VISITING PROFESSORS

Visiting Assistant Professor

Mehrnoosh Aryanpour is an energy lawyer and legal scholar whose work focuses on economic sanctions, energy security, energy justice, international trade and climate governance. Her scholarship examines how sanctions regulations and Office of Foreign Assets Control licensing policies affect energy transitions, particularly in sanctioned, fragile and conflict-affected energy markets.

At Villanova Law, Aryanpour teaches public international law and contracts. Her current research addresses the governance of shared energy resources and maritime chokepoints and the role of climate mitigation and adaptation projects in sanctions diplomacy.

Prior to joining the Villanova faculty, she practiced law in the United States, France, Iran and Afghanistan. She worked in the sanctions and international trade practice at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; helped establish Holland & Knight's office in Afghanistan; and served as a partner and Iran country head at Gide Loyrette Nouel, where she opened and led the firm's Tehran office, the first branch of a European law firm in Iran. She is also the founder of Green Swan, an advisory and research organization leading projects on gas flaring reduction in Venezuela.

She earned her doctor of juridical science (SJD) from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where her doctoral research was supervised by Presidential Distinguished Professor Shelley Welton. She holds an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center and an LLB from the University of Tehran. She ranked first among 496,797 participants in Iran's National University Entrance Examination and is a member of the New York Bar.

Visiting Professor

Last year, Paul Figley was a visiting professor at Villanova Law, where the Student Bar Association voted him Adjunct Faculty Member of the Fall 2025 Semester. He is professor of legal rhetoric emeritus at American University Washington College of Law (AUWCL), where he taught from 2006-2024. During his tenure at AUWCL, the Student Bar Association voted him Professor of the Year in 2012-13 and Faculty Member of the Year for 2014-15.

Figley has published articles in scholarly journals and two books. He has testified before Congressional committees on matters pertaining to government liability, appropriations, and the Judgment Fund. He has presented at scholarly symposia and conferences, international organizations, and government agencies. In 2017, he won Washington College of Law’s Emalee C. Godsey Scholar Award.

Figley was a US Department of Justice litigator for three decades. During his last fifteen years there, he served as deputy director in the torts branch of the civil division. Figley represented the United States and its agencies in appellate and district court litigation involving torts, national security and information law. He headed defense teams for Agent Orange, Nuclear Radiation and Katrina Flood Litigation.

Figley is a graduate of Franklin & Marshall College and Southern Methodist University School of Law, where he was leading articles editor for the Journal of Air Law & Commerce.

Visiting Professor

Bruce Grohsgal is the Helen S. Balick Professor in Business Bankruptcy Law at Widener University Delaware Law School, where he teaches bankruptcy and other commercial law courses and serves as director of the Delaware Institute of Corporate and Business Law. At Delaware Law School, he was awarded the Douglas Ray Faculty Scholarship Award in 2018 and 2022 and the Outstanding Faculty Award in 2017 and 2025.

Grohsgal joined the Delaware Law School faculty from Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones in Wilmington, Delaware, where he practiced business bankruptcy law, representing Chapter 11 debtors, trustees and creditors' committees.

His recent articles are "Working to Make Bankruptcy Work: The First Hundred Years of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges – Part I," 100 Am. J. Bankr. L. 1 (2026), and "A Brief History of Third Party Releases under the Bankruptcy Code," 36 W. Legal Hist. 215 (2026). Forthcoming this year is "Working to Make Bankruptcy Work: The First Hundred Years of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges – Part II," 100 Am. J. Bankr. L. ___ (2026), which is scheduled for publication in August.

Visiting Professor

Susan King, visiting professor of law, teaches legal writing. She received an AB from Bryn Mawr College, a JD from Temple Law School and an MLS from Rutgers University.

King began her academic career as a reference librarian at Rutgers Law School. She then taught in the legal methods department at Widener University Delaware Law School. She has also taught in the LLM program at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, the undergraduate law program at Drexel University and the legal research & writing program at Temple University Beasley School of Law.

Prior to her academic career, King worked as a litigation associate at Pepper Hamilton & Scheetz, specializing in complex tort litigation.

Visiting Professor

Irina Manta's research spans legal issues involving intellectual property, torts, the internet, privacy, artificial intelligence, property, national security and immigration. She has a particular interest in the intersection of law and the social sciences, especially psychology and economics. Manta has published and has forthcoming work in the New York University Law Review, Texas Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Emory Law Journal, William & Mary Law Review, Iowa Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Washington Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Northwestern University Law Review Online and Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, among others. She is also a co-author of a textbook on criminal law issues in intellectual property and blogs for The Volokh Conspiracy.

