Narrative
Research
Very broadly speaking, I am interested in researching how we can make people and institutions behave “better” (yes, I realize that it’s a rather broad and vague question, but alas). More specifically, I study the intersectionality of law and other incentivizing forces (e.g. social norms, institutional culture, your mom, etc.) that aim to modify behaviors of private actors towards pro-sociality. (I don’t actually study your mom, but you get the gist). Some areas of my research include, but are not limited to: 1) how laws and regulations impact business practices to be more sustainable and reduce negative externalities (e.g., labor exploitation); 2) how policies and promotion schemes at institutions like universities can foster a more inclusive and equitable culture; and 3) how we can encourage groups from diverse backgrounds to work together towards achieving a common goal and shared prosperity (both in classrooms and in boardrooms). In conducting my research, I’ve incorporated different fields of discipline along side the law, from psychology, sociology, neurosciences, and even meditative sciences, the last one got me a speaking gig and a trip out to Spain, which was quite lovely (if you have never tried Txistorra from Navarra, it’s highly recommended).
Although these research lines may feel somewhat haphazard and disconnected, the commonality between these issues lies in their shared solution (at least in my opinion), which is better communication between stakeholders and creating creative solutions more collectively. While my background is in legal practice (technically, I am still registered as an attorney in the New York Bar), I am not a huge proponent of litigation and protracted arguments, both personally and professionally. Instead, I am an avid advocate of alternative dispute resolution and negotiations that leave room for compassion, empathy, and better understanding of one another. So much so that I quit my law firm life in New York City back in 2012 to start a PhD on business and human rights in Maastricht. During my PhD, I coached our university’s team for the International Chamber of Commerce’s International Mediation Competition for several years together with Catalina Goanta, where we advised aspiring lawyers to be more “chill” and to become better listeners (rather than the stereo-typical, Type-A A-holes that typical legal education manufactures them to be).
In addition to my personal research area, I am also a part of the Institute for Corporate Law, Governance and Innovation Policies and the Dutch Sector Plan on Transformative Effects Of Globalisation In Law; the latter of which enables me to work together with wonderful colleagues not only from Maastricht, but Amsterdam, Tilburg, and the Open University as well (e.g. organizing a lecture series, an inter-university summer school program, and even fun and educational networking events with fellow nerds). I have also been fortunate enough to receive fellowships from Toyo University in Tokyo, which has enabled me to teach and publish articles and books, not only in English, but in Japanese as well. This international experience has enabled me to expand the coverage of my ideas to a wider range of audiences, while learning firsthand of the difficulties that come with cross-cultural communication and perspective-taking. The benefit of these challenges is that they have given me much food for thought and substance to incorporate into my work.
In sum, I very much enjoy working with people from different cultures and those with unique - and sometimes unconventional - insights, whether through editing special editions of journals, writing books together with researchers from all over the world, or supervising and consulting with a handful of external PhDs.
Education
As an educator, I not only focus on teaching substantive legal content (i.e. Contract Law, International Business Law), but also on global citizenship skills like cross-cultural communication, empathetic understanding, and dispute resolution skills. In doing so, I can incorporate various threads of my research into the classroom like discussing how the binding nature of laws (extrinsic incentive) and the transformative power of global citizenship skills (intrinsic incentive) can combine to manifest meaningful and sustainable changes that promote private actors to behave in a more prosocial manner, not just in theory, but in practice (i.e. in the classrooms).
I also like organizing and planning extra sessions for interested students, from running the Harvard Negotiation Project Multi-Stakeholder Negotiation Simulations, organizing webinars with practitioners and academics from other universities (e.g. International Commercial Arbitration Seminar, Webinar with Bas Van Zelst on International Commercial Arbitration, etc.), and planning negotiation exercises with law schools in the United States and Japan. I also like engaging with broader audiences and organize pop up events that invite the entire Maastricht community to discuss questions such as “Can the Law Save the World?” in collaboration with the United World College Maastricht.
While I particularly enjoy working with students, I have also been involved in curriculum design and developing education materials not only at Maastricht University’s Faculty of Law, but also at our School of Business and Economics, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Faculty of Law at Hasselt University (Belgium). At a more administrative and management level, I currently serve as an Advisory Board Member of our Interfaculty Global Studies Bachelor’s Program and have been a member of Maastricht University’s Learning and Innovation Taskforce, where we worked to develop and improve our education experience, not only for our students, but for our staff as well. The taskforce also disseminated good educational practices in close collaboration with EDLAB, our university’s Centre for Teaching & Learning. Along these lines, we organized annual conferences on UM Learning & Innovation and awarded seed money grants to many of our innovative educators and education researchers.
