Vanessa Mak appointed member of KNAW
Vanessa Mak has been appointed as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). As a Professor of Civil Law, the main focus of her research is on lawmaking in European private law, and particularly in the area of contract law.
Exceptional
The KNAW considers Vanessa Mak’s research exceptional because she studies the law not only as a self-contained system, but also takes an interdisciplinary approach by viewing it as part of market regulation and judicial policymaking. She explores how consumer law can facilitate relationships between companies and consumers in response to general trends in digitalisation and sustainability. She also examines lawmaking processes in which private parties such as online platforms develop their own regulations in the form of contracts and codes of conduct. Who makes the rules in that case, and how can such arrangements align with national or EU law, and above all with consumers themselves? Mak has written authoritative monographs and articles on this subject.
Dean Suzan Stoter: ‘On behalf of the whole faculty, I am delighted to say how proud we are that Vanessa Mak has been appointed as a member of the KNAW. We congratulate Vanessa on this exceptional academic honour.’
Awards and grants
Until October 2020, Vanessa Mak was affiliated with Tilburg University, where she was appointed Professor of Private Law in 2014. She obtained an NWO Vici grant in 2022 for the research project ‘These Shoes Don’t Fit! – How can consumer interests be protected when consumer identities are increasingly diffuse?'(ConsumerID). She is currently supervising ten PhD projects, for which she obtained funding from sources including an NWO Gravitation project in the field of quantum technology and Leiden Law School’s Meijers round. As an expert in the field of European contracts and consumer law, she regularly advises European and Dutch lawmakers and policymakers. Vanessa Mak was also appointed as an arbitrator in proceedings by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), the World Bank’s arbitration institution.
KNAW appoints 17 new members
The KNAW has appointed 17 new members: 16 ordinary members and one foreign member. Members are outstanding scientists and scholars from all disciplines and are appointed for life, based on nominations by peers from both inside and outside the Academy. The KNAW has around 600 members in total. The new Academy members will be inaugurated in September.