In 2014, she received the Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publications, which is awarded to two junior faculty members across all disciplines at Hofstra University in recognition of outstanding scholarship. Manta has delivered well over 100 talks nationally and internationally, and her writings have appeared in the Washington Post, Scientific American, MSNBC, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Salon, Newsweek, Yahoo! News, International Business Times and The Conversation, as well as on SCOTUSblog. She also co-hosts the podcast Strangers on the Internet and posts on Bluesky.

During her academic career, Manta has taught or will teach courses in the following topic areas: torts, property, intellectual property, trademarks, copyright, patents, law and social science.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Law & Director of the Health Law Clinic

Jacqueline Penrod is a visiting assistant professor and director of the Health Law Clinic. Penrod is particularly focused on the ways in which public health and education policies play a role in perpetuating health and income inequity. She brings a decade professional experience in the healthcare industry in addition to nearly fifteen years of legal practice in managed healthcare, healthcare compliance, and the legal issues surrounding healthcare data interchange. Penrod is a graduate of Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, and holds an MBA from Temple University. Her legal professional experience includes two years of service as a law clerk in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania with the Honorable Gene E.K. Pratter, private practice at Duane Morris, LLP and Reed Smith, LLP, in-house practice as senior counsel for the AmeriHealth Caritas Family of Companies, as well as eight years of teaching undergraduate students health policy and law at an open-access undergraduate institution. Her experiences in the healthcare industry span perspectives of patients, doctors, facilities, and insurers. In addition to advocacy and teaching, she is pursuing an MEd. focused on adult learning and global change in an international cohort program at the University of British Columbia.

Visiting Professor

Matthew Shapiro is a professor of law at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey School of Law, Camden, where he also co-directs the Rutgers Institute for Law and Philosophy. A proceduralist and legal theorist, Shapiro writes about civil procedure and related aspects of private and public law, drawing on legal and political theory to examine how the state uses procedural law to shape the resolution of private disputes in light of important public values such as democracy, dignity, equality and the rule of law.

Shapiro has been repeatedly honored for his scholarship, including with a Rutgers University Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence, which is awarded annually to five of the most distinguished young faculty members from across the Rutgers University system in recognition of truly outstanding contributions to research. His article "Distributing Civil Justice" won the Association of American Law Schools' Scholarly Papers Competition. Two of his other papers were selected for the Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum, and another was chosen for the New Voices in Civil Justice Workshop. His scholarship has appeared in such publications as the Boston University Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal and Law and Philosophy, as well as in two edited collections of essays on private law theory published by Oxford University Press.

Shapiro clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. of the Supreme Court of the United States and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He also practiced at a large law firm, specializing in appellate and complex civil litigation. Before joining the Rutgers Law School faculty, he served on the faculty of the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, having begun his academic career as an associate in law at Columbia Law School.

Shapiro received a JD from Yale Law School, where he was a book reviews & features editor of the Yale Law Journal; an MPhil and a DPhil in political theory from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Keasbey Memorial Foundation Scholar; and an AB from Princeton University.

Visiting Assistant Professor & Director of the Intellectual Property Law Clinic

Paul Szynol specializes in media, art, entertainment and technology transactions. For two decades, he has focused his legal practice on intellectual property matters. He has worked with award-winning filmmakers as well as tech startups and multinational companies. As an academic, he is especially interested in copyright law and the First Amendment. He frequently lectures on film and law at venues including SXSW and the Sundance Institute, and he has written about law, art and culture for academic journals and mainstream media outlets.

Szynol is also a filmmaker and photographer. His documentaries have been featured by The New York Times (Op-Docs), The Atlantic, The New Yorker and Aeon, and screened at film festivals around the world, including AFI Docs, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, DOC NYC, Palm Springs International ShortFest, Slamdance and the Toronto International Film Festival Kids program. His photographs have appeared in print publications, including Interview Magazine, and online outlets, including The New York Times. He has also exhibited his work in the United States and Europe, including a solo exhibition at the Leica Gallery in Warsaw.

In the past, Szynol played loud drums with loud bands in a bunch of loud places, including CBGB. He started coding in seventh grade, and still tinkers with Python and Java. He likes old jazz records, even older trains and every dog he’s ever met.