Thomas E. Kadri, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law, recently spent several weeks as a fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. His experience abroad was made possible by a Sarah H. Moss Fellowship, which “provide[s] funds for travel and related expenses for tenure-track faculty of the University of Georgia (Athens) pursuing advanced scholarship, research, and study in institutions of higher learning abroad and in the United States.” Kadri also received financial support from the Dean Rusk International Law Center as a Rusk Scholar-in-Residence, which promotes international opportunities for Georgia Law faculty that advance the mission of the Center.

In his guest post below, Kadri reflects on his time abroad, which he calls “a tremendous professional and personal experience that enriched [his] scholarly research, broadened [his] comparative understanding of legal education and academic culture, and helped [him] build meaningful relationships with scholars from across Europe and beyond.”

Intellectual Engagement: Thinking Infrastructurally

One of the most formative aspects of my fellowship was my participation in a seminar series titled Thinking Infrastructurally, organized by Professor Thomas Streinz. This series, which brought together researchers working across disciplines, focused on how legal scholars might better engage with insights from infrastructure studies. The seminar explored fundamental conceptual questions—how infrastructures differ from platforms, systems, or networks; how infrastructures are regulated and how they might themselves serve as regulatory tools; and how legal scholars can incorporate infrastructural thinking into normative, doctrinal, and empirical work.

Each of the three sessions I attended provided new perspectives and provocations that will shape my future research. The first session emphasized methodology, asking how legal academics might attend to “relations, processes, and imaginations” across technical, organizational, and social dimensions. The second session turned to digital infrastructures, grappling with questions such as: What is gained by viewing platforms as infrastructures—or infrastructures as platforms? What kinds of regulatory possibilities emerge when code is conceptualized as an architectural or infrastructural force? These questions dovetail with my own interests in digital platforms and online speech governance. The final session featured doctoral students presenting posters based on their projects, offering a chance to reflect on visual, material, and speculative methods for representing infrastructures and their effects.

These sessions were intellectually generative and expanded my scholarly toolkit in unexpected ways. I have long studied the regulation of online platforms, but the seminar invited me to reframe these inquiries through an infrastructural lens. This framing has already begun to shape my current writing on the regulation of deepfakes and may form the basis of future scholarly collaborations.

Workshop Participation and Interdisciplinary Dialogue

In addition to the seminar series, I participated in a workshop titled Entangled Concerns, Uncertain Futures: Law and Politics in the Making of Infrastructures, which brought together scholars and artists to discuss the construction and contestation of infrastructures. This experience was inspiring for my own work on deepfake harms and regulatory responses, helping me situate these concerns within the broader question of how legal systems should respond to emerging technologies whose boundaries and risks are often unstable. The workshop featured excellent presentations, including a memorable artifact-based presentation by the Indonesian artist Elia Nurvista, whose piece Long Hanging Fruits: Myth and Matter on Palm Oil Complex invited participants to think materially and historically about infrastructures of extraction and trade.

These discussions reaffirmed the value of interdisciplinarity in legal scholarship and encouraged me to think more creatively about the empirical and theoretical frames I use in my own research. They also exposed me to new voices and methods, enhancing my appreciation of the ways law is entangled with political economy, cultural meaning, and technological development.

Contributing to the Scholarly Community: Mentorship and Outreach

While at the EUI, I was also pleased to contribute to the intellectual life of the doctoral program by organizing and hosting a workshop titled How to Publish in U.S. Law Reviews. This session was aimed at EUI’s graduate students and demystified the odd publication process that defines American legal scholarship. The workshop served not only as a chance to offer mentorship but also to reflect on the institutional and cultural differences between U.S. and European approaches to legal scholarship. It deepened my appreciation for the rich diversity of scholarly styles across jurisdictions and highlighted the structural barriers that non-U.S. scholars often face when trying to enter the American legal academy. I left the session with a renewed commitment to making space for more international voices in U.S. legal publications and a network of aspiring scholars whose work I hope to support going forward.

Advancing Research and Building Collaborations

The EUI fellowship provided the intellectual space and community support that allowed me to make significant progress on my writing. While in residence, I began working on a forthcoming article coauthored with University of Georgia School of Law Professor Sonja West titled Deepfake Torts: Emerging Tort Frameworks in U.S. Deepfake Regulation. The piece, which will appear later this year in the peer-reviewed Journal of Tort Law, explores how various tort doctrines are being adapted to address the novel harms posed by synthetic media. Although the article is grounded in U.S. law, many of the insights I developed during my time at EUI—particularly those drawn from discussions about infrastructure and transnational platform governance—shaped how I framed the legal challenges at stake.

I also held multiple one-on-one meetings with Professor Thomas Streinz, a fellow legal scholar based at EUI who shares my interest in platform regulation, data governance, and comparative digital policy. These conversations were productive and inspiring. In addition, I had the pleasure of meeting repeatedly with Adi Mansour, a Palestinian LL.M. student whose work on censorship and surveillance by state and corporate actors in Palestine and Israel offered sobering insights into how infrastructure—both digital and political—can become a tool of domination and control.

Broader Benefits and Institutional Impact

Beyond these specific accomplishments, the fellowship helped me develop a more global perspective on legal education, research, and academic culture. Engaging with European scholars—many of whom approach legal questions from sociolegal or historical perspectives less common in the United States—challenged some of my assumptions and introduced me to new bodies of literature. I gained a clearer sense of how European doctoral training operates, how interdisciplinary work is structured, and how faculty balance research with mentorship in different institutional settings. These insights will inform my own mentorship of students and contribute to ongoing conversations within my home institution about graduate training and international engagement.

The fellowship also strengthened institutional ties between my university and EUI. I encouraged several doctoral students to consider applying for visiting opportunities in the United States and hope to maintain long-term scholarly relationships with several of the colleagues I met. In this way, the benefits of the fellowship extend beyond my own development and offer pathways for future collaboration and exchange.

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For more information about the Rusk Scholar-in-Residence initiative, please email Sarah Quinn, Director, Dean Rusk International Law Center: squinn@uga.edu