Universiteit Maastricht

Personal profile page

W. Bull (William)

Positions

Junior Researcher

Faculty / Department
  • Law, International and European Law
  • Law
E-mail: contact

Location: A2.026

W.  Bull

Expertise

- Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory
- Common and Comparative law, particularly Contract, Tort and Property law
- Fundamental EU law, the Internal Market and the Four Freedoms
- EU Competition law
- Intellectual Property law

Professional Career History

William read English and Italian law at University College London and graduated with Honours in 2004. Subsequently after a period teaching Business English (including Legal English) he obtained his Master’s degree in European law from Maastricht University. During his Master studies William also worked as a student assistant at the METRO Institute for Transnational Legal Research, assisting the Editor of the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative law and the coordinator of the Tort law Ius Commune Europaeum casebook.
William joined the Maastricht European Private Law Institute (M-EPLI) as a Junior Researcher in June 2011. For three years prior to this he performed a similar role for the European Centre for Judges and Lawyers, the Luxembourg Antenna of the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA). During this time he developed, managed and delivered workshops and seminars on various aspects of institutional, procedural and substantive EU law for officials of EU Institutions and Member State public administrations, as well as civil servants (including judges) from Candidate and Associate Countries, and acted as Director of EIPA Luxembourg’s Master of European Legal Studies, in the context of which he gave lectures on Legal Concepts, Sources and General Principles of EU law, Free Movement of Goods, Competition law and Intellectual Property law.
His research project focuses on existing and proposed optional instruments in different fields of European law, including contract law, company law and intellectual property law (such as the proposed European contract code, the Societas Europaea and the EU trade mark respectively), with a view to investigating the benefits and disadvantages of creating optional private law at European level, and to what extent these differ depending on the particular optional instrument in question. Ultimately, William will seek to determine whether and in what ways such ‘optional’ EU law provides a viable and desirable alternative to top-down harmonisation in the quest for greater uniformity in European private law.