Biography and publications | Alain Wijffels - European Chair

Biography

Ars longa, vita brevis

Roaming

Alain Wijffels (b. Switzerland, 1954) studied at various universities in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and England. He holds degrees in philosophy (Antwerp), law (Antwerp, Louvain), criminology (Louvain), canon law (Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve), Roman law (Paris-2) and medieval history (Louvain-la-Neuve). He defended a doctoral thesis in law at the University of Amsterdam on learned rights in the practice of the Court of Holland and the Grand Council of Malines in the ^15th and ^16th centuries, followed by another thesis (PhD) at the University of Cambridge on the practice of the High Court of Admiralty in London towards the end of the ^16th and beginning of the ^17th centuries. Cambridge University also awarded him the Doctor of Letters (DLitt) for his body of historical work.

He has worked as a teacher and researcher at the Universities of Antwerp and Amsterdam, Research Fellow at Churchill College (Cambridge), Fellow Commoner at Trinity Hall (Cambridge) and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Visiting Scholar at the University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt am Main. He has been a visiting professor at the universities of Brussels (FUSL/KUB/Academy of Legal Theory), Frankfurt am Main (Mercator Chair of the DFG, German Scientific Research Community), Nantes, Paris-2, Paris-12, and was appointed to the Francqui Chair at Ghent University. In Leiden, he directed a research project in judicial history supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). He is a member of several scientific and editorial committees, and an associate member of the Académie royale in Brussels, the Comité d'histoire du droit of the Académie royale flamande, and the Commission royale pour la publication des anciennes lois et ordonnances de Belgique. He is director of research at the CNRS, attached to the Centre d'histoire judiciaire (Lille-2), and an associate member of the Centre Georges Chevrier (CNRS and Université de Bourgogne, Dijon). He teaches the history of public law in Europe (including the history of international law) in Leiden (as a professor at the Faculty of Law), comparative constitutional history in Leuven (as an ordinary professor at the Faculty of Law), legal history and various lectures on comparative law in Louvain-la-Neuve (as an extraordinary professor at the Faculty of Law). These courses, which cater for some 2,000 students a year from all institutions, include lectures in French, Dutch and English.

He has also been involved in a number of research committees. He was a member of the scientific committee of the Catholic University of Louvain, the Burgundy region's research advisory committee, the (junior) jury of the Institut universitaire de France, the advisory committee of the Institut d'études avancées in Nantes, the selection committee of the European Council of Institutes for Advanced Studies (EURIAS), the Flemish Foundation for Scientific Research (FWO), the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and occasionally advises on scientific projects at the request of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, Oxford and Cambridge University Press, the German Research Foundation (DFG), etc.

His awards and honors include the Concours Universitaire de Belgique, the Prix Charles Duvivier of the Académie Royale de Belgique, the Sarton Medal (University of Ghent), the Francqui Chair (University of Ghent), membership of the Royal Dutch Society of Sciences and honorary citizenship of San Ginesio in Italy (the latter in recognition of his work on the jurist Alberico Gentili, one of the initiators of the modern science of international law in the 16th^century).

His current research projects include a lecture on the relationship between the German Hanseatic League and England from the ^15th to the 17th^century(a project that has been taken up within the general framework of the LOEWE program at Frankfurt University and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Law); the co-editing of a collective work on major printed legal works in the Western tradition; a chapter on the role of jurists at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the Modern Age; a project on central courts and supreme tribunals in the Habsburg Netherlands; a chapter on judicial organization and procedure in theOxford Handbook of Legal History ; forthcoming entries in the Handbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, etc. He is also preparing a revised and expanded third edition of his textbook Introduction historique au droit - France - Allemagne - Angleterre (Presses universitaires de France, ^1sted. 2010).

Doctoral theses

(Dr.jur.): Les allégations du droit savant dans la pratique du Grand Conseil de Malines (causes septentrionales, ca. 1460-1580) (Amsterdam, UvA, 1985)
(PhD): Civil Law in the Practice of the High Court of Admiralty at the Time of Alberico Gentili (Cambridge, 1994)

Annals

1954: born in Chêne-Bougeries (Switzerland)
1977-85: assistant, Faculty of Law, University of Antwerp (part-time)
1980-89: assistant, law faculties of the universities of Amsterdam and Leiden (part-time)
1989-: Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Leiden (part-time)
1989-92: Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge
1990-: Lecturer, later Professor, Faculty of Law, Catholic University of Leuven (part-time)
1990-: research fellow, then director of research at CNRS
1997: Commoner Fellow, Trinity Hall, Cambridge
2013-: Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Leuven (KULeuven, part-time)

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