Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - 00:00
Maynooth University Department of Law is currently hosting two STEP traineeships over the summer. ELSA's (The European Law Students' Association) Student Trainee Exchange Programme (STEP) makes it possible for law students and young lawyers to gain work experience abroad and provides an outstanding opportunity to gain practical legal experience as well as the culture of another country.
Meet our STEP Trainees!
Gina Carapali (ELSA Romania)
Gina is a law graduate from the Faculty of Law at the University of Bucharest. She has also successfully completed her masters studies in criminal law, which is the area of law she loves most at a theoretical level. Gina is also very interested in labour law, having worked as a paralegal, researching and drafting documents in the areas of employment law, contracts, and mergers & acquisitions. Since the first year of her law studies, Gina has been active in ELSA; she has attended various international events and was elected Treasurer of ELSA Romania for the term 2011-2012.
Through the STEP programme, Gina was offered the opportunity to work as a researcher at the National University of Ireland Maynooth, which she says has been a unique experience and has given her great insight into a common law legal system. Her traineeship has consisted of conducting academic legal research in the area of labour law, industrial relations law and policy, EU law, and discrimination law. Her work has focused on the impact of the economic and social crisis on the labour law regimes of the Member States of the EU most affected: Ireland and Greece
Melania Veri Peñaranda (ELSA Spain)
Melania completed a double honours degree in Law and Business Administration and Management at the University of Alicante (Spain) and became a lawyer. She has been working in the Criminal and International Law Department at a law firm in Madrid, and was responsible for assisting clients, drafting legal documents, and attending at court. In addition, she has managed other legal matters in the areas of civil and administrative law. She is also involved in ELSA as Vice President for Marketing of her local group in Alicante.
Melania's traineeship at Maynooth University focuses on researching the United Nations human rights body documents (specifically relating to economic, social & cultural rights). She is looking at economic models, fiscal and budgetary policies, privatisation or nationalisation of resources, state spending & intervention in the market, and the role of the international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organisation, in economic governance.
Melania’s research interests are not limited to international law, but also include criminal law. She has lived in the United States and Italy where she has taken international, criminal, and constitutional law courses given by Case Western Reserve University, Fordham Law School of New York, and Yale University.
Our trainees enjoying the beautiful surrounds of the South Campus.