Anne-Lise Sibony
Anne-Lise Sibony is professor of EU law at UCLouvain. Her areas of expertise are internal market law, competition law and consumer law. Her favourite approach to legal research consists in shopping for science and assembling relevant findings with legal analysis. Anne-Lise studied law and economics in Paris as two separate curricula and started her interdisciplinary journey wondering why two disciplines that looked in part at the same sections of reality seemed to essentially ignore each other’s point of view (she was later relieved to find out this was not entirely the case). This early experience of acoustic separation combined with a longstanding interest for translation resulted in a desire to bring insights from other disciplines to legal scholarship in a way that would make them meaningful to native law speakers. In her doctoral research, she analysed how courts use economic reasoning in competition cases. Later, she investigated whether insights from psychology could be used in similar ways to inform consumer law. With her team, Anne-Lise continues to map various types of usage for behavioural input in EU law.
Her contributions to EU law and behavioural science include Nudge and the Law: A European Perspective (co-edited with Alberto Alemanno), Can EU Consumer Law Benefit from Behavioural Insights? An Analysis of the Unfair Practices Directive, European Consumer Protection Through the Behavioral Lense (with G. Helleringer) and Data and Arguments: Empirical Research in Consumer Law.
Fabrizio Esposito
Fabrizio is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Université Catholique de Louvain, where he joined the PROSECO Project, and an Extramural Fellow at the NOVA Law School, Lisbon. Fabrizio studies the relationship between economics, EU law, and legal theory with a particular focus on consumer and antitrust law. Before joining UCLouvain, Fabrizio was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Tel Aviv University, held visiting positions at the University of Helsinki and Pisa, and was a Global Visiting Fellow at UCLouvain. He received an LL.M. from the European University Institute, where he defended his Ph.D. thesis entitled 'Law and Economics United in Diversity: Minimalism, Fairness, and Consumer Welfare in EU Antitrust and Consumer Law'. His research was published in journals such as: the European Review of Contract Law, the European Journal of Risk Regulation, the European Competition Journal, the Journal of Consumer Policy. With Profs. Anne-Lise Sibony and Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz, Fabrizio edited the Handbook on Research Methods in Consumer Law (Edward Elgar 2018).
Fabrizio’s interest for behavioural analysis and the law is a spin-off of his interest for law and economics. In this regard, first, he has explained “How The Behavioural Turn In Law And Economics Vindicates The New Haven School” (Oeconomia, 2017). Second, he has pointed out that behavioural sciences picture “A Dismal Reality” for consumers in comparison to pre-behavioural economic analysis (Journal of Consumer Policy, 2017). Having found behavioural analysis important for legal scholarship, he has devoted attention to their dissemination. He has started by reviewing Nudge and the Law (Hart, 2015), edited by Profs. Alemanno and Sibony (Humana.mente, reprinted in European Journal of Risk Regulation, 2015. More recently, he has written a chapter on the “Conceptual Foundations of the Behavioural Analysis of Consumer Law in Europe” in the Handbook on Research Methods in Consumer Law (republished this year in Portuguese). In this chapter, he explained that some legal concepts are malleable enough to incorporate behaviourally insights. He has made this claim about, among others, the (in)famous average consumer. His main goal about behavioural sciences at the moment is raising the awareness among his colleagues that this incorporation is both possible and desirable.
Alessandra Donati
Alessandra is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Procedural law in Luxembourg and a lecturer at the University of SciencesPo. She obtained her PhD at the University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne with a thesis on the precautionary principle under EU law. Alessandra holds a degree in law from the Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi (Milan) and in economics from the Università Politecnica delle Marche (Ancona). She also holds an LL.M. in French and European Law from the University Paris 1- Panthéon Sorbonne. She is a member of both the Italian (Milan) and French (Paris) Bar Association. Before joining the Max Planck Institute, Alessandra practiced law for several years as an attorney in Milan at Chiomenti Studio Legale and in Paris at Castaldi Partners law office.
Alessandra specializes in European Union law, and namely in EU environmental and food law. She is currently working on a research project at the intersection of EU law, food law and behavioural sciences. The goal of this research is twofold. First, this research aims at understanding how behavioral insights are incorporated into EU law, with specific attention to the food sector. Second, the project offers some proposals on how to better translate behavioral sciences under EU law to foster the production by private companies of healthy and sustainable food.
Vincent Delhomme
Vincent studied in Sciences Po Paris and College of Europe, Bruges, where he has worked as a teaching and research assistant (2017-2020). He currently works as Head of research for the French think-tank GenerationLibre. He has varied research interests: EU internal market law, with of focus on how non-market objectives are pursued and regulated (health and consumer protection), and constitutional aspects of EU law, especially in the vertical dimension EU/Member States.
Vincent started his doctoral research with Anne-Lise Sibony in September 2018, with a project entitled ‘Lifestyle risks regulation in EU law’. Vincent is interest in how EU law regulates unhealthy lifestyles (tobacco, alcohol, diets, etc.) and investigates particularly how EU law arbitrates between the different costs and benefits of this form of regulation (protection of health, economic value, consumer autonomy, cultural diversity). For that purpose, he looks at the broad EU law ‘toolbox’: constitutional framework and its interpretation by the ECJ, legislation and ‘risk management’ tools (RIAs, CBA, precautionary principle, etc.).
Behavioural insights are important for Vincent’s research in many ways, as lifestyles risks regulation targets primarily individual behaviour. He is particularly interested in uncovering the behavioural assumptions made by legal actors, such as the ECJ or the EU Commission, to confront it to the available evidence, and in the way these actors process this evidence, when they do.
Pratiksha Ashok
Pratiksha joined the PROSEcco (Platform Regulation and Operations in the Sharing Economy) Project in November 2019 as a PhD Researcher under the supervision of Prof. Anne-Lise Sibony and Prof. Alain Strowel. She completed her Bachelor's in Business Administration and Law in 2017 at Christ University, India where she continued to pursue her LLM in Corporate and Commercial Laws. She has written two theses on “A Paradox between Party Autonomy and Public Policy” and “Corporate Criminal Liability”. She is also a member of the Karnataka State Bar Council, India 2017 and the Bar Council of India, 2018. In July 2019, she graduated from The University of Cambridge with a Master of Corporate Law.
Pratiksha’s PhD seeks to understand consumer harms that can arise from ratings and reviews on collaborative platforms in the EU and in India. Her research studies the behaviour of consumers and reviewers that can lead to harm and breach of trust. Herding and salience are among the relevant behavioural phenomena which the research investigates. Additionally, her research also studies the appropriate legislative or techno-legal standards that may be adopted to regulate such harmful behaviour.
Agis Karzis
Agis is a lawyer and a member of the Athens Bar. He studied for his undergraduate law degree in Athens Law School and has obtained an LL.M in Commercial and Corporate Law from Queen Mary University in London. He has since been active in university student mentoring schemes in the UK.
Over the past ten years, Agis has worked as a journalist, a lawyer, a compliance consultant, a start-up advisor and currently has an in-house role with the regulatory team of a major investment bank in London.
His PhD research sits on the intersection of antitrust law and behavioural science. He is trying to explore the benefits behavioural research could bring in better understanding how the decision to break competition rules, namely in horizontal agreements, is taken in different corporate structures. Agis focuses on how behavioural findings can improve corporate governance and compliance programmes, shape regulatory authorities’ plans and allocation of resources, and refine the targeting of remedies in antitrust enforcement cases.