Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine
Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance
Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences
Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust
Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine
Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History
Luxembourg Centre for European Law
Luxembourg Centre for Socio-Environmental Systems
PhD Seminar Series
How to access an academic legal career at universities in Europe and beyond, through an in-depth examination of diverse legal and academic cultures.
Abstract
This PhD seminar explores how to access an academic legal career at universities in Europe and beyond, through an in-depth examination of diverse legal and academic cultures. Each session focuses on one or two jurisdictions, presented by experts active within the respective systems. The seminar addresses questions shaping academic careers, including hiring conditions and pathways to access, social expectations placed on early-career researchers, career progression, differences between public and private systems, as well as practical aspects such as working conditions, languages, publication expectations, academic networks, and support mechanisms. It also examines what these differences reveal about the highly diverse legal and academic cultures in Europe and compares European systems with those outside Europe. The course concludes with a comparative overview of the findings discussed throughout the seminar.
About the speakers
Päivi Leino-Sandberg is Professor of Transnational European Law, University of Helsinki, and Deputy Director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights where she has led various international research projects relating to EU decision making and governance. She engages in multidisciplinary work, uses empirical methods, and believes the EU should live up to its democratic and transparency commitments. She has won cases on access to documents in EU Courts. Before returning full time to the academia in 2015, she worked for over 10 years as a legal adviser for the Finnish government participating in numerous EU and international negotiations and Court cases, and continues to advise in particular the Parliament of Finland and various other institutions. Her writings have appeared in lead journals in the field and been quoted by the EU Court and the German Federal Constitutional Court. She has previously worked as Academy of Finland Research Fellow and Professor of International and European Law at UEF Law School. In addition, she has held various visiting positions including at the European University Institute, NYU Law School, Humboldt University Berlin and the iCourts Centre of Excellence at the University of Copenhagen. Her recent books include a monograph entitled The Politics of Legal Expertise in EU Policymaking (CUP 2021), and three co-edited collections of essays Law, Legal Expertise and EU Policymaking (CUP 2022), (In)visible European Government. Critical Approaches to Transparency as an Ideal and a Practice (Routledge 2023) and Dynamics of Powers in the European Union (Hart Publishing 2024). Her new monograph (co-authored with Peter Lindseth) European Integration in the Constitutional Borderlands. The NextGeneration EU Model and the Struggle for Europe’s Future is in press, forthcoming with Oxford University Press (2026)
Language
English.
This is a free event. Registration is mandatory.