Dr B. van Rooij (1973) has been named professor of Chinese law and regulation at the University of Amsterdam's Faculty of Law.

Benjamin van Rooij conducts comparative and interdisciplinary research in the area of Chinese law and regulation. He assesses the most effective legislative means of regulating undesirable behaviour by companies within China's unique political, economic, legal and social context. Research areas of regulation include labour, the environment, food safety, intellectual property rights and spatial planning. His research centres around themes such as the implementabilty of legislation, the influence of regulatory instruments (state, market or voluntary) on the effects of regulation, enforcement strategies and their effects on compliance, and the role of citizens in the regulatory process. Van Rooij aims to use his findings from China to stimulate regulatory theory development.

Van Rooij is project leader for two research projects funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. The first project is a comparative study of regulatory enforcement in China, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The project is being conducted in collaboration with the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The second project was set up to assess how legal empowerment interventions can help the victims of environmental incidents invoke their rights. This study is a collaboration with various institutes, including the China University of Politics and Law and Leiden University. In addition to these research efforts, Van Rooij will also be teaching courses on the development of the rule of law and access to justice in China.

Van Rooij studied Law and Chinese language and culture at Leiden University. He obtained his doctorate with honours in 2006 in Leiden, with his dissertation Regulating Land and Pollution in China: Lawmaking, Compliance and Enforcement, Theory and Cases. Van Rooij worked at Leiden University's Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Development from 2000, where he was lecturer/researcher and - from 2006 onwards -university lecturer. Over the past few years he has served as an adviser to the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment. He regularly publishes in international academic journals and has co-edited an edition of Law & Policy on regulatory enforcement in emerging economies set to appear in early 2010. Van Rooij has been appointed Hauser Global Faculty Professor at New York University, School of Law, effective 2010.