JOB: Full-Time Chair in Public International Law (KULeuven/Open University (The Netherlands); DEADLINE 10 Mar 2016

(image source: KULeuven)

The Law Faculty of the KULeuven and the Faculty of Humanities and Law of the Open University (the Netherlands) hire a full-time chair in public international law.

Requirements:

Candidates are expected to meet the following requirements:

• PhD in Public International Law
• knowledge of and research experience in Public International Law, demonstrated by an excellent academic output at international level
• interest in fundamental doctrines of Public International Law, such as sovereignty, human rights, governance mechanisms in international society, international relations
• managerial and communicative skills, including an excellent command of English (B2/C1 in CEFR)
• the requisite skill to apply for tenders for research funding; experience in obtaining research grants is a plus
• experience with academic teaching and good didactical qualities, demonstrated by evaluations
• experience with or a demonstrable interest in the engagement of ICT and multimedia in academic teaching
• skills in research supervision; completed PhD studies under supervision are a plus
• a positive attitude towards obtaining the relevant teaching qualifications, if not yet obtained

Proficiency in English is required.
The official administrative language used at KU Leuven is Dutch. If you do not speak Dutch (or do not speak it well) at the start of employment, KU Leuven will provide language training to enable you to take part in administrative meetings.
Before teaching courses in Dutch or English, you will be given the opportunity to learn Dutch respectively English to the required standard.


Research:
The appointed candidate is expected to develop and execute research projects in cooperation with the departments /sections for International and European Law at both Faculties, as well as with the KU Leuven Institute for International Law and the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies. It is expected that excellent results will be achieved, such as publications in international peer reviewed academic journals as well as effective participation in national and international research networks in the field of the chair. This senior position entails the supervision of PhD students.

Teaching:
The appointed candidate will develop and execute an effective contribution to the law curricula of both Faculties. For KU Leuven the position will involve teaching in the campuses at Kortrijk, Brussels and Hasselt in conformity with the educational concept of the university. For the OU the position will involve the development and teaching of courses for online academic education as well as sharing the responsibility for the quality of other courses in the field of the chair. Supervision/examination of LLM papers is expected. Both Faculties expect the teaching to meet the standards of academic programmes (LLB, LLM) as regards level, orientation and content. The teaching will be evaluated through the relevant quality assurance systems, with which the chairholder will have to comply.

Service:
The appointed candidate is expected to engage in assignments of service to society and /or to the administration and management of the institutions where the chair is established.

 Offer:

The actual legal regime of the appointment will be discussed with the selected candidate, in view of interalia his /her nationality and personal preference. The chair's residence has to allow for personal presence of the chairholder in the academic communities,both in Leuven (B) and in Heerlen (NL), on a regular basis.
Equal opportunities and diversity policies are qualities of the HRM policies of both universities.

Interested ?

For more information please contact Prof. dr. Bernard Tilleman, tel.: +32 16 32 53 34, mail: bernard.tilleman@law.kuleuven.be or Prof. dr. Evert Stamhuis, tel. +31 455 762 307, mail: evert.stamhuis@ou.nl.
For problems with online applying, please contact solliciteren@kuleuven.be.

You can apply for this job no later than March 10, 2016 via the

online application tool

Call For Papers: “Law between Global and Colonial: Techniques of Empire” (3-5 October 2016, Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki)

(image source: Helsinki University)

The Conference Law Between Global and Colonial: Techniques of Empire proposes to discuss the legal languages and techniques through which colonial powers ruled non-European territories and populations throughout the modern age. The aim of the Conference is to examine in detail the juridical practices and discourses of colonial powers when they exercised their supremacy over colonial subjects and disciplined them. Given the complexity and variety of these legal strategies and without neglecting the classical the study of “law of nature and nations”, we intend to move beyond it in order to explore a hybrid normative body consisting of ad-hoc colonial laws, commercial laws and domestic laws adapted to colonial contexts. What came to be called the “empire of free trade”, for instance, operated largely through a commercial law (sometimes, though not always called “lex mercatoria”) that possessed features of both international and domestic law.

Although the focus of the conference is historical, the interest feeding it lies in the present. With the great numbers of people moving about in Europe, Asia and Africa as migrants, guest workers, refugees and displaced persons, territorial states have often used methods and techniques that resemble those with which colonial populations once were treated. With research showing a sharp rise in world inequality, the conference poses the question whether legislative techniques and institutions inherited from the imperial past, once again see the light of day in the present.

