prof.dr.mr. JAW (Josephine) van Zeben

Josephine van Zeben is Professor and Chair of the LAW group at Wageningen University (WUR, the Netherlands). She has also been a visiting professor at Bocconi University since 2021, and part of the Transdisplinary Advisory Board of JPI Climate.  

She holds a PhD in Law and Economics (cum laude) from the University of Amsterdam, and LLM degrees from Harvard University and the University of Amsterdam (European Private Law), an LLB in Scots Law from the University of Edinburgh and a BA in Social Sciences from University College Utrecht, Utrecht University.

Prof. van Zeben’s research focusses on the regulation of environmental issues by public and private actors across jurisdictions, with particular attention for polycentric governance theory and developments related to the European Union. She is research lead of the LAW Group's program "Law for the Living Environment". Her research also draws on her teaching of law to non-law students and lawyers from foreign jurisdictions by actively searching for optimal ways of analysing complex legal and societal problems so as to facilitate interdisciplinary solutions.

Prof. van Zeben welcomes inquiries on PhD supervision, particularly in the areas of international and EU environmental law, climate change, ecosystem management and biodiversity, pollution and plastics, comparative environmental law, and EU public law.

Prof. van Zeben is co-editor-in-chief of Transnational Environmental Law, and is part of the editorial board of several other academic journals, including the Croatian Yearbook of European Law and Policy, and Istituzioni del Federalismo, and board member of several associations, such as the Society for Environmental Law and Economics. She has held visiting professorships at Notre Dame Law School (United States), La Trobe Law School (Australia) and provides guest lectures across the world. Between 2012 and 2022, she taught Environmental Law and Policy at the ETH Zürich. 

Her inaugural lecture "Law for the Living Environment" (7 October 2021) can be viewed here.

Publications can be accessed under the heading 'publications'