Avec Edwina TAYLOR et Aline NARDI, doctorante de l’UNamur

Programme

• 9h : Arrivée des participant.e.s
• 9h30 : Mot de bienvenue
• 9h45 – 11h : Présentations des thématiques de recherche de 3 doctorant.e.s
  • Le parcours des données de santé dans l’écosystème numérique belge — Olga Thiry
  • Le droit de la désinformation — Clément Maertens
  • La TVA sur les transactions et la digitalisation dans une perspective euro-Afrique : cas du commerce électronique direct en République démocratique du Congo — Serge Sango Kayamba
• 11h – 11h30 : Activité « Ma recherche en 60 secondes »
• 11h30 – 12h30 : Activité « Research Shuffle »
• 12h30 – 14h : Lunch (offert) et discussions informelles

Wednesday 18 March 2026, 11.00 – 16.30, UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles

Cycle Interdisciplinarités en droit

Language: English

Alessandra Arcuri is Full Professor of International Economic Law at the Department of Law and Markets, Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a member of the Erasmus Initiative on Inclusive Prosperity. Her research and teaching focus on international economic law, sustainability, environmental law, global technocracy and democracy. She has also been invited to teach in various institutions worldwide including Lund University, Bocconi University, the African Universities in Lomè, Togo, Luiss University, and University of Siena. In addition to her academic research and teaching, Arcuri engages with non-academic audiences, by authoring commissioned reports and briefing institutional actors, including the Dutch Parliament, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Commission and NGOs.

During this seminar, Alessandra Arcuri will present her work on international investment law and the fossil fuel economy. She will use her research to reflect together on some general questions, including: how does the law enable/hinder a just transition? Which methodologies help to identify relations of domination? How should lawyers engage with clients, such as fossil fuel corporations, whose main business is damaging the planet? And what is the role of academic scholars in studying these issues?

Programme

11.00 – 12.00: Interview

Moderated by Claire Debucquois

12.00 – 13.00: Lunch

13.00 – 14.30: Presentation of international investment law and the fossil fuel economy

Alessandra Arcuri will discuss insights from her article ‘On how the ECT fuels the fossil fuel economy: Rockhopper v Italy as a case study’ [2023] 7(1): 3. Europe and the World: A law review and bridge these with her more recent work. The central thesis of this article is that the Energy Charter Treaty (a sectoral investment agreement on energy) can be deployed to expand the rights of the fossil fuel industry and counter the democratic forces that animate the ecological transition. More specifically, the article shows the entanglement between the suppression of ecological democracy and the expansion of fossil rights.

We will take the Rockhopper v Italy arbitration proceedings as an opportunity to reflect on morality and lawyering. In times of democratic crises and socio-ecological upheavals, how should lawyers support clients whose business can compress democracy and/or severely damage the planet? We will also reflect on the role of academic scholars in engaging with socially relevant debate. Should academics stay ‘neutral’ and shy away from public debates or should they intervene and engage with policymakers?

14.30 – 15.00: Coffee Break

15.00 – 16.30: Discussion: Boundary-Work and Dynamics of Exclusion by Law

On the basis of the article referenced below, participants are invited to prepare a short (max. 5 min) opening statement to explain how/whether they identify the construction of ideational boundary (or other techiniques of exclusion) in their research. In particular, they should consider whether/how they critique legal doctrines and institutions, in ways that reveal relations of domination. Are you considering how the law treats marginalized subjects? Are you looking at how, in your legal domain, the law includes/excludes? What are plausible alternative legal imaginaries that could flow from your critique? The objective is to discuss the difficulties and opportunities of engaging with this type of questions.

Reference: Arcuri Alessandra, ‘Boundary-Work and Dynamics of Exclusion by Law: International Investment Law as a Case Study’, in Bartl and Lawrence (eds), The Politics of European Legal Research: Behind the Method (Edward Elgar, 2022). (If pressed for time, you can read only the Introduction, Section 2 and conclusion: pp. 60-66 and 75-76.)

La formation aura lieu le mardi 7 avril, de 9h30 à 11h30, sur Teams (le lien vous sera transmis),  mais également sur le site Saint-Louis (le local vous sera communiqué ultérieurement, une fois le nombre de participant·es connu). L’inscription est gratuite mais obligatoire, avant le 27 février, et s’effectue via ce lien.

27 November 2025, 10:30-12:30 and 13:30-15:30, Saint-Louis, Brussels

The doctoral school is offering two doctoral School seminars to help doctoral students improve their English language skills. 

1. Improving your writing skills
2. Improving your presentation skills

Caroline Laske will lead both workshops, which will take place in Saint-Louis Brussels on February 11th, respectively in the morning (10:30-12:30) and in the afternoon (13:30-15:30). Lunch will be provided and we will find a spot to share the mid-day meal together.

