explanation of non-delegated legal validity. His work has been published by the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Jurisprudence, Law and Philosophy, Modern Law Review, and the Journal of Comparative Law. He is also one of the editors of Philosophical Foundations of Precedent (OUP, 2023) and was also one of the convenors of the Oxford Jurisprudence Discussion Group (2020-21).

Sebastian’s teaching experience covers jurisprudence, administrative law, constitutional law, and EU law. He has taught at the University of Oxford, King’s College London, and the LSE, and has presented his research to various discussion groups and conferences in the UK, Europe, and Latin-America.

Sebastian loves tennis and music, particularly modern jazz.

Dr Lucas Miotto Lopes

Lucas obtained both his law degree and a research masters in Theory of the State and Constitutional Law from his home country, Brazil. In 2014, he moved to Scotland to conduct his doctoral studies in legal philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. By the end of his PhD, Lucas had joined the University of Maastricht in The Netherlands as an Assistant Professor in Legal Philosophy, where he stayed until 2022. Before joining the University of Surrey, he took up a Senior Lectureship at Leeds Beckett University (2022-2023). 

Lucas’s research interests revolve around legal, moral, and political philosophy and around theoretical aspects of criminal law. For the past few years, he has primarily worked on the coerciveness of legal systems and on the idea of non-coercive legal governance. His work has been published in leading international peer-reviewed journals. He has also been involved in collaborative projects on digital ethics, experimental jurisprudence, and global health justice.

Besides research and teaching, Lucas devotes part of his time to disseminating academic knowledge to a wider audience. He runs the Legal-Phi blog where he interviews early-career legal and moral philosophers to make their work more accessible to the public. He also co-convenes the Legal Philosophy Trident Seminar Series, which is an online seminar series featuring recent works of legal philosophers. More information about Lucas and his research can be found on his website.