Carla Sieburgh - Biography#

Carla Sieburgh has degrees in both medicine and law. She began her career in Groningen University (1995-1999) writing a dissertation on the attributability of an unlawful act, based on comparative research of the basic principles of the law of torts and the concepts of unlawfulness, culpa and risk factors that are attributable to the wrongdoer (cum laude).

She then became law clerk of the Procureur-Général at the Supreme Court of The Netherlands (2000-2003). In February 2003 she was appointed Professor of Private Law at Nijmegen University. In 2010 she was appointed Research Professor of Private law, in particular the influences of European Law on national private law, at the same University. She wrote extensively on those influences, both nationally and internationally, offering many new scholarly insights.

At the same time she writes and lectures for the benefit of practising lawyers and judges. Her works on Dutch private law include the leading commentary in four volumes on the law of obligations (general part, contracts, torts and unjust enrichment), since 2001 as co-author, since 2015 as sole author.

She was also a part time alternate Judge in the Amsterdam Court of Appeal and a visiting professor at several universities. In 2017 she was appointed as a judge in the Supreme Court of the Netherlands (civil senate), while continuing part of her work at the Radboud University. She has supervised seven dissertations.

Prof. Sieburgh has built an international network comprising eminent colleagues such as prof. dr. dr. h.c. mult. Reinhard Zimmermann (Max Planck Institute for comparative and international Private Law, Hamburg, Germany), prof. dr. Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz (European University Institute, Firenze, Italy) and prof. dr. Wouter Devroe (Catholic University Leuven, Belgium), with all of whom she edited important publications. Under her co-chairmanship a novel approach to European Private law was developed in the Casebook (Ius Commune series) on the horizontal effects of EU-law, together with a team of European scholars from ten EU member states.