More about the workshops

Have you ever wondered whether your research, your hypotheses and theories come across in the way you intend when expressed in English? We have all experienced how our research work ‘sounds’ different in another language and that some of it may even have been lost in translation. This is because translation is not just a process of crossing over into a different language but also comes with having to adopt a different cultural and intellectual context to create the equivalent effect for your communication as it was intended in the original language.

During the two seminars, we will review some of the basic writing and communication techniques in English that will improve the way you present your research, whether in writing or in an oral presentation at a conference. For the morning seminar, students are invited to write a 500 word abstract of an (hypothetical or real) article. For the afternoon seminar, students are encouraged to make a five-minute presentation with PP slides of their work. 

Interested? Please sign up below and send your abstract/presentation to Caroline Laske.

More about Caroline Laske

Caroline Laske is a lecturer and research fellow at the University of Louvain (B) and an affiliated researcher at both the Ghent Legal History Institute (B) and the Bonn Centre for Dependency and Slavery Studies (D), where she also held a Heinz Heinen Fellowship in 2019-2021. She was a visiting Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Oslo (N) in 2021-2022.

Caroline holds graduate and post-graduate degrees in law and in linguistics/translation studies from the Universities of Cambridge and Birmingham and a PhD in legal history from the University of Ghent. Her research activities as a university researcher (University Durham, Free University Brussels, University Ghent, University Bonn, University Louvain) and her work as a legal expert and specialist consultant for EU and international agencies, have taken her across a number of fields. Today her interdisciplinary research lies at the intersection of history, law and language, applying linguistic analysis to study legal history and concepts, comparative law and translation. She has particular interests in gender studies and in the late medieval/early modern period.

Location UCLouvain Saint-Louis Brussels, salle du Conseil. From the main entrance (Bd du Jardin botanique 43), take the elevator to the 4th floor. The Salle du Conseil is right across.

Langue : français

Présentation

L’Ecole doctorale en sciences juridiques lance un nouveau projet : une journée d’accueil-formation pour les nouveaux.elles doctorant.e.s. Pour cette première année, l’événement est organisé par la Faculté de droit et de criminologie de l’ULB mais il est destiné à l’ensemble des doctorant.e.s de première année de la Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles, ainsi qu’à tous ceux et celles qui sont en train de préparer le dépôt d’un projet de thèse.

Lors de cette journée, vous recevrez toutes les informations et conseils pour démarrer la thèse, et pourrez également partager vos hésitations et inquiétudes.

L’accent sera mis tout au long de la journée sur l’interaction entre les participant.e.s et intervenant.e.s. Des moments de réflexions individuelles et en petits groupes sont aussi prévus.

A la fin de la journée, vous repartirez avec des informations utiles, tout en ayant eu l’occasion de travailler directement sur votre projet de thèse et d’avoir échangé sur celui-ci avec d’autres.

Programme

Lieu

ULB, Ax1.216 (Hall des marbres). Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50 à 1050 Bruxelles.

Langue : français

Stéphanie Hennette Vauchez est professeure de droit public à l’Université Paris Nanterre et membre de l’Institut universitaire de France. Auparavant, elle a été Fulbright Fellow à Northwestern University Law School (2000), Marie Curie Fellow à l’Institut universitaire européen (2007-2010), Law and public affairs Fellow à l’Université de Princeton (2013-14) et Jean Monnet Senior Fellow à la New York University (2023). A l’Université Paris Nanterre, elle a longtemps dirigé le Master de droits de l’Homme (2011-2019) et le CREDOF (Centre de recherches et d’études en droit fondamentaux – 2015-2023). Ses travaux de recherche s’inscrivent dans le champ du droit des droits humains ; elle travaille notamment sur les questions de bioéthique, de liberté religieuse, de laïcité et de non-discrimination. Ses travaux mobilisent largement le concept de genre et s’inscrivent dans le sillage des théories féministes du droit. 

Parmi ses publications récentes: Laïcité (Anamosa, 2023); L’école et la république. La nouvelle laïcité scolaire (Dalloz, 2023); (avec Laurie Marguet) De Haute Lutte. La révolution de l’avortement (CNRS Editions, 2025). Elle publiera en septembre 2025, avec Antoine Vauchez, Des juges bien trop sages. Qui protège encore nos libertés (Seuil). Elle dirige, avec Marc Pichard et Lisa Carayon, la revue Intersections. Revue semestrielle genre et droit (en ligne). 

Programme

Lieu

Salle du Conseil. Depuis l’entrée principale (Bd du Jardin botanique 43), prendre l’ascenseur jusqu’au 4e étage. La Salle du Conseil est en face. Organisatrices : Juliette Gilman et Elise Dermine (ULB). Les courtes présentations sont à envoyer à l’adresse suivante : juliette.gilman@ulb.be. Pour toute question, il est également possible d’utiliser cette adresse.