A series of research and practical activities led up to the foundation of the Bruno Simma Competence Centre for International Legal Practice in the fall 2026 and are now continued under its aegis. Some of them are listed below.


  • The International Law Roundtable at the University of St. Gallen, a research seminar founded by the chair of international law held by Professor Leena Grover and led together with the Simma Centre. From the spring 2026 on, the ILR has convened international law researchers several times per semester to discuss research and practical issues of international law.
  • A data analysis of 100+ submissions in the International Court of Justice advisory proceedings on climate change law to support Switzerland. The project was jointly conducted with the Swiss Directorate of International Law and produced two ASIL Insights: 2024, 1, and 2025, 2.
  • An international competition with prize money of 100’000 US$ to test the feasibility of the European Union’s legislation on A.I. (Grand Challenge, 2023). The competition was held at the University of St. Gallen in partnership with Mercedes Benz, Deutsche Telekom, Merantix, several A.I. startups, and the Swiss Department of Defense which organized a boot camp for the participating teams. A report on the competition was published in Nature MI. The University of St. Gallen honored it with an impact award.
  • Advice and counsel of islanders in the decolonization of the Chagos Archipelago. We have covered the case since 2018, including the advisory proceedings at the International Court of Justice and the implementation of the Court’s 2019 advisory opinion, inter alia with two conferences at the Lauterpacht Centre at the University of Cambridge and the University of St. Gallen.

  • The Master of Arts in International Law (MIL). In 2026, Professor Leena Grover assumed the MIL program direction; before Thomas Burri had held it from 2015 to 2026. The MIL has grown significantly in terms of student numbers, diversity of the teaching body, and courses offered. It is now a well established program that attracts students from all over the world. It also brings practitioners from as far afield as Africa, the US, Australia, the UK, and Germany to St. Gallen to teach and inspire our students. The program offers students not only a unique experience in international law, but also a close link to business for which the University of St. Gallen is well known.
  • A major project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation which investigated human control of intelligent algorithms. The project conducted in person lab experiments to test machine learning algorithms (2020-2024, CHBRep).
  • An ethical evaluation schema for autonomous systems in security. The project under the lead of the Digital Society Initiative at the University of Zurich, Dr. Markus Christen, developed a multi-disciplinary tool to assess the implications of autonomous systems in security, including disaster relief and weapons systems (from 2017 on). Daniel Trusilo undertook PhD research to apply the tool to existing autonomous systems, see  J. in 2021.
  • Several studies on EU case law in free movement of persons and EU foreign relations. Major research was published in 2015 (monograph with Nomos) and 2018 (journal article with ZöR).