Tilburg University appoints Dave De ruysscher as Professor of Legal History
Tilburg University has appointed Dr. Dave De ruysscher as Professor of Legal History. De ruysscher already was a highly valued member of the team in the Department of Public Law and Governance at Tilburg Law School, where he has been working on the legal-historical development of commercial law, in particular relating to custom, mercantile insolvency and company law.
As the new Full Professor of Legal History, he will take full responsibility of the education and research in the field of (legal) history. In his research, Dave De ruysscher focuses on legal change and the interactions between law and practice in the commercial sphere. In the coming years he will, inter alia, explore the connections between commercial and international law in the early modern period including the sovereignty of cities of commerce and international trade relations. This research fits within one of the four central research themes of Tilburg Law School, Global Law and Governance.
Professor Geert Vervaeke, dean of Tilburg Law School: “I am very glad about De ruysscher’s promotion to Full Professor in the field of Legal History, and I look forward to continue to work with him in this new role. De ruysscher has shown to be a very valuable team player, a true academic citizen and a top expert in his field of research and education. Outstanding research and education in legal history is one of our Law School’s unique selling points, and with De ruysscher we continue to cherish this."
Dave De ruysscher studied history (KU Leuven, 2000) and law (KU Leuven, 2001, and University of Antwerp, 2004). In 2009, he obtained his doctorate from KU Leuven, with a dissertation on the commercial law of Antwerp in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This dissertation was awarded the five-yearly prize Charles Duvivier by the Royal Academy of Belgium. In 2016, Dave De ruysscher received an ERC Starting Grant (Analyzing coherence in law through legal scholarship). The ERC project tackles the development in the early modern period (16th-18th centuries) of scholarly rules that were crucial for trade, in particular those concerning security interests and insolvency. In 2019, Dave De ruysscher was accepted as member of the Young Academy of Flanders and as member of the Young Academy of Europe. He serves in the board of the Tijdschrift voor rechtsgeschiedenis, and is part-time professor at the Vrije Universiteit of Brussels. The effective date of the Legal History chair at TLS is February 14, 2022.
Note to editors
For more information please contact press officer Corine Schouten, tel. +31 13 466 2993 / c.h.schouten@tilburguniversity.edu or Dave De ruysscher at d.deruysscher@tilburguniversity.edu.