By Sharon Morioka
Michigan Law
A new fellowship at Michigan Law will help fund important postgraduate opportunities for masters of law students, while honoring a longtime champion of international students. The Virginia Gordan LLM Public Service Fellowship is named for the first assistant dean for international affairs at Michigan Law.
The Law School’s Center for International and Comparative Law announced the creation of the fellowship and its first two recipients, Viktoria Baumgartl, LLM ’25, and Dmytro Soldatenko, LLM ’25, this spring.
The fellowship will support postgraduate transnational public service and public interest work at international NGOs, foreign or international courts, and other globally significant public service organizations outside the United States.
“It will give interested LLMs an opportunity to pursue the kind of postgraduate opportunities that are quite difficult to get funded,” said Gordan. “And these opportunities are very often key to launching or furthering people’s careers in their areas of interest. I’m tremendously honored that a fellowship in my name has been established for this purpose.”
Gordan started at the Law School in 1981 as assistant dean of students. Her broad set of responsibilities in that position included work with international students. In 1996, then-Dean Jeffrey Lehman asked her to serve as the school’s first assistant dean for international affairs with a mandate to build on and expand the Law School’s strong foundation in international and comparative legal studies.
“Having a public service fellowship for international students named after a much-loved former staff member is perfect for Michigan Law,” said Eric Christiansen, the Law School’s current assistant dean for international affairs. “It reflects our deep respect for a transformational former colleague, our highly individualized support for our graduate law students, and our commitment to training legal professionals who can make the world a better place.”
Gordan—who retired from the Law School in 2013 and went on to work a reporter at NPR affiliate Michigan Radio (now Michigan Public) for 10 years—said, “Michigan Law has sought to bring cross-border perspectives to the study and practice of law in order to prepare its graduates, both US and foreign, to be able to effectively and creatively address the problems of an ever-more-interconnected world. Our overseas students, scholars, and faculty play an important role in this endeavor.”
Baumgartl used her fellowship this summer to support human rights litigation before the European Court of Human Rights and other national and international bodies on behalf of the AIRE Centre, an NGO based in London. As part of the European team, she worked on legal interventions focused on the rights of refugees and migrants.
An Austrian human rights scholar and lawyer, Baumgartl has spent the last four years in academia, pursuing her PhD in the field of European Union law at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. Earlier this year, she earned her LLM from Michigan Law.
“One of the reasons I applied to the University of Michigan was the chance to connect academic studies with practical experience through international fellowship opportunities,” she said.
Now back in Vienna, she is completing her PhD on EU constitutional and asylum law. She’s also looking forward to the publication of a case note that she co-authored with her supervisor at the AIRE Centre on European Union asylum law.
Reflecting on her fellowship, she said that fellowships at NGOs like the AIRE Centre offered the chance to work outside academia and test other waters as she looks to the future.
“I wanted to dive more into practice, and this fellowship was the perfect opportunity.”
The fellowship allowed Soldatenko, an international law scholar and independent consultant from Ukraine, to support the work of Commissioner Dapo Akande at the International Law Commission. The Geneva-based commission is an organ created by the UN General Assembly that codifies and develops various fields of international law.
Currently an SJD candidate at Michigan Law, Soldatenko said that the fellowship gave him the practical experience of working in international law, which supplemented his LLM experience. In addition, his work at the commission is relevant to his research on transformation that occurs with collective enforcement of international law.
“For example, one topic at the commission that has been debated this year is how sea level rise affects the sovereignty of small island states,” Soldatenko said. “What I learned is that it was advocated by small states as a collective effort, trying to ensure that their rights are recognized and protected. And this fellowship and this internship gave me the opportunity to be exposed to such problems.”
Michigan Law
A new fellowship at Michigan Law will help fund important postgraduate opportunities for masters of law students, while honoring a longtime champion of international students. The Virginia Gordan LLM Public Service Fellowship is named for the first assistant dean for international affairs at Michigan Law.
The Law School’s Center for International and Comparative Law announced the creation of the fellowship and its first two recipients, Viktoria Baumgartl, LLM ’25, and Dmytro Soldatenko, LLM ’25, this spring.
The fellowship will support postgraduate transnational public service and public interest work at international NGOs, foreign or international courts, and other globally significant public service organizations outside the United States.
“It will give interested LLMs an opportunity to pursue the kind of postgraduate opportunities that are quite difficult to get funded,” said Gordan. “And these opportunities are very often key to launching or furthering people’s careers in their areas of interest. I’m tremendously honored that a fellowship in my name has been established for this purpose.”
Gordan started at the Law School in 1981 as assistant dean of students. Her broad set of responsibilities in that position included work with international students. In 1996, then-Dean Jeffrey Lehman asked her to serve as the school’s first assistant dean for international affairs with a mandate to build on and expand the Law School’s strong foundation in international and comparative legal studies.
“Having a public service fellowship for international students named after a much-loved former staff member is perfect for Michigan Law,” said Eric Christiansen, the Law School’s current assistant dean for international affairs. “It reflects our deep respect for a transformational former colleague, our highly individualized support for our graduate law students, and our commitment to training legal professionals who can make the world a better place.”
Gordan—who retired from the Law School in 2013 and went on to work a reporter at NPR affiliate Michigan Radio (now Michigan Public) for 10 years—said, “Michigan Law has sought to bring cross-border perspectives to the study and practice of law in order to prepare its graduates, both US and foreign, to be able to effectively and creatively address the problems of an ever-more-interconnected world. Our overseas students, scholars, and faculty play an important role in this endeavor.”
Baumgartl used her fellowship this summer to support human rights litigation before the European Court of Human Rights and other national and international bodies on behalf of the AIRE Centre, an NGO based in London. As part of the European team, she worked on legal interventions focused on the rights of refugees and migrants.
An Austrian human rights scholar and lawyer, Baumgartl has spent the last four years in academia, pursuing her PhD in the field of European Union law at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. Earlier this year, she earned her LLM from Michigan Law.
“One of the reasons I applied to the University of Michigan was the chance to connect academic studies with practical experience through international fellowship opportunities,” she said.
Now back in Vienna, she is completing her PhD on EU constitutional and asylum law. She’s also looking forward to the publication of a case note that she co-authored with her supervisor at the AIRE Centre on European Union asylum law.
Reflecting on her fellowship, she said that fellowships at NGOs like the AIRE Centre offered the chance to work outside academia and test other waters as she looks to the future.
“I wanted to dive more into practice, and this fellowship was the perfect opportunity.”
The fellowship allowed Soldatenko, an international law scholar and independent consultant from Ukraine, to support the work of Commissioner Dapo Akande at the International Law Commission. The Geneva-based commission is an organ created by the UN General Assembly that codifies and develops various fields of international law.
Currently an SJD candidate at Michigan Law, Soldatenko said that the fellowship gave him the practical experience of working in international law, which supplemented his LLM experience. In addition, his work at the commission is relevant to his research on transformation that occurs with collective enforcement of international law.
“For example, one topic at the commission that has been debated this year is how sea level rise affects the sovereignty of small island states,” Soldatenko said. “What I learned is that it was advocated by small states as a collective effort, trying to ensure that their rights are recognized and protected. And this fellowship and this internship gave me the opportunity to be exposed to such problems.”
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