A New Place for Jurisprudence: Launching the Maastricht Centre of Law & Jurisprudence
After being active for almost a year, the Maastricht Centre of Law & Jurisprudence (MCLJ) officially launched on 23 January 2025. Twenty-five researchers affiliated with the MCLJ gathered to further develop the Centre’s research programme and objectives.
The MCLJ directors prof. Roland Pierik, dr. Lukasz Dziedzic and dr. Monica Garcia-Salmones look back on a ‘fruitful academic exchange’. “We have put quite some work into the formal structure of the MCLJ. An all-day in-person event allowed us to elaborate on the content of the research streams. It was a great opportunity for the MCLJ members to get to know one another and each other’s research interests better. We were pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm, engagement and willingness to take ownership of the research streams by the various members.”
A formal home for sharing ideas
Before the MCLJ was set up, researchers in the Foundations department of the Faculty of Law were spread out over the various research institutes and groups. “We used to meet quite informally to exchange our research ideas but now we have a formal home where we are able to organise colloquia, brown bag lunches, seminars and reading groups. Through all these initiatives we try to generate spaces for thinking about important theoretical and interdisciplinary juridical issues that transcend legal disciplines,” the directors say. “The world is confronted with fundamental challenges. Think of climate change, populism, the dismantling of the rule of law, the rise of AI, and inequality. These challenges call for a rethinking of the foundations of law. Preferably we want to tackle those challenges with other institutes and researchers in our faculty.”
Research streams
During the internal part of the launch event MCLJ members were able to exchange their ideas on the further development of the initially six research streams. By addressing overlaps and cross-cutting issues, the participants managed to limit the programmatic orientation of the Centre to four central research streams: 1. Law beyond the human, 2. Law, normativity, and authority, 3. Law and mind, and 4. Global markets, nature and the common good.
Future
The directors of the MCLJ look forward to what the future brings for the Centre: “We would like for the MCLJ to become an internationally renowned hub for jurisprudence in Europe and beyond. We are already working towards this goal through organising academic events with distinguished international and national scholars representing the various jurisprudential sub-disciplines the centre represents. Moreover, we are also running a visiting research programme aimed at building the reputation of MCLJ as centre of excellence for jurisprudential research.”
Stay up to date on the MCLJ’s research and news via their website.
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