Professor Nikolay Marin PHD as served as Rector of South-West University “Neofit Rilski” since 2023. Professor of Law (International Law and International Relations)
Education
- 2003 – Obtained the educational qualification degree Master of Law from South-West University “Neofit Rilski”.
- 2007 – Obtained the educational and scientific degree Doctor in International Law and International Relations.
Academic and Teaching Activity
- Between 2007 and 2011, successively held the academic positions of Assistant, Senior Assistant, and Chief Assistant in the Department of International Law and International Relations at the Faculty of Law and History, South-West University “Neofit Rilski”.
- In 2011, appointed to the academic position of Associate Professor.
- Since 2023 and currently, holds the academic position of Professor.
Administrative Positions at South-West University “Neofit Rilski”
- 2011–2019 – Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Law and History.
- 2019–2023 – Dean of the Faculty of Law and History.
- On 14 December 2023, elected Rector by the General Assembly of South-West University “Neofit Rilski”.
Research Activity
- Author of over 50 scientific publications. His research interests include: international public law, European Union law, legal regulation of personal data protection in the Republic of Bulgaria, and international relations.
- In 2019, completed specialisations at the Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law (Luxembourg) and at the Court of Justice of the European Union.
- Project leader of the Jean Monnet Module initiative “European Data Protection: Post-pandemic effects and new dimensions” (EDP-PPEND), Erasmus+ 2021–2027.
As a supervisor he provided strategic academic guidance and ensured the project’s strong grounding in the Bulgarian legal and institutional context.
Dr. Moritz Baumgärtel was the lead researcher in the PROME project. He is a scholar of human rights, migration, and socio-legal theory with more than a decade of international research experience. He holds a PhD from the Université libre de Bruxelles, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and an LLM from Utrecht University. His work examines how courts interpret and apply human rights norms in cases involving migrants, and how legal categories shape the lived reality of inequality. Before joining South-West University "Neofit Rilski" as a Petar Beron Research Fellow in 2024, he was an Assistant Professor at University College Roosevelt in the Netherlands, where he also taught sociology of inequality and qualitative research methods. His monograph Demanding Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and numerous articles in leading journals have established him as a significant voice in the field.
Dr. Baumgärtel’s research is marked by its interdisciplinary reach and strong engagement with both theoretical and practical questions. He has presented PROME results at universities and institutes across Europe, including Zürich, Ghent, Budapest, Utrecht, and Cologne. In addition to his scholarly publications and presentations, he contributed to doctoral training at South-West University and delivered seminars on publishing in international journals.