Biography

Vanessa’s foremost research interests are at the intersection of law and technology, with a particular focus on corporate law (Business Law, Securities Regulation, Corporate Technologies, and Fintech). Her secondary interests are Comparative Law, Contracts, and Empirical Methodologies in Law. As a Max Weber Fellow, Vanessa plans to develop Models of Governance for Accessible Cryptomarkets, running a lab experiment.

Vanessa holds a JSD (expected 2023) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she served as a senior editor for the Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal. Her dissertation assesses how cryptointermediaries can address conflicts of interest in decentralized finance. She has been a teaching assistant in Contracts and Civil procedure and a research assistant in Securities Regulation. Currently, Vanessa is a research fellow for the ‘South EU Google Data Governance Chair’ project at the Roma Tre University, where she teaches Empirical Methodology to Doctoral Students and Corporate Technologies to JDs.

Her scholarship includes peer-reviewed articles in English, Italian, and Spanish law reviews. Moreover, her work has been selected for presentation at the Young Comparativists Committee section of the American Association of Comparative Law, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Law and Society Association, and Jean Monnet Chairs events, among other prestigious venues.

Vanessa Villanueva is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley (LLM) and the University of Genova, Department of Law (JD) and Department of Economics (MA).