Law & History Research Network
The Law & History Research Network was established in 2021 and provides a venue for interdisciplinary research and joint projects and events in the overlapping fields of law, history and legal history. We bring together researchers from the Faculties of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS) and Law (FoL) at Maastricht University.
The Law & History Research Network focuses on understanding the origins of modern law and today’s multipolar rules-based global order. Its researchers combine, amongst other fields, institutional history, comparative legal history, legal biographies, and an anthropological reading of archives (against and along the grain).
Researchers interested to join the Law & History Research Network as members (UM colleagues) or associated members (non-UM colleagues) are welcome to contact Karin van Leeuwen and/or Agustín Parise.
Fast facts
- Joint initiative of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Law
- Established in 2021
- Led by: dr. Agustín Parise (FoL) and dr. Karin van Leeuwen (FASoS)
- Focus on fostering an interdisciplinary dialogue
- Common research interests include: transnational legal networks, global histories of legal education, comparative legal history, legal transfer
News
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Karin van Leeuwen currently is a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt am Main until the end of March.
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What is the link between the Grimm Brothers’ collection of stories, their work on language, and law? This exhibition proposes to explore how the Grimm Brothers depicted the legal culture of their time through storytelling and the study of language.
Events
Members

Pablo del Hierro
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Karin van Leeuwen
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Agustín Parise
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Moritz Koenig
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Remco van Rhee
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Mariken Lenaerts
Full profilePublications
Author(s) | Title | |
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Pablo del Hierro | Writing a transnational (Global?) history of extradition law in the short twentieth century: Beyond western-centric approaches | Link to article |
Haakon A. Ikonomou, Karin van Leeuwen and Morten Rasmussen | "Calculate the limits of the Possible": Scandinavian Legal Diplomacy, Diplomatic Arenas and the Establishment of the Permanent Court of International Justice | Link to article |
Blogs by members of the network
The Ethnographic Turn in International Law: Vernacularisation as a Path towards Reform?
It has often been argued that international law and international legal scholarship are incapable of reforming themselves.
Moritz Koenig

Overcoming the pitfalls of anachronisms – and why this matters to all of us
Every now and again, and especially when redesigning a curriculum, the question regarding the role and place of legal history in said curriculum is brought up.
M.F. Lenaerts
Roaming across the X and Y axes: A plea for comparative legal history
Comparative legal history offers opportunities to roam across time and space.
Agustín Parise

Rights for others, furing back?
Colonialism and decolonization have importantly shaped the constitutional trajectories of not only the colonized states, but also those of the colonizers.
Karin van Leeuwen