Adam Druckman is a 2L at Harvard Law School from New Jersey. On campus, he is a member of the Journal of Law and Technology and the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. Outside of work, he enjoys reading, running, and hiking.
Sarah Lorgan-Khanyile is a JD/PhD candidate at Harvard University. She is currently on fellowship at École Normale Supérieure. As a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature, her research interests span across Continental Philosophy, Intellectual Property Law, Constitutional Law, Disability in Literature and the Law, Theories of Blackness, Theories of the Lyric, Psychoanalysis and Trauma Theory, South African History, and English, French, German Literature from the 19th Century to Present. She works in Zulu, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and most recently, Russian and Arabic. She received her B.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Cornell University in 2021.
Giovanni DiRusso is a 4th-year PhD student in the Committee on the Study of Religion. His research focuses on the intellectual history of Christianity and Islam in the medieval Middle East, and he is currently writing his dissertation on Christian Arabic apocalyptic literature. In addition to his primary research interests, Giovanni uses several machine-learning and computational tools in his study of Arabic and Islam, including OCR/HTR, text alignment, and natural-language processing. Among other tasks at PIL, Giovanni has tested and trained several machine-learning models for Arabic-language legal sources.
Ghada Amer is a J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School (Class of 2027). Prior to law school, she worked as a Specialist Legal Analyst in the Claim Monetization and Dilution practice at Kobre & Kim LLP, where she focused on cross-border asset recovery and international judgment enforcement. She holds a B.A. from Harvard College in Government and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
Christine is a 2L from Auckland, New Zealand. She graduated from NYU Abu Dhabi with a degree in economics and worked on research policy and strategy in Abu Dhabi before law school. Her interest in Islamic law and finance began at NYU Abu Dhabi, where she worked on an Islamic finance policy project during an internship. At the law school, Christine is also involved in the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Harvard Law & Policy Review, and Women’s Law Association.
Wan Mohd. Zulhafiz Bin Wan Zahari is an Associate Professor of Law at the Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah of Laws, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), where he also serves as Company Secretary of IIUM. He has held key academic and administrative roles, including Deputy Dean (Academic and Internationalisation) of Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah of Laws, IIUM and Deputy Legal Adviser of IIUM.
A legal scholar and governance practitioner, Zulhafiz specializes in energy law and policy, corporate governance, Islamic finance, and climate change regulation. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Governance Institute (UK), a Chartered Secretary (CS), and a Chartered Governance Professional (CGP).
He holds a PhD in Law from the University of Aberdeen, an MBA in Energy Management from Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, an LLM in Corporate Law from Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), and an LLB (Hons) from IIUM.
Currently a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow at American University Washington College of Law, he is also serving as a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Program in Islamic Law. His current research explores the integration of Islamic legal principles into ESG frameworks and sustainable energy and climate change governance.
Will Smiley is Associate Professor in the Humanities Program at the University of New Hampshire. He is a historian of the Middle East, Eurasia, the Ottoman Empire, and international law; previously served as an Assistant Professor of History and Humanities at Reed College; and has held post-doctoral fellowships at Princeton and New York University.
His first book, From Slaves to Prisoners of War: The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and International Law (Oxford University Press, 2018), examines the emergence of rules of warfare surrounding captivity and slavery in the context of the centuries-long rivalry between the Ottoman and Russian empires, which defined the future of the Middle East and Eurasia. His other publications include articles in the Law and History Review, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of the History of International Law, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Journal of Ottoman Studies, Turkish Historical Review, and International History Review.
He received a BA from Hillsdale College, an MA from the University of Utah, a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and a JD from Yale Law School.
Muhammad Hassan Ali is a legal practitioner and writer specializing in constitutional law, fundamental rights, Islamic law, and commercial law. He earned his first law degree from the University of London in 2017 and is currently pursuing an LL.M. from Harvard Law School (Class of 2025). With over seven years of professional experience primarily in litigation, he has clerked for three Justices of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, contributing to several landmark judgments on constitutional law, fundamental rights, and commercial law.
