Cecilia Isola (NOVA School of Law)

13 November 2026, 11.00 – 16.30, UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles

Language: English

Cecilia Isola is a postdoctoral researcher in European Private Law at NOVA School of Law in Lisbon. She obtained her PhD in Security, Risk and Vulnerability from the University of Genoa in November 2025, and her research interests lie at the intersection of law and technology, with a particular focus on EU law, consumer law and digital regulation. Her research has been published in leading journals in the field, relevant publications include “A Systematic Literature Review on Dark Patterns for the Legal Community: Definitional Clarity and a Legal Classification Based on the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive”, co-authored with Fabrizio Esposito, and “Back to the Future-Proof? Four Reforms for the Better Regulation of Dark Patterns under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and Article 25 of the Digital Services Act”, co-authored with Fabrizio Esposito, Cristiana Santos and Martim Farinha. She is also the Main Proposer and Chair of the COST Action ConsciousTech: Normative Consciousness in the Tech Community, a European Union-funded interdisciplinary network bringing together researchers working on normative questions arising from digital technologies.

During this doctoral workshop, participants will be introduced to the method of systematic literature reviews and explore how it can be applied to legal research, drawing on Cecilia Isola’s experience conducting interdisciplinary reviews at the intersection of law and technology. The workshop will examine how systematic approaches can be used to identify, select, organise and synthesise existing knowledge, and how they can complement more traditional forms of legal research. Particular attention will be paid to the methodological choices involved in designing a review and to the challenges that arise when legal research engages with interdisciplinary bodies of literature.

Programme

11.00 – 12.00: Interview on Academic Trajectory

Moderated by Anne-Lise Sibony

12.00 – 13.00: Lunch

13.00 – 14.30: Presentation: Systematic Literature Reviews in Legal Research

Introduction to systematic literature reviews and their use in legal research. The session will cover the main steps involved in designing a systematic review, including formulating the research question, developing a review protocol, defining inclusion and exclusion criteria, selecting databases and other sources, and developing an effective search strategy.

14.30 – 15.00: Coffee Break

15.00 – 16.30: Discussion and Practical Workshop

Participants will work on a practical case designed to guide them through the key stages of a systematic literature review, including the formulation of the research question, the development of the search strategy and the definition of inclusion and exclusion criteria. The session will conclude with a Q&A focused on the participants’ own research topics and on how systematic reviews could be adapted to their specific projects.

In preparation for the workshop, participants are invited to read:

Maciej Pichlak, Krzysztof J Kaleta and Agata Nawacka, ‘Systematic Literature Review Method in Legal Research: Prospects and Challenges’ (2025) Law and Method, available open access here: https://www.boomportaal.nl/tijdschrift/LaM/lawandmethod-D-25-00001

Langue : français

Présentation

L’Ecole doctorale en sciences juridiques organise pour la deuxième année consécutive une journée d’accueil-formation pour les nouveaux·elles doctorant·es. L’événement est organisé par la Faculté de droit et de criminologie de l’ULB mais il est destiné à l’ensemble des doctorant·es 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·es et intervenant·es. 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

8h45 – 9h15 : Accueil

09h15 – 09h30 : Bienvenue. Une thèse de doctorat : pourquoi ?
Anne-Lise Sibony, présidente de l’Ecole doctorale

09h30 – 11h00 : L’élaboration du projet de recherche
Avec Olivier Corten (professeur de méthodologie juridique)

11h00 – 11h15 : Pause

11h15 – 12h15 : Formation : Zotero, logiciel de gestion de références bibliographiques
Avec Marie Beudels (Maître de conférences en droit de l’énergie, ULB)

12h15 – 13h15 : Déjeuner

13h15 – 14h30 : Préparer la diffusion dès le début de la recherche (TBC)

14h30 -14h45 : Pause

14h45 – 16h30 : Le parcours doctoral : risques et opportunité
Avec Elise Dermine (promotrice) et Giulia de Pascale (assistante-doctorante)

16h30 – 17h00 : En guise de clôture : qu’est-ce que cette journée a apporté à mon projet de thèse ? (Elise Dermine)

17 h00 : Drink

Lieu

ULB, Salle Baugniet –Bâtiment S, 44 avenue JEANNE à 1050 Bruxelles (Rez-de-chaussée).

Surabhi Ranganathan (University of Cambridge)

Monday 28 September 2026, 11.00 – 17.00, UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles

Cycle Interdisciplinarités en droit

Language: English

Surabhi Ranganathan is Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and the Deputy Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. She is the winner of the 2025 Humboldt-Max Planck Research Award for her research on the history and political economy of ocean governance, and the pursuit of decolonisation within and against the law of the sea. Her writing on these topics has been published in leading law journals, edited collections and popular magazines like The Dial, and extensively covered in traditional and new media platforms. Professor Ranganathan is also co-editor of the forthcoming The Battle for International Law in the Neoliberal Era (OUP 2027), the recently published Cambridge History of International Law in Asia (CUP 2026), and co-editor-in-chief of the now open-access Leiden Journal of International Law. 

During this masterclass, Surabhi Ranganathan invites us to think about how we could reimagine ocean governance as one aspect of global commons and natural resources governance. The seminar will draw on Prof. Ranganathan’s research to explore questions about international law’s political economy and epistemic in/exclusivity.

Programme

11.00 – 12.00: Interview on Academic Trajectory

Moderated by Claire Debucquois

12.00 – 13.00: Lunch

13.00 – 14.30: Presentation of Professor Ranganathan’s five-year Berlin Project ‘Ways of Worldmaking: The Global South and the (Re)Imagination of Global Ocean Governance’, and discussion of how the objects and ideas of this proposal relate to a work-in-progress paper provisionally titled ‘Textual Dysfunction’.

