Dr Federica Sona

Federica Sona is a Senior Research Fellow in the Law & Anthropology Department at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, in Halle (DE) 

She recently completed a Stipendiary Visiting Fellowship at Harvard School of Law, Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World (PLSMW), in Cambridge (US). Before joining the MPI, she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at LDF, a research centre directed by the former Italian judge at the ECtHR (V. Zagrebelsky). Prior to that, she was a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Law Department at the University of Turin (IT), and a Teaching Fellow in the School of Law at SOAS-University of London (UK).

Federica is currently involved as expert, lecturer and convenor in the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN) and has been acting as invited lecturer and judicial trainer for the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA). She also gives lecture in several European universities and research institutions; her research findings have been disseminated in Europe, North Africa, North America, and South Asia. 

Federica conducted researches commissioned by official authorities and public bodies such as the British Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and the Italian National Council for Research (CNR). From 2019 to 2021, she contributed to the first major project to prevent religious radicalisation launched by the Italian government. In 2021, Federica acted as referee for the European Research Council (ERC).

Federica is involved in several transnational networks. In 2020, she secured a Visiting Fellowship at IALS-University of London. In 2022, she acted as co-investigator in a project supported by the Polish Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative. In 2022, she became a Board Member of the Observatory on Religious Freedom in the ECtHR’s Jurisprudence.

With respect to Islamic and Muslim studies, in addition to PLSMW at Harvard, Federica is an Associate Member of EZIRE and a Senior Member of NISIS. 

Since 2013, Federica has been acting as assistant editor, peer-reviewer and/or member of editorial boards; i.a. Australian Family Law Journal, Bio-Law Journal, CUREDI, Daimon Annuario di Diritto Comparato delle Religioni, Global Jurist, Review of Social Studies, MPI-EJTN case-books, South Asia Research, The International Journal of Human Rights. Since 2023, she is the ‘Law/Minorities in the West’ SAR Assistant Editor.

Since 2005, Federica serves as expert and advocate providing legal assistance and advice (pro-bono) in proceedings involving Muslim parties and/or Muslim-majority countries’ nationals in courts, diplomatic premises and law clinics, in Italy and Great Britain.

• ORCiD number = 0000-0001-8131-6688

• (Un)official Islamic and Muslim laws
• Comparative law and legal systems
• Conflict of laws and private international law
•  Family laws
• Immigration and asylum laws
• Law and religions
• Legal anthropology
• Sociology of law
• Western Islām-s and European Muslim (migrant/minority) communities
• Legal pluralism, Inter-/multi-culturalism, inter-legality
• Ethnically, culturally and religiously embedded normativities
• Diversity and intersectionality
• Cyber Islam and digitalisation of (extra-)judicial remedies including ADR
• Bioethics, biomedicine and Islamic medical ethics.