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DINA HADAD
Profile
A socio-legal scholar and legal consultant working at the intersection of international law, human rights, family law, migration and cultural expertise. My work is concerned with a central question: how can law understand realities that do not readily fit within its categories?
I worked across Europe and the Middle East, examining the shifting relationship between universal human rights standards and culturally situated practices. Rather than treating culture and rights as opposing frameworks, my research explores how culturally informed analysis can deepen legal reasoning while upholding the principles of equality, dignity and justice.
With over a decade of experience in socio-legal research, international law and legal innovation, I translate complex cultural and legal realities into rigorous, evidence-based analysis for courts, legal practitioners, governments and international organisations. My work engages particularly with migration, cross-border family disputes, gender-based violence, conflict and political transition, drawing on socio-legal research, policy analysis and independent expert reports.
At the centre of this work is the question of whose reality the law is prepared to hear. This also means asking where her voice sits within legal categories that have often been defined without her, and how expertise can make experiences that remain at the margins visible and legible to legal institutions. The aim is not simply to make her voice heard, but to ask what changes when law genuinely listens.
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Bridging Universal and Cultural Right & Dismantling Complex Cultural Socio-Legal Realities
Research
Rights are never quite where law claims they are. Their meaning shifts with power, their protection with circumstance, and justice with the realities against which it is measured. Law speaks in the language of universality, yet its application is continually shaped by context, sovereignty, culture and crisis. What appears central in principle can become subordinate in practice; what is recognised as a right can depend on whose experience is heard, whose knowledge is admitted, and whose reality the law is prepared to understand.
And sometimes, it is her voice that remains at the margins: recognised in principle, yet subordinated in practice. Everyone claims to be listening to her; yet somehow, her voice remains unheard.
My research follows these shifting boundaries between law and lived reality. It asks what happens when established legal categories no longer fully contain the worlds they seek to govern, and when rights, sovereignty, culture and justice begin to pull in different directions.
Human Rights & International Law
When rights meet power, and both move away from justice.
International obligations, state responsibility and the fragile architecture of rights protection in a global world increasingly driven away from human dignity.
International Law & the Middle East
Where legal orders meet, and turn towards disorder.
Sovereignty, pluralism and the changing place of international law in the Middle East.
States of Emergency & Human Rights
When the ordinary becomes exceptional, and the exceptional becomes the norm.
Emergency powers, exceptional governance and the protection of rights in times of crisis.
Constitutional Processes & Rights
When a constitution becomes a site of transformation, negotiating with unconstitutionality.
Constitutional change, institutional reordering and rights in transitional contexts.
Politics of Law & Crisis
When crisis reshapes law, and law reshapes rights.
The entanglement of legal authority, political power and sovereignty.
Women’s Rights
Where law meets lived reality, yet remains incapable of addressing its grievances.
Gender, family law, legal pluralism and the search for justice across borders.
Cultural Expertise & Cultural Heritage
When law encounters what it does not yet understand, and turns to expertise to reshape its application and reintroduce justice.
Culture, expertise and heritage as lenses for rethinking legal knowledge and decision-making.
Research Collaborations & Leadership
K-Peritia COST Action CA22101
- Elected
Vice-Chair of K-Peritia
- Co-leader, Working Group 1 – Theory
- Founder/co-organiser
of the WG1 seminar series
- “Conversations
in Context” webinar series, 2025–2026
- Venice
roundtable: Cultural Expertise and Cultural Heritage
- Sorbonne
research based on K-peritia
- Research
on Cultural Expertise in Post-Communist Legal Regimes
- Joint
research with other COST Actions include the poster of exploring synergies
K-Peritia WG1 YouTube / Video Seminar Series
WG1 series is an ongoing video seminar
initiative led by Dina Hadad, with the seminars disseminated through the
K-Peritia YouTube channel.
Link:
K-Peritia WG1 Video Seminar Series
WG1 Editorial Report – Dina Hadad
TECNOSIA / CULTEXP/ Cultural Rights and AI
- CEO, Tecnosia
OÜ
- CULTEXP
and AI-supported cultural expertise
- Legal
technology and judicial expertise
- Translation
of academic research into applied legal innovation
- European Commission Seal of Excellence
Teaching, Training & Mentoring
Teaching, Training & Mentoring / Pedagogy
Teaching is an encounter between knowledge, place and voice. Law may be taught as universal, but it is never encountered from nowhere. Every student enters the classroom carrying a history, a position and a way of seeing; and sometimes, her voice carries what the law has overlooked, silenced or placed at the margins.
My teaching brings together perspectives across the UK, Europe and the Middle East, creating a space where different legal traditions, experiences and ways of knowing can meet. It is a pedagogy of positionality and dialogue: learning not only what the law says, but from where it is being read, and whose voice is present when it is understood.
- International
law
- Human
rights
- Middle
East studies
- Cultural
expertise
- Socio-legal
research
- Legal
pluralism
- Cultural
heritage
- Gender
and women's rights
- Cross-regional
pedagogy
- Interdisciplinary
learning
- Positionality
and culturally situated teaching
K-Peritia
Training
·· Cultural Expertise in Civil Law and Common Law Systems
Developed and delivered by Dina Hadad; first delivered at Ca' Foscari Venice, 2025.
Training: Cultural Expertise in Civil Law and
Common Law Systems
·
Cultural
Expertise Across Jurisdictions
Three-hour training covering cultural expertise across jurisdictions, including
practical activities.
Training: Cultural Expertise Across Jurisdictions
·
How to
Introduce Cultural Expertise to an Interdisciplinary Audience
K-Peritia training delivered in Istanbul.
Training: How to Introduce Cultural Expertise to
an Interdisciplinary Audience
·
How to
Publish on Cultural Expertise
Include as part of the K-Peritia training portfolio. The K-Peritia publications
page currently lists this training.
K-Peritia Training & Publications