Visiting professors
Professor Ben Mason Meier (2025-2026)
Professor Ben Mason Meier currently is (Full) Professor of Global Health Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (U.S) and Senior Scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National & Global Health Law at Georgetown Law School. Across two decades of collaborative research, interdisciplinary teaching, and policy analysis at the intersection of international law and global health, he has come to work as both (1) a leader in the academic field of global health law and (2) a consultant to international organizations, national governments and nongovernmental organizations.
Professor Meier is one of the most prominent scholars in the field of global health law. His work aligns with the research of Professor Brigit Toebes, to implement human rights law in non-communicable disease policy; and Dr. Marlies Hesselman, to shape international legal scholarship on environmental health and planetary health, as well as with the PhD candidates of the Groningen Centre for Health Law. He will be collaborating with scholars at the Faculty of Law on issues of non-communicable disease control, environmental health, and climate change.
Professor Tsung-Ling Lee (2025-2026)
Professor dr. Tsung-Ling Lee is Professor of Law at the Graduate Institute of Health and Biotechnology Law, Taipei Medical University in Taiwan. As an interdisciplinary researcher and legal scholar, she examines how governments, international organizations, and civil society advance shared objectives in contemporary global health through a constructivist lens of international law. Her work lies at the intersection of international law, health policy, and global governance, with
particular focus on East Asia. She is a leading expert in Global Health Law, Biotechnology Law, Digital Health Governance, AI and data surveillance, with a focus
on the perspective of human rights law, international law and ethics.
As a trained lawyer, Professor Tsung-Ling Lee has advised governments on public health policies, particularly in tobacco control and international infectious disease control. She is a full member of the Global Health Law Consortium, together with Professor Brigit Toebes and Dr. Marlies Hesselman - an international collaborative research group consisting of leading health law faculties and emerging health law scholars around the world - and an attorney of law (New York State). She will be collaborating with staff and PhD researchers at the Faculty of Law, and as appropriate the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health and the Jantina Tammes School of Digital Society, Technology and AI, on matters of Global Health Law, Biotechnology Law, Digital Health Governance, International Law, Human Rights and Health Ethics.
Professor Jessica Owley (2025-2026)
Professor Jessica Owley is a renowned researcher in the field of private law, particularly property law, and environmental law in the United States. She has been a professor at the University of Miami since 2019, where she also holds a chair in Environmental Science and Policy. She is one of the leading authors on environmental protection and the promotion of social justice through and within property law. She has extensive practical experience in U.S. legal practice and international organizations, including eight years of participation in climate treaty negotiations.
Her research aligns closely with the research of the Chair of Private Law and Sustainability held by Professor Björn Hoops and colleagues working in the areas of national, European, and international environmental law. Professor Owley is familiar with the work of several members of our faculty, such as Professor Björn Hoops, Professor Stefan Weishaar, Professor Michel Vols, and Professor Leon Verstappen. As an American professor with expertise in environmental law, property law, and the intersection of private and public law, she can provide a significant boost not only to private law research and teaching but also to the internationalization and interdisciplinary collaboration within our faculty.
Professor Christoph Schmid (2024-2025)
Professor Christoph Schmid is affiliated with the University of Bremen. He obtained his PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. He is a renowned researcher in both European economic law from a European constitutional perspective, as well as in European private law and comparative law within the EU. His recent research focuses on the role of European legal comparison in the context of housing and property rights.
There have been close ties for many years between Professor Schmid and (members of the research groups of) Professor Aurelia Colombi Ciacchi and Professor Michel Vols. The appointment of Professor Schmid to our faculty is significant for the research programme Public Interests and Private Relationships (PIPR) and for the further development of European law and comparative legal research concerning the role of property and housing rights in a European, private law, and constitutional context.
Professor Lisa Whitehouse (2024-2025)
Professor Lisa Whitehouse is a Professor at the Law School of the University of Southampton and a renowned researcher in the field of property and housing law in the United Kingdom. Together with researchers from, among others, Oxford University, she has conducted both traditional legal and empirical research on topics such as evictions in the United Kingdom. She is now one of the leaders of the People, Property, Community research centre at the University of Southampton.
Professor Whitehouse's appointment to our faculty is important for the further development of the research led by Professor Michel Vols. She will contribute to further empirical and comparative research on the right to housing and will help strengthen the connection between the two research groups.
Professor Ernst Marais
Professor Ernst Marais (Law School University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) has been invited from the Department of Private Law and Notary Law to come and conduct research with Professor Björn Hoops this spring. Marais is a renowned researcher in the field of property and housing law in South Africa. His research fits very well with the existing expertise at our Faculty and will make an important contribution to the internationalization of private law research and teaching. Marais will deliver two seminars in April and May 2024, which will also be of interest to the research group around Professor Michel Vols.
Academic Year 2024-2025
Professor Silke Goldberg
Professor Silke Goldberg has been a visiting professor at the Faculty of Law since 2021 and since 2025 professor by special appointment of Energy Law in the North Sea.
Goldberg specializes in energy (infrastructure) projects, including interconnectors and offshore cables. She has worked in Paris, Brussels, Berlin and London, giving her a European perspective and extensive experience advising on compliant international energy projects. On 11 December 2023, she received her PhD. The subject of her dissertation was 'Taking back control of the energy sector? A legal analysis of Brexit and the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement'.
Academic Year 2024-2025
Dr. Chau Le Thi Nguyet
Dr. Chau Le Thi Nguyet is the Dean of Law school, and member of the Board of Trustee at Can Tho University. She got her LLD in economic law (1995) from Ho Chi Minh Law University and her LLM (1998) and PhD degree (2006) from the University of Groningen. She also obtained the graduate certificate in international tax law (2001) at Harvard Law School and graduate diploma in Advanced Politics (2012) from the Vietnam National Political Academy.
Beside the Dean’s duties, Chau is a member of the Management Board at Can Tho Lawyer’s Association. She occasionally serves as an independent legal advisor for local governments, companies and international institutions. She is also member of the Governing Board, the Strengthen Human rights and Peace studies in Southeast Asia (SHAPE-SEA) Project. Her research focuses on tax law and budget law.
Academic Year 2023-2024
Professor Dorothy Gruyaert
The Belgian Journal of Private Law (TPR) has awarded a prestigious Exchange Chair at our faculty to Prof. Dorothy Gruyaert in July 2022. Every year, that magazine awards two Belgian-Dutch Exchange Chairs. Every two years it allows Belgian academics to lecture in residence in the Netherlands, and every two years vice versa.
Gruyaert teaches administrative law at KU Leuven. Her research focuses on the role of law in the development of a more sustainable society, particularly the sustainability of the built environment. The research area is at the intersection between private and public law.
Academic Year 2023-2024
Professor David Lagnado
David Lagnado is Professor in Cognitive and Decision Sciences at the Department of Experimental Psychology, UCL and member of the JDI Centre for Crime and Forensic Sciences and the UCL Judicial Institute, London, UK. Together with Anne Ruth Mackor (UG) and Christian Dahlman (Lund), Professor Lagnado is programme leader of the NWO project Preventing Miscarriages of Justice (2023-2028). His research focuses on causal reasoning, decision making and responsibility attribution with a special interest in legal evidential reasoning. A recent publication is Explaining the evidence: How the mind investigates the world (CUP, 2021).
Academic Year 2023-2024