Introduction
Register now for the Advanced Course on Legal Research Methodologies, a three-day course offering practical training in doctrinal and interdisciplinary legal research.
Practical information
- Start date
- Wednesday 11 Mar 2026
- Duration
- 3 days
- Price
- €450
- Teaching mode
- In-person
Course content
How should I design my (PhD) research project? How to formulate my research questions, choose my methods, and find my sources? Should I include other disciplines and, if so, how?
Erasmus School of Law organizes a three-day Advanced Course on Legal Research Methodologies. This international course is meant for early career researchers and PhD candidates. It aims to provide a sound methodological basis for researchers with a background in law. It may also be useful for researchers from other disciplines such as ethics or political sciences that want to include legal research in their empirical or theoretical projects.
Some of the topics to be addressed are the importance of legal research methodologies, designing and executing doctrinal research projects, formulating research questions, library research, how to make evaluations and recommendations and how to do comparative law.
Doctrinal research can in many ways be enriched both by empirical studies and by the humanities. When should doctrinal researchers include such disciplines? How precisely to include insights, theories or methods from different disciplines? There will be an extensive discussion of both empirical legal studies and law and humanities.
The classes will be interactive. We expect the participants to have read the materials in advance and to submit descriptions of their research projects. Feedback on those descriptions will be given during the course. Apart from the group sessions, tutorials can be scheduled with the teachers in this course.
Lecturers
Wibren van der Burg is professor of Legal Philosophy and Jurisprudence at Erasmus School of Law. His research focuses on three themes: methodologies of interdisciplinary legal research, legal and cultural pluralism, and the relationship between law and morality. He is co-author of Contextualising Legal Research (Edward Elgar, 2024) and author of Rechtsfilosofie in een pluralistische wereld (Boom Juridisch, 2025). Wibren has widely published on law’s interaction with ethics and society, combining doctrinal, empirical, and philosophical approaches in his work and teaching.
Sanne Taekema's research addresses various themes in legal philosophy and methodology. Two core themes are the rule of law, especially in a transnational context and in relation to non-state actors, and the methodology of legal and interdisciplinary research. Other interests include: general issues of legal theory, particularly the role of values in jurisprudence and legal pragmatism, and law and literature. She is one of the editors-in-chief of the journal Law and Method. Her current research focus is on the rule of law in relation to legal mobilisation and protest.
Michał Stambulski is an Assistant Professor in Legal Theory at the Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and a visiting professor at West University in Timisoara, Romania, and Oñati International Institute of Sociology of Law, Spain. He was a 2023 Emile Noël Global Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice, New York University. His recent publications address the issues of rule of law, constitutional populism, legal mobilization, and strategic litigation in Europe.
Niels van Tol is a Library Faculty Liaison for the Erasmus School of Law. He provides legal information support on both national and international law. This includes providing students and academics with the support for their research by guiding them to the correct sources and materials, providing the aforementioned sources and materials, and assisting in any way that is necessary.
Pieter Desmet has been Professor of Quantitative Empirical Legal Studies at Erasmus School of Law since 2021. He is a pioneer in Empirical Legal Studies and plays a key role in the further development and institutionalization of this field in research and education.
His research focuses on decision-making and behavior within legal and economic contexts, including that of judges, perpetrators, victims, managers, and consumers, with a particular focus on behavioral ethics and nudging. In addition, he co-founded the Erasmus Center for Empirical Legal Studies (ECELS) and is actively committed to embedding empirical legal research within the curriculum of Erasmus School of Law.
Annie de Roo is associate professor of comparative law and dispute resolution at Erasmus University School of Law, Rotterdam. She is, among other roles, director of an NWO project on hybrid local governance, editor-in-chief of the Dutch-Flemish Conflict Management Quarterly, and has acted as key expert on alternative dispute resolution for the European Commission and the Council of Europe.
Her research and teaching combine legal and socio-economic perspectives, with a focus on the theory and practice of mediation and other ADR processes. She teaches, inter alia, the international master course Mediation Advocacy: Theory & Practice. Among her recent publications is “Shadow of the Law or Shadow of the Settlement” (Springer, 2018).
Provisional program
| Day 1. | Designing legal research |
|---|---|
| Morning 9.30–12.00 | Introduction to the course; legal and doctrinal research; importance of methodology; research questions |
| Afternoon 13.00-15.30 | Doctrinal research: research design, state of the art, theoretical frameworks, methods, grant proposals |
| 16.00-18.00 | Tutorials |
| Day 2. | Moving beyond positive law |
|---|---|
| Morning 9.30–12.00 | Evaluations and recommendations, library research |
| Afternoon 13.00-15.30 | Law in context research, contextual and interdisciplinary research, empirical legal studies |
| 16.00-18.00 | Tutorials |
| Day 3. | Mixing disciplines |
|---|---|
| Morning 9.30–12.00 | Problems of interdisciplinary research, law and philosophy & ethics |
| Afternoon 13.00-15.30 | Law and literature, comparative law, concluding reflections. |
Readings in advance
- Sanne Taekema and Wibren van der Burg, Contextualising Legal Research. A Methodological Guide, Edward Elgar 2024
- Additional sources on Canvas
Start date
For further details or inquiries, please contact:
Lisette Smit-Bennemeer
Course Coordinator
- Email address
- smit@law.eur.nl
- Phone
- +31 010 4081533
Facts & Figures
- Start date
- Wednesday 11 Mar 2026
- Duration
- 3 days
- Price
- €450
for three days (incl. lunch)
- Tax
- Not applicable
- Instruction language
- English
- Teaching mode
- In-person