Fernanda G. Nicola is Professor of Law at the Washington College of Law, American University and she is the Director of the Program on International Organizations Law and Development. Her research and teaching interests are in European Union Law, Constitutional Law, Comparative Law and Local Government Law. She received her PhD from Trento University and her SJD degree from Harvard Law School where she was the recipient of the Mancini Prize in European Law, and the Justice Welfare and Economics fellowship at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. 

Professor Nicola is the author of several articles on  transnational legal theory, European law and integration including Family  law exceptionalism in Comparative Law (2010); Invisible Cities in EU Law (2012); National Legal Traditions at Work in the  Jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (2016); Legal  Diplomacy in An Age of Authoritarianism (2020); with Michelle  Egan, The  Values-Based Trade Agenda (2023). In 2024 Professor Nicola co-authored with  Transparency International this Report on Protecting  National Sovereignty: What is the Real Threat? Comparing the U.S. Foreign  Agents Registration Act with  Hungary’s National Protection of Sovereignty  Law.

She co-authored with Günter  Frankenberg, Comparative  Law. Introduction to a Critical Practice (2024). She co-edited three  volumes on the Court  of Justice of the European Union, with Bill Davies entitled EU law Stories: Contextual and Critical Histories in  European Jurisprudence(2017); with Mikael-Rask Madsen and  Antoine Vauchez,Researching  the European Court of Justice: Methodological Shifts and Law's Embeddedness (2020); with Daniele Gallo,  Roberto Mastroianni and Lorenzo Cecchetti, The  Italian Influence on European Law. Italian Judges and Advocates General at the  European Court of Justice (2024).

Professor Nicola is a member of the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL) and was the AALS Chair of the EU law and Comparative law Sections. In 2017 she was a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence and a Visiting Professor at LUISS in Rome.  She organized the Luxembourg  forum at AUWCL that is the official visit of the Court of Justice of the EU  (CJEU) to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C. and she took part in the  movie 70 years of the  European Court of Justice.