The Ved Nanda Center for International & Comparative Law Welcomes New Faculty Affiliates
The Ved Nanda Center is pleased to introduce David Akerson and María Guadalupe Martínez Alles as Faculty Affiliates.
David Akerson, visiting assistant professor of the practice of law at the Sturm College of Law, is a legal expert with more than 25 years of experience in international criminal law, human rights litigation, and war crimes prosecution. He has served as senior attorney and legal adviser at multiple United Nations tribunals—including those for Rwanda, the Former Yugoslavia, and Lebanon—as well as the UN team investigating ISIS crimes. His work spans from human rights advocacy in apartheid South Africa to advising governments and investigative bodies in Ukraine, Iraq, and Kenya.
Akerson has also advanced the use of digital technologies in atrocity investigations and trained legal teams worldwide in evidence analysis. He previously taught at the University of Denver, where he created the International Criminal Law Practicum, and continues to prepare students for accountability work in complex digital evidence cases. He holds a JD from Florida State University and a BA in Computer Science and Business from Furman University. FULL BIO
María Guadalupe Martínez Alles is an associate professor of law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, where she teaches torts, private law theory, and product liability. Her research focuses on tort theory, comparative private law, consumer law, and punitive damages, drawing on both legal doctrine and insights from social psychology. Her forthcoming book, Torts and Retribution: The Case for Punitive Damages (Cambridge University Press, 2025), advances a novel framework for analyzing punitive damages across jurisdictions.
Martínez Alles previously taught at IE University in Madrid and Universidad de San Andrés in Buenos Aires, and has held visiting research positions at Yale, Oxford, the Max Planck Institute, and universities in Chile, Argentina, and Hong Kong. She earned her law degree summa cum laude from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba and holds LLM and JSD degrees from Yale Law School. FULL BIO