How was the “law of nations” understood when it was used for imperial purposes? Would domestic laws apply to colonial expansion? What laws might govern the groups concerned – indigenous population, settlers, slaves, indentured servants, subjects of third nations? What was the role of the idiom of international law in Europe’s colonial expansion? To what extent was colonial rule organised by domestic laws of a special character? How did special colonial laws and the “law of nature and nations” relate to each other? To what extent did any of these laws open an avenue to contesting colonial governance? How far did such techniques extend beyond the end of the period of formal colonialism and even decolonization?

To answer such questions, the relations between global and domestic laws in imperial expansion and colonial governance ought to be studied.

Keynote speakers: Lauren Benton, Isabel. V. Hull, Luigi Nuzzo

The conference will close the four and a half-year period of the Finnish Academy research project on “International Law, Religion and Empire” at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki. Members: Martti Koskenniemi, Paolo Amorosa, Mónica García-Salmones, Manuel Jimenez and Walter Rech.

Interested participants should submit an abstract of no more than 600 words, in Word format accompanied by a brief (2-3 sentences) scholarly biography by March 1st, 2016 to both Mónica García-Salmones (monica.garcia@helsinki.fi) and Paolo Amorosa (paolo.amorosa@helsinki.fi).

Accepted participants will be required to submit full papers, in Word format, of no more than 8000 words by August 31st, 2016.

The conveners will cover meals for the duration of the conference for accepted participants. Travel and accommodation expenses are to be met by the participants.

Deadlines: Submission of Abstracts March 1st, 2016

Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by June 1st, 2016

Final papers must be submitted by August 31st, 2016

WORKSHOP: A new world order? Internationalism and legal imagination in inter-war Europe (17 December 2015, Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki)

(image source: Helsinki University)

The Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights and the Graduate School Law in a Changing World are pleased to invite you to a workshop “A new world order? Internationalism and legal imagination in inter-war Europe”. The event takes place on December 17, 2015, at Unioninkatu Festive Halls (Unioninkatu 33).

The cataclysm of the Great War, the birth of democratic nation-states upon the ruins of monarchic empires, and efforts to found the League of Nations challenged contemporary legal theorists to restate, re-frame – or indeed to found anew – the principles of European internationalism. The urgent agendas of this extraordinarily intense period of legal innovation included attempts to think beyond unlimited state sovereignty, articulations of the legal and institutional tools for an organized system of internationalism, and reformulations of natural law or positivism to support these efforts. The seminar explores the transformations and innovations in the political and legal discourses of the time, as well as their embeddedness in the substantive and methodological frameworks of the tradition. A particular focus is on mapping the state of art in the inter-war history of European legal thought, including possibilities for a trans-national approach, and on its echoes in our own times.

Program:

1.        Nathaniel Berman, Brown University, "Whose Imagination? A Cacophonous Period and the Impossibility of Legal History"

2.        Georgios Varouxakis, Queen Mary University of London, "Continuities and discontinuities in Inter-War British internationalism"

 3.        Kaius Tuori, University of Helsinki, “Tradition and renewal: Refugee scholars and the revisiting of the foundations of European legal culture as a counter-reaction to interwar totalitarianism"

4.        Balasz Trencsenyi, Central European University, "Dominance, Crisis, and Renewal: The Faces of Liberalism in Interwar East Central Europe

5.        Katharina Rietzler, University of Cambridge, “German and Indian critics of British imperialism”

6.        Taina Tuori, University of Helsinki, “From League of Nations Mandates to Decolonization: A History of Rights”

7.        Timo Miettinen, University of Helsinki, “The idea of  internationalism and universalism in the phenomenological tradition in Germany” 

8.        Panu Minkkinen, ”The Political Constitution: Law and  Politics in Weimar” 

9.        Liisi Keedus, University of Helsinki, "'The New World' of Karl Barth: On Political Theologies"

10.      Rotem Giladi, University of Helsinki/University of Jerusalem, "Blending the Universal with the Particular: Jewish Engagements with International Law in the Interwar Period"

More information on the website of the Erik Castrén Institute.