Visiting professors

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).

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.

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.

Professor Silke Goldberg

Professor Silke Goldberg has been a visiting professor at the Faculty of Law since 2021. She joins the faculty part-time in the field of energy law. 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'.

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.

Professor Lisa Whitehouse

Professor Lisa Whitehouse is a renowned researcher on property and housing law in the United Kingdom. Together with researchers at the University of Oxford and others, she has conducted classical-legal and empirical research on, among other things, evictions in the United Kingdom. Now she is one of the leaders of the People, Property, Community Research Centre at the University of Southampton.

From September 2024 to August 2025, Whitehouse will join our Faculty and contribute to further empirical and comparative law research on the right to housing within the ARW section. She would also like to be involved in teaching activities. She will therefore lecture within the Law and Legal Skills course. In addition, during her stay in Groningen, grant applications will be worked on to acquire more research projects.