Celebrating Professor Piet Eeckhout’s Deanship of UCL Laws

During his time in post, Piet has navigated and led the Faculty through some of the most uncertain times, providing instrumental direction and thought leadership to the Faculty and wider UCL communities, first with Brexit and then through the global pandemic.  

During his tenure, Piet brought the UCL Laws community back to its home, Bentham House, after a three-year redevelopment of the building took place. He led on the review and restructuring of the LLM programme, making it a highly competitive programme in the sector, and consulted widely with students through town halls to gather their feedback and experiences. Piet led the Faculty, together with the Vice-Dean (Research) at the time, to be rated the top law school in the UK for research quality in the 2021 REF, the seven-yearly government-led assessment of the quality of research in universities. 

A centrepiece of Piet’s vision has been his absolute commitment to the view that our academic excellence goes hand-in-hand with promoting equality of opportunity. To this end, Piet has led and implemented a series of initiatives to promote the Faculty as UCL’s Inclusive Law School. These have included: mainstreaming the Faculty’s EDI work by creating a new Vice-Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; reviewing recruitment and promotion procedures to ensure fairness and greater transparency in recruitment and progression decisions; successfully applying for the Faculty’s first Athena Swan award and committing the Faculty to ambitious gender and equality targets; promoting diversity on the curriculum to eliminate the Faculty’s BAME Awarding Gap (which stood at 13.6% in 2018/19 but is now 0%); and widening participation by extending the Faculty’s contextual offer scheme (from ‘AAB’ to ‘BBB’), creating a new suite of Faculty ‘Opportunity Scholarships’ across all degree programmes and establishing a new mentorship scheme (‘Target Law’) for sixth-form students from marginalised backgrounds.  

In the early days of Brexit, Piet led several events across UCL about the future relations between the EU and the UK, spoke at the European Parliament Committee and conducted interviews with mainstream media. Specific achievements include co-authoring a working paper for the European Institute on Article 50 which not only led to a highly-cited journal paper but also his academic role in the European Court of Justice (CJEU) Wightman case. Piet published a major study for the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade (INTA) on future trade relations between the EU and the UK after Brexit and has steered the European Institute through two successful rounds as Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. 

Piet will return to the Faculty following a year’s sabbatical to continue his work as Professor in European Law. His research will focus on research, focused on the EU, EU law, and international economic law.   

Piet will also continue in his role as Academic Director of the Centre for the European Institute, which enables and supports UCL research and teaching activities on Europe, and creates an environment where work on Europe can flourish. 

Professor Eeckhout will be succeeded as Dean from 1 November 2022 by Professor Eloise Scotford, who first joined UCL Laws in 2017. Professor Scotford said:  

“I want to acknowledge the work of our outgoing Dean, Professor Piet Eeckhout, who has led the Faculty with a steady hand for the last five years, during which time the Faculty’s vitality and strength has continued to grow, including through the challenges of the pandemic. We are fortunate to be retaining his deep expertise in EU and international economic law in the Faculty going forward.”  

On reflection of his role, Piet Eeckhout has said: 

“I am delighted to hand over the office of Dean of UCL’s Faculty of Laws to Professor Eloise Scotford.  I have known and worked with Eloise for many years, and admire her vigour, enthusiasm, academic excellence, and not least humanity. Under Eloise’s stewardship this thriving Faculty will continue to prosper and develop as a genuinely world-leading academic institution.   

I will be returning to my love for research, focused on the EU, EU law, and international economic law.  I also want to emphasise that I am immensely grateful for all the support I have had throughout my Deanship.  It is impossible to mention everyone.  A very special word of thanks nonetheless for the Vice-Deans who have been on my Dean’s Team, and for the Faculty’s professional services staff who have supported me so well.”