Functions
Full professor in European Public Law
In detail
Joana Mendes joined the Luxembourg Centre for European Law in 2025, after having been Professor of Comparative Administrative Law at the University of Luxembourg since 2016, Director of the Doctoral School of Law (2020-2025), and coordinator of the doctoral research group in “Enforcement in Multi-Level Regulatory Systems” (DTU-REMS-II, Fonds Nationale de la Recherche, 2019-2025).
She graduated in law and obtained a master’s degree in public law (2002) at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). She has a doctor degree from the European University Institute (Italy), awarded in 2009. Before joining the University of Luxembourg, she worked at the University of Amsterdam (2009-2016), where she was Associate Professor at the Department of International and EU Law, senior researcher at the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance and PhD Dean. She has been a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Yale Law School (2014) and a visiting scholar at the Law School of the London School of Economics (2024). She also taught as a guest lecturer at the University of Coimbra, the European University Institute, the LUISS Carlo Guidi School of Government (summer school), and the Legal and Judicial Training Centre of Macao.
She is a founding managing editor of European Law Open, member of the editorial boards of the German Law Journal and of the Revue de Droit Public. Prior to helping create European Law Open, she was co-managing editor of the European Law Journal (together with Harm Schepel).
Her research has focused on the relationship between law and public power in the field of monetary policy and banking supervision; on administrative discretion in the EU (for which she has received an Individual research grant (VENI), by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), in 2013); on international regulatory cooperation, in particular in the framework of mega-regional agreements; and on the allocation of authority in EU and international law (in collaboration with Ingo Venzke).
Her publications include “Participation in EU Rulemaking. A Rights-based Approach” (OUP, 2011), an edited volume on “EU Executive Discretion and the Limits of Law” (OUP, 2019) and articles published in the Modern Law Review, the Common Market Law Review, the European Law Journal, the International Journal of Constitutional Law and Transnational Legal Theory.