Impact
In my efforts to connect my research and education to the broader public (I’ve been told by our Global Studies team that the term we use for this is “transdisciplinarity”), I have spoken at various events, including but not limited to TEDxMaastricht, Petchakucha, Studium Generale’s Pleasure, Arts and Science Festival, Law Open Air Festival, and many other events aimed at communicating academic ideas to the general public (in addition to the more traditional, academic engagements like conferences and seminars of course).
Furthermore, linking my passion for dispute resolution - and particularly mediation - with our educational curriculum, I co-founded the Maastricht Mediation Clinic, where we worked together with Stichting Trajekt to train students to become neighborhood mediators that volunteer to resolve issues such as landlord-tenant disputes, bullying at schools, and so forth. While I passed on the reins of the MMC back in 2019 (that’s when our son was born, and tough decisions had to be made about work-life balance, which I’ve subsequently learned is not really a thing), I am still actively involved in teaching students how to negotiate better by incorporating elements of psychology and neurosciences into our legal training.
In an attempt to not only promote prosociality, but to inspire that in others, I have been a member of the Maastricht Young Academy and the UM Diversity & Inclusivity Advisory Council, both groups with the stated mission of making our academic community a better one, albeit in different ways. When it comes to societal impact, I am particularly interested in the area of academic citizenship and how to create a more open, creative, and collaborative working environment by awarding grants, planning networking events, and drafting policy recommendations/advice to the leadership of our university. All of which feeds back to my personal research on how incentives work (or don’t work). I was also a member of the Studio Europa Maastrict’s Young Researcher’s Network, which had similar aims, but the network was disbanded after a year or so because - and I paraphrase here - “we weren’t doing enough”, but alas.
While we’re on the subject of failures and things that haven’t worked out, I have never been good at drafting grants and acquiring funds for myself (see the Fail section for the proof), through my involvement in committees such as the aforementioned Learning and Innovation Taskforce and the UM D&I Advisory Council, I have been able to create and award grants for young researchers and for diversity and inclusivity initiatives. On one - very rare - occasion, I organized a project together with my photographer friend, Tetsuro Miyazaki and many of my colleagues from all across the UM to create the Expats x Migrants project, which was funded by the D&I Advisory Council and Studio Europa Maastricht. More recently, I have joined the Faculty Council of the Law Faculty in the hopes that I can contribute to making positive changes more “locally”.
Personal
In my “free” time (before our kids are awake or after they’ve gone to bed), I love reading and scrambling down random thoughts on an assortment of issues. I even worked as a part time columnist for the university newspaper, The Observant, for a few years. I mostly write about teaching, parenting, and being a foreigner everywhere I go. While I’ve stopped writing these columns a few years back, I use this space to continue my blabbering. I am also now serving on the Editorial Board of UMagazine, which enables me to bring to light unique stories and narratives of my friends and colleagues at Maastricht University.
I’m also heavily vested in the issue of mental health and well being, and so I volunteer for Flourish Maastricht, which is a group started by Anna Schuth to address issues of mental well-being around Maastricht. Together, we’ve organized events such as the UM Blue Monday Web Event and Suicide Prevention Workshops in collaboration with 113 and The InnBetween. From time to time (which there isn’t much of to be honest), I moderate/host events and conduct interviews for assortment of events such as International Mental Health Festival, Opening of the Academic Year, the Global Studies Opening Ceremony, interview with Vice-chancellor of University of Cape Town, Mamokgethi Phakeng or human right’s activist Nice Nailantei Leng'ete, and so on.
While I may not be very good at it (or at the very least, I don’t follow all the conventional coaching and mentoring guidelines), I do a bit of mentoring as well for students in our Global Studies program, the first years of our European Law School, our University’s PremiUM Project, and for the United World College Maastricht’s Justice Club. I’m always quick to offer unsolicited, unqualified life advice that may or may not be useful to anyone as well. Last, but not least, I am one of the “coordinators” for our out-of-shape academics football meet-ups in Maastricht. We meet every now and then, sometimes to actually play football, sometimes to have a few pints, but at all times, to rant about our unbearable work pressures.