Rate My Professor Elise Muir

Elise Muir is full professor of European Law at KU Leuven’s Faculty of Law and Criminology, where she holds the positions of Vice Dean for Research, Head of the Institute for European Law, and Head of the Department of International and European Law. She is also Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges for the LLM in European Legal Studies. Previously, she served as tenured Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University and Associate Director of the Maastricht Centre for European Law. Her academic background includes law studies in France and the UK, with degrees of Maîtrise, LLB, and LLM, followed by an LLM at the College of Europe as top law student. She earned her PhD from the University of London in 2010 under the supervision of Professor Takis Tridimas. Muir has been a visiting researcher at Columbia Law School as Fulbright grantee, the European University Institute, and the Fondation pour l’innovation politique. She has also been visiting lecturer at Sciences Po Lille, the Kosovar Civil Society Foundation, and EDHEC-Esprit in Lille.

Muir’s research specializes in fundamental rights within EU law, covering constitutional implications of EU legislation, judicial protection by the CJEU and ECtHR, non-discrimination (including sex and employment), data protection, migration law, and transnational judicial cooperation. She was principal investigator of the RESHUFFLE project, funded by an ERC Starting Grant (2019-2025), analyzing the EU’s role in European fundamental rights law. At Maastricht, she completed Veni programme research (NWO, 2013-2017) on collective enforcement of EU non-economic law and Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship research (2011-2013) on horizontal effects of the EU non-discrimination principle. Her research programme received the 2012 Edmond Hustinx prize for science. Key publications include the monograph EU Equality Law (Oxford University Press, 2018); An Introduction to the EU Legal Order (Cambridge University Press, 2023); edited volumes Revisiting Judicial Politics in the European Union (Edward Elgar, 2024) and Activating human and fundamental rights before the European courts (Hart, 2026); and articles such as “Winds of Treaty change? Taking fundamental rights in the EU yet more seriously” (Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law, 2024). She serves on the editorial boards of Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law and European Council Studies, KU Leuven’s University research council and Faculty doctoral committee, and supervises doctoral theses on EU fundamental rights adjudication, data protection, and judicial dialogue.