Dr Raffael Fasel

Raffael joined Jesus College in 2021 as a Teaching Bye-Fellow and Director of Studies in Law. He holds a £440,000 grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation for his research in constitutional theory.

Academic interests

Raffael’s academic interests include: 

• Constitutional theory and comparative constitutional law
• Human and animal rights law
• Jurisprudence
• Intellectual history.

Degrees obtained

• Bachelor of Law, University of Fribourg.
• Master of Law, University of Fribourg.
• MA in Philosophy, UCL.
• LLM, Yale Law School.
• PhD, University of Cambridge.

Awards and prizes

• Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione Grant (2021).
• Yorke Prize of the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law for a thesis of ‘exceptional quality’ (2020).
• Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Mobility Scholarship (2019).
• Swiss National Science Foundation Doctoral Mobility Scholarship (2016).
• Fulbright Scholarship (2013).
• Janggen-Pöhn Foundation Academic Career Scholarship (2013).

Biography

Raffael researches and teaches in constitutional law, legal theory, and animal rights law. In 2021, he was awarded a £440,000 research grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation for his research on constituent power theory, for which he is also affiliated with the University of Zurich.

Before joining Jesus College, Raffael was a research fellow at LSE Law School. He completed his PhD in Law on the theory of human and animal rights at the University of Cambridge (Sidney Sussex College), with stints as a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School and the University of Oxford. He obtained an LLM from Yale Law School on a Fulbright scholarship, an MA in Philosophy from University College London, and holds a Bachelor of Law and a Master of Law degree from the University of Fribourg.

During his doctoral studies, Raffael co-founded the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law and currently serves as its Executive Director. He also co-created Europe’s first Animal Rights Law course at the Cambridge Law Faculty, which he co-lectures. Raffael is also an Associate Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.