External PhD candidate in European constitutional law; my supervisors are Tom Eijsbouts and Jan-Herman Reestman. I am also production editor of the European Constitutional Law Review, which is hosted by the International and European Public Law department of the UvA. I combine my academic activities with a practice as an attorney (at Franssen Advocaten) specialized in Dutch immigration law and freedom of movement in EU law.

Recipient (from 2009-2012) of the I. Henri Hijmans Scholarship for practitioners of law who are pursuing a PhD relating to law and society at the UvA.

Research

The dissertation I am currently researching (working title: Citizenship in Federal Orders: the double bind of equality) is a comparison between the historical legal development of United States citizenship to the ongoing legal development of European Union citizenship. Both can be described as federal citizenships; while the word "federal" is extremely controversial when applied to the European Union (as it carries implications of sovereignty and centralized authority), the term is indispensable for analyzing the relationship between states that have entered into (a more perfect) / (an ever closer) union with each other. And both US citizenship and EU citizenship are "dual" in nature, necessarily bound up with the citizenship of a (member) state. Every citizen is thus a point of overlap between two legal orders.

If the core aspect of citizenship is equality (i.e., all citizens of a given order are to be treated equally), then what happens when the equality guaranteed to citizens of the federal order is greater or less than the equality guaranteed to citizens of a (member) state? The "Europe" or "Belgium" route employed by e.g. Dutch nationals to secure a right of residence for their non-EU citizen family members provides a particularly striking case study for this phenomenon.

Education

1988-1992: Mt. Lebanon Senior High School, Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), USA
1992-1996: BSc. in linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington (DC), USA.
2003-2006: LL.B. in Dutch law, UvA.
2006-2007: LL.M. (mr.) in constitutional and administrative law, UvA.

• LL.M thesis: Privacy and Legitimacy in Public

Publications

'European Citizens' Third-Country Family Members and Community Law' (case note on European Court of Justice case C-291/05, Eind ) , EuropeanConstitutional Law Review(2008),4:344-362
'Who's Afraid of Union Citizenship?' (book review essay on Christoph Schönberger, Unionsbürger; Europas föderales Bürgerrecht in vergleichender Sicht ). European Constitutional Law Review (2009), 5: 517-527.

'Een Nederlands rijbewijs halen in 3 stappen. Een speelse reis door twee federale stelsels en de ruimte ertussen' [Getting a Dutch driver's license in 3 steps. A playful journey through two federal systems and the space in between'], in J-H. Reestman et al. (ed.), De regels en het spel: Opstellen over recht, filosofie, literatuur en geschiedenis aangeboden aan Tom Eijsbouts (2011, TMC Asser)

No known ancillary activities