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2019-03-doc1 PhD Workshop European/International insolvency law

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A foundation, carrying my name (‘Stichting Bob Wessels Insolvency Law Collection’) is a Dutch incorporated legal person. It was founded in August 2016, at my initiative, a few years after my retirement for the Leiden University. The Foundation has acquired the larger part of my private collection of books and other media in the field of national and international insolvency law (the ‘library’) and it aims to secure, maintain and expand this collection for the future, provide access to it by national and international students and researchers and to organize related activities for a broad, general public.

The Foundation is managed by a board, consisting of five law professors, prof. Matthias Haentjens and prof. Reinout Vriesendorp (acting as Chairman and secretary/treasury respectively, both of Leiden University), prof. Eric Dirix (Belgium), Dr Paul Omar (England) (succeeding prof. Ian F. Fletcher who sadly passed away in July 2018) and prof. Stephan Madaus (Germany).

The collection was officially opended by the dean of the Law faculty, Joanne van der Leun, in January 2018, see blog/2018-01-12-bob-wessels-insolvency-law-collection-1. The Foundation’s main goal is to provide access to the library as well as maintaining and safekeeping of the library. For this reason it concluded an agreement regarding custody and management of a substantial part of this unique collection with Leiden University.

One of the foundations’ activities is to organise an annual PhD-Workshop. A call for expressions of interest (via several channels; I posted it on my blog) resulted in no less than 25 submission from PhD students from 12 countries, 10 from the EU, one from Russia, one from China.

Last Thursday 28 February and Friday 1 March a workshop was organised where 8 PhD students could present each for 30 minutes their research, followed by vivid discussions. Around 20 participans also got acquited to the research sujects of several other PhD’s, presenting these in posters. The board, evidently also present, elected the nr 1 presentation and I, invited as patron for the meeting, was invited to present the award, a 500 euro cheque, to the candidate that the Board had chosen. It is Lydia Tsioli, from King’s College Londen, having presented and discussed a part of her PhD topic ‘The viability test in European debt restructuring’. I understood that the board of the foundations aims to publish a call for papers in September 2019, for a PhD-workshop to be organised early March 2020.