Professor dr. Wim Decock

E-mail: Wim.decock (ad) law.kuleuven.be

Curriculum Vitae

Wim Decock (°1983) graduated as a classicist at the Catholic University of Leuven (lic. summa cum laude 2005).

He went on to participate in an interdisciplinary research project on European Legal Cultures, financed by the European Commission (6th Framework Program).

As a Marie Curie Early Stage Training Fellow he stayed at the Max Planck Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt am Main (2006-2007), the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane in Florence (2007-2008), and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (2008-2009) in Paris. He was also granted a scholarship at the Academia Belgica in Rome (2007). From 2009 through 2012 Wim joined the Division of Roman Law and Legal History at the Law Faculty of KU Leuven as a junior fellow of the Flemish Research Foundation. He spent the spring term 2011 as a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School.

On 8 December 2011 Wim received his PhD in Law from the University of Leuven and the degree of 'Dottore di ricerca in diritto europeo su base storico-comparatistica' from the Università degli Studi Roma Tre. In his dissertation, he explored the interconnectedness between law and religion in the history of Western culture, especially concentrating on the theological as well as canonistic origins of modern contract law ('Theologians and Contract Law, The Moral Transformation of the Ius Commune, ca. 1500-1650). The published version of his work is forthcoming in Brill's Studies in the History of Private Law series.

Since 1 August 2012 Wim is leading a research team on 'Canon Law, Moral Theology and Conflict Resolution in the Early Modern Period' at the Max Planck Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte within the larger framework of a LOEWE-project on ‘Judicial and Extrajudicial Conflict Resolution’.  The general aim of the LOEWE junior research team, in particular, is to highlight the paramount historical role played by the Roman-Catholic Church in creating norms in fields as diverse as the administration of the Church and the regulation of global business transactions, and in sanctioning those norms through judicial and extrajudicial means of conflict resolution.

As a guest professor at the Leuven Faculty of Canon Law, Wim is looking forward to teach a seminar on reading Latin canonical texts, introduce students to the history of canon law and manage the doctoral research school.

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