Dr Aurélie Villanueva wins ELFA Proxime Accessit prize

Aurélie Villanueva, assistant professor European Union Law at our Faculty, has been awarded the Proxime Accessit Prize of the European law Faculties Association (ELFA). She received the prize for her dissertation titled ‘Culture in European Union Law: Between Market and Society’, which she defended last year at the European University Institute in Florence.

Taking culture into account in law

For her dissertation, Villanueva examined how culture is taken into account in EU lawmaking. She focused not only on tangible culture, namely goods and services within the EU internal market, but also questioned the depth of EU involvement with culture. The biggest challenge in her research was defining the central concept of ’culture’. That quest provided Villanueva with the insight that EU law relies on different concepts of culture, rather than a single concept.

Villanueva remains puzzled by the interaction between intangible culture, namely the behaviors, habits and traditions of Europeans, and EU law. How the two can be reconciled will be the focus of her work in the coming years.

ELFA Awards

The European Law Faculties Association (ELFA) was founded to enhance the quality of legal education in Europe by providing a platform for discussion and exchange. In 2012, the ELFA created an award for the best doctoral thesis on European law, with the goal of encouraging and recognizing outstanding legal research. Since then, the ELFA Awards have been presented annually. Previous winners are employed at Oxford, Cambridge, Leiden University and Maastricht University.

This article was published by the Faculty of Law.