I am a PhD Researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, with a four-year Fellowship from the Research Foundation — Flanders (FWO). My dissertation is on storytelling at the International Court of Justice.
I grew up in Brussels, Belgium. I have undergraduate degrees in law and in philosophy from UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles, as well as a joint master’s degree in European and international law from KU Leuven and Universität Zürich. After my studies, I worked as a research and teaching assistant in international law and legal methodology at KU Leuven before obtaining an LLM from Yale Law School in 2022 with a Fulbright Grant and a Fellowship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation.
My research focuses on the use (and abuse) of storytelling in international adjudication. For example, I recently published a piece on “masterplots” in the work of the European Court of Human Rights and co-taught a postgraduate seminar entitled “Show and Tell: Law as Performance and Narrative.” More generally, I am interested in international law, in legal philosophy, and in human rights theory and advocacy, including climate litigation. I also enjoy grappling with issues of legal research methodology and thinking about how to improve (access to) legal education. I try to keep a generalist perspective in my research and teaching.
The collective dimension of academic work, often overlooked, is important to me. That is why I’ve taken on various roles like representative of the researchers in the Law Department of the EUI, coordinator of the EUI’s International Law Working Group, and leader of the subgroup on international courts and tribunals of the Global Network of Peer Reviewers on Climate Litigation (Sabin Center, Columbia University). I also sit on the Advisory Board of Verfassungsblog and on the Early-Career Network Co-ordinating Committee of the European Society of International Law.
Outside academia, I gained practical experience through internships at Belgian and international law firms as well as a Belgian court (Justice de Paix). At Yale, I was a member of the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, where I collaborated on a pro bono project relating to the human rights responsibility of sovereign wealth funds and “sportswashing.” I also worked as a research assistant for the Shell Center for International Human Rights and for the Law, Environment & Animals Program. More recently, I have been involved in a couple of new consultancy projects, including on the domestic enforcement of European Human Rights Court’s rulings and the law of occupation.
Antoine De Spiegeleir, LLM (Yale) 