28 November 2023
The current dean, Prof. André Nollkaemper, will dedicate himself to a UvA-wide commitment to sustainability from the new year as university professor of International Law and Sustainability. 'A permanent successor has not yet been found. It turns out that we need more time to find someone,' says Geert ten Dam. 'I am therefore very pleased that Mireille van Eechoud is willing to take on the deanship in the coming year. She knows the education and research at the law faculty very well. In addition, Mireille has a wealth of administrative experience, both inside and outside the university, and there is broad support for her appointment within the faculty.' The recruitment procedure for a new dean will resume in mid-2024.
Van Eechoud has worked at the UvA’s Institute for Information Law since 1996, and has been a professor of Information Law since 2012. She is also director of the Amsterdam Graduate School of Law. Van Eechoud provides education in the Master's course in information law and the Bachelor's degree in law; she was formerly the programme director of the Master's programme in Information Law. She was also chair of the University Research Committee, which advises the Executive Board on research policy.
Outside the UvA, Van Eechoud is inter alia chair of the Copyright Committee (statutory advisory board of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security), chair of the board of the Copyright Association, and an elected member of the European Copyright Society. Previously, she was also a member of the Advisory Council of the Dutch Data Protection Authority.
In her research, Van Eechoud focuses mainly on the regulation of open data and public information sources from a transparency perspective; fundamental rights and innovation in communication; European and international intellectual property law (in particular copyright and database law); and private international law aspects of information law. Together with Prof. Natali Helberger and Dr Joris van Hoboken, she leads the Digital Transformation of Decision-Making Initiative - this faculty-wide research initiative is part of the Digital Legal Studies priority area of the national Law Sector Plan.