Vanessa Mak appointed Chair of Civil Law
Vanessa Mak is appointed Professor of Civil Law at Leiden University as of 1 October 2020. She will succeed Professor Jac. Hijma who is retiring.
From 2008 Vanessa Mak has worked at Tilburg University, where she was appointed Professor of Dutch and European Contract Law in 2014. In 2017 she was also appointed Vice-Dean for Research at Tilburg Law School. She had previously worked as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institut für ausländisches und internationales Privatrecht in Hamburg and as a lecturer at Oriel College, Oxford. She obtained her PhD at the University of Oxford in 2006 following comparative research on performance-oriented remedies in European Sale of Goods Law.
Vanessa’s research focuses on the formation European private law, particularly in the area of contract law. Key questions are: who makes the rules to facilitate transactions between companies and consumers? What level of legislation, national or European, is the most appropriate in certain cases? And how can rules under public law be aligned with private law regulations? These questions are examined in more detail in relation to consumer markets in Europe. Specific focus areas are the regulation of the platform economy, issues concerning regulation with regard to data and technology, and financial services provided to consumers. Vanessa Mak has published widely on these topics in leading national and international journals. Later this summer she will publish a monograph entitled Legal Pluralism in European Contract Law (OUP 2020).
Vanessa Mak regularly provides expert advice to national and European institutions. She is also a member of the editorial staff of the Tijdschrift voor Consumentenrecht en handelspraktijken (TvC) and the Journal of European Consumer and Market Law (EuCML).
From 1 October 2020, Vanessa Mak will be working at the Department of Civil Law of the Institute of Private Law in Leiden. She will be teaching on the bachelor’s and master’s programmes and her research will conducted within the research programme Coherent Private Law.