Ivona loves the freedom of discovery offered by academic research and the process of thinking about the law, of exploring ideas, and of making unexpected connections. Her main area of research is competition law, and she adopts a comparative approach to the issues she studies. As she has a keen interest in the broader implications of competition policy on business strategy, her work is informed to a large extent by economic theory, especially by industrial organization scholarship. Currently, she is focusing on the European Union (EU) law of private damages actions for infringements of competition law. Private enforcement of EU competition law was harmonized through Directive 2014/104/EU, so her LLM thesis examines critically the provisions of this Directive to determine to what extent it enhances consumer welfare.
In addition to the EU, Ivona is also interested in the competition law systems of Mexico and Latin America. Between September and December of 2016, she conducted a collaborative research project at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, in Mexico City. The project carried out a comparative analysis of the merger control systems of Canada and Mexico to determine which one better facilitates the flow of foreign direct investment. This research was supported by the University of British Columbia through a Go Global Scholarship, and by the Government of Canada through a Mitacs Globalink Research Award.
At UBC, Ivona has been a Research Assistant for her supervisor, Dr. Ljiljana Biukovic, and a Teaching Assistant for Public Law and Tort Law.
Outside of academia, Ivona has volunteered for the Law Students’ Legal Advice Program at UBC, where she developed effective relationships with low-income clients while providing summary advice and legal representation under the supervision of lawyers in various areas, including criminal, employment insurance and residential tenancy law. She was also the President of the UBC Graduate Law Students’ Society, where she led a diverse team of kind and community-minded graduate students in improving the academic experience of our colleagues in the law graduate programs. Currently, Ivona is Chair of the Organizing Committee for the 21st UBC Interdisciplinary Legal Studies Graduate Conference. In this role, she coordinates a team of four graduate students in the organization and delivery of the 2017 edition of the longest running graduate conference in Canada.
Originally from Romania, prior to joining the Peter A. Allard School of Law, Ivona graduated from King’s College London (in England) with a First Class degree in Law and European Legal Studies, having spent one year on exchange at IE University in Segovia, Spain. During her exchange year in Spain, she held an Erasmus Scholarship offered by the European Commission to encourage student mobility between universities of the European Union. Upon joining UBC, she held a Law Faculty Scholarship and is the recipient of the International Tuition Award.