14.30 – 15.00: Coffee Break

15.00 – 16.30: Discussion: Lawmaking Processes & Critical Research in (International) Law

Masterclass participants are invited to read the articles referenced below and to engage with those that are most generative in terms of drawing links with their own work. Although these papers have the oceans as their subject, they are really about lawmaking and participation processes, and the agenda for critical research in (international) law. Doctoral researchers are encouraged to prepare a short (max. 5 min) opening statement explaining how their own projects relate to natural resource governance and/or to broader questions of lawmaking processes, international law’s political economy, or epistemic in/exclusivity.

References (these will be shared with all registered participants ahead of the masterclass) :

1. The Seabed and the South: From Stock Stories to New Histories of International Lawmaking, (2024) 15:2 Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 183-213, which explores how we write histories of treaty making processes and what ingredients of Southern-oriented counter histories could look like.
2. The Participatory Scope of the Common Heritage Principle, (2024) AJIL Unbound 88-92, which explores the promises and limits of performative participation in global governance, by looking at how Indigenous Groups have tried to make their presence felt at the International Seabed Authority.
3. Decolonization and International Law: Putting the Ocean on the Map, (2021) 23:1 Journal of the History of International Law 161-183, which thinks about the kinds of histories of decolonization we could write via a turn to the oceans.

28 mai 2026 de 9h à 17h30 – Musée L, Louvain-la-Neuve

L’Ecole doctorale, le Corps scientifique de la Faculté de droit et de criminologie de l’UCLouvain, et la Louvain Law Review vous invitent à une journée d’étude consacrée à la recherche empirique en droit le 28 mai prochain à Louvain-la-Neuve.

Cette journée d’étude aura lieu le 28 mai au Musée L, de 9h à 17h30 et sera ensuite suivie d’un drink festif.

PROGRAMME

8h30 Ouverture des portes et accueil

9h00 Introduction – Lucie Breyer et Salomé Van Bunnen, Doctorantes et assistantes, UCLouvain,
co-organistrices de la journée

9h15 Repères «théoriques» autour de l’ouvrage «Le tournant des méthodes empiriques en droit»
(sous la direction de Ariane Amado et Armand Desprairies, Droit et Société, 2025)

Interventions de : Ariane Amado, Chargée de recherches au CNRS-CHJ, Armand Desprairies, Maître de conférences, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne et de Frédéric Audren, Directeur de recherche au CNRS et Professeur invité, ULB et VUB

10h45 Pause et café

11h15 Discussion avec la salle

12h15 Déjeuner

13h00 Introduction – Marie Jadoul et Pierre Walckiers, Doctorant.es, UCLouvain, co-organisteurs.trices de la journée

13h15 Partages d’expérience de chercheurs ayant mobilisé des méthodes empiriques en droit
autour des thèmes suivants :

• Comment choisir la méthode empirique (si l’empirie a lieu d’être) ?
• Comment surmonter les diffi cultés de récolte de données, d’accès au terrain et de posture en tant que chercheur ?
• Comment analyser les données une fois récoltées ?
• Comment rédiger son chapitre méthodologique ?
  Comment justifier les choix opérés et restituer son positionnement et l’influence de celui-ci dans la
  construction des données et la production des résultats ?

Interventions de : Zoé Crine, Chargée de cours invitée, UCLouvain, Camille Gambi-Arnold, Doctorante, UCLouvain, Victor Godart, Doctorant et assistant, UGent, et Léa Teper, Docteure en droit, UCLouvain, et une intervention par vidéo de Narcisse Mideso, Professeur, Université catholique de Bukavu

15h15 Pause

15h30 Échange et exercice de réflexivité en sous-groupes

16h00 Discussion avec la salle

17h00 Conclusion de la journée – Anne-Lise Sibony, Professeure, UCLouvain

17h15 Présentation solennelle du double numéro de la Louvain Law Review sur le pluralisme des
méthodes en droit – Christine Frison, Professeure, Université de Liège et UCLouvain

17h30 Célébration festive (drink)

INSCRIPTION

Inscription gratuite (mais obligatoire) – Places limitées

FORMATION PERMANENTE

Formation reconnue par l’École doctorale en droit : une attestation de présence sera remise
sur demande lors de l’inscription

RENSEIGNEMENTS

salome.vanbunnen@uclouvain.be
marie.jadoul@uclouvain.be
lucie.breyer@uclouvain.be

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

Cette expérience inédite (et gratuite) se déroulera du 23 au 24 avril au domaine de Haugimont. 

Pendant deux jours, vous aurez l’occasion de réaliser plusieurs séances d’écriture intensive ponctuées de pauses telles que : 

• des balades en forêt pour faire de véritables pauses et prendre une bouffée d’oxygène 
• une séance de méditation/relaxation 
• des ateliers ludiques et interactifs entre doctorants pour discuter, partager et passer des moments conviviaux

Une ou plusieurs séance(s) de présentation des recherches seront également dédiées pour les doctorant.e.s qui le souhaitent. 

La localisation en pleine campagne de ce séjour vous permettra de faire de véritables pauses en plein air avec des promenades et d’être dans une « bulle » de déconnexion, car l’élément original est l’absence d’accès au Wifi. Cet exercice de détox vous permettra, pour une courte durée, de ne pas être distrait ni dérangé durant les séances d’écriture et d’avoir de réels moments de partage entre collègues. 

Pour vous permettre d’anticiper cet exercice au mieux, vous recevrez un kit de préparation au séjour qui vous permettra de travailler avec toutes les (res)sources dont vous avez besoin et de ne rien oublier !

LIEN D’INSCRIPTION : Formulaire d’inscription à la retraire d’écriture (Ecole doctorale) – Remplir le formulaire 

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.