mw. prof. dr. D.M. (Deirdre) Curtin

Profile

Deirdre Curtin is Joint Chair of European Law and Politics at the European University Institute, Florence. She has been Professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Amsterdam since 2008 and held the Chair in European Law from 2008 to 2015. From 2003- 2013, she held (part-time) the Chair in European and International Governance at the Utrecht School of Governance of the University of Utrecht. She was previously Professor of the Law of International Organizations in the Faculty of Law of the University of Utrecht (1992 -2002). In the academic year 2014/15 she was a Regular Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute of Advanced Study) in Berlin.  

Deirdre Curtin is Founding Director of the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance (ACELG), a centre of excellence of the Faculty of Law at the University of Amsterdam. As research leader she co-directed ACELG's research programme on 'Compound Constitution(s) in Europe'. ACELG comprises a group of some 30 persons with internationally recognized scholars in the field of European law and European governance, including a large and growing group of Ph.D. fellows.  

In 2003 she was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). In 2007 she was awarded the top-level Spinoza prize by the Dutch Scientific Organization (NWO) for her research in the field of European law and governance, the only time it has been awarded to a lawyer. In 2008 she was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate in law by University College Dublin.  In 2013 she was elected an Honorary Bencher by the King's Inn, Dublin.

Research

Current research projects include data privacy, government secrecy, executive power of the EU, open government of the EU, multi-level governance and public accountability in Europe, living constitutions in Europe and the codification of European administrative law.

This edited volume offers legal perspectives on the emerging institutional characteristics of transatlantic relations and contemporary rule-making in both trade and security. 

In her inaugural lecture of October 2011, entitled 'Top Secret Europe' Deirdre Curtin focuses on the understudied phenomenon of government secrecy in the context of the EU, its nature, structure, categories and its multiple layers. This topic is particularly relevant at a time when the EU is giving further substance to its own internal security in a manner that involves a multiplicity of European and national actors.

On the role of accountability in democratic governance, she has co-edited (with Peter Mair and Yannis Papadopoulos) a volume, titled 'Accountability and European Governance' (Routledge, West European Politics Series 2012).   The volume attempts to position a broad understanding of the notion of accountability within the overall context of the evolving political system of governance in Europe and in particular in the European Union.

On multi-level governance and public accountability in Europe she co-directed a research project funded (in 2002) by the Dutch Scientific Organization with political scientists at the Utrecht School of Governance. She was research group leader of the thematic group "Democracy and Accountability in the EU" of the CONNEX funded network of excellence (2004-2008).

On the executive power of the EU, Deirdre Curtin has in 2009 published a monograph with Oxford University Press, Executive Power of the European Union. Law, Practices and the Living Constitution. She supervises a number of research projects and doctoral dissertations related to this subject. She directs the research project Constitutionalising Accumulated Executive Power in Europe, funded by the Dutch Scientific Organization since 2008. Linked with this is a research program on open government in Europe (started in 2009), which she directs, with political science and legal researchers in both Utrecht and Amsterdam.

On the content of European administrative law she is a team leader within the ReNEUAL Network on rule making in Europe, a Research Network on EU Administrative Law. The network was created in 2009 with a view to building a Common Framework of Reference on European Administrative Procedural Law. This effort has recently resulted in the publication of the ReNEUAL Model Rules on Aministrative Procedures.

Deirdre Curtin was one of the project leaders on the cross-disciplinary project 'The Architecture of Postnational Rulemaking' which investigates the phenomenon of rulemaking in the postnational sphere from the perspectives of European public law, European private law and international public law. The project is one of the University of Amsterdam 's research priority projects.

Teaching

Taught courses include Europees Recht, European Constitutional Law and EU Administrative Law and Governance.