Photo of Professor Valsamis Mitsilegas

Professor Valsamis Mitsilegas LLB (Thes/niki), LLM (distinction) (Kent), PhD (Edinburgh), SFHEA

Dean of the School of Law and Social Justice & Professor of European and Global Law School of Law and Social Justice

    About

    Personal Statement

    Valsamis Mitsilegas is Professor of European and Global Law and Dean of the School of Law and Social Justice at the University of Liverpool. He joined the University in September 2022 from Queen Mary University of London, where he held a number of senior leadership positions including Head of the Department of Law (2012-18), Dean for Research for the Humanities and Social Sciences (2017), University Academic Lead for Internationalisation (2017-18) and the University’s Dean for Europe and member of the University's Internationalisation Senior Leadership Team (2018-22). He served as the Inaugural President of Queen Mary (Paris), as the Inaugural Director of the Queen Mary Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, as a member of the Leadership Team of the Queen Mary Global Policy Institute (GPI) and, for 11 years, as the Director of the Queen Mary Criminal Justice Centre (2011-22). Prior to joining Queen Mary, he served as legal adviser to the House of Lords European Union Committee (2001-05).

    His research explores the development of and intersection between European and Global Law and their impact on human rights, justice and the rule of law. Well-known for leading in the establishment of European Criminal Law as a distinct academic field, Professor Mitsilegas has also produced cutting-edge research in the fields of immigration, asylum and borders (including the criminalisation and securitisation of migration), security and human rights (including surveillance, privacy and the rule of law) and transnational and economic criminal law (including the emergence of a multi-level regime against organised crime and money laundering). He is the author of 9 books and over 150 articles and chapters and the curator of over 20 edited volumes in these fields. Recent books include the second edition of EU Criminal Law (Hart, 2022: EU Criminal Law, 2nd edition), The Legal Regulation of Environmental Crime (with Fitzmaurice, Fasoli and Giuffrida, Brill, 2022: The Legal Regulation of Environmental Crime) and Policing Humanitarianism (with Carrera, Allsopp and Vosyliute., Hart, 2019: Policing Humanitarianism).

    Professor Mitsilegas has played a leading role in the establishment and development of a number of transnational research networks. He is Co-Coordinator of the European Criminal Law Academic Network (ECLAN) and a member of the Management Board of the International Research Network on Migration and Crime (CINETS). He has held a number of visiting positions in leading institutions including Visiting Professor at the Universities of Geneva (2015), Louvain (UCL-2017), the Sorbonne (Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne) (2018), Bologna (2019), Uppsala (2019), ULB (2020), Copernicus Visiting Scientist at the University of Ferrara (2015) and Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the EUI (2019). He has been Principal Investigator, Co-Investigator or member of research teams in more than 30 funded research projects, receiving funding from a variety of sources including the European Union, the ESRC, the Leverhulme Trust and the Open Society Foundation. He is founding General Editor of the Hart Studies in European Criminal Law, of the Queen Mary-Renmin Series on Comparative Criminal Justice Issues in China and Europe and of the Brill Research Perspectives in Transnational Crime. He is also General Editor of the New Journal of European Criminal Law and the Brill series on Immigration and Asylum Law and Policy in Europe.

    Professor Mitsilegas is a regular adviser to parliaments, governments and EU institutions including the European Commission, the European Parliament and the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. He is currently serving for a fourth term as a member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Criminal Policy and has drafted a number of expert reports for the European Parliament. He has given regular evidence to Parliament, including most recently on the impact of Brexit on criminal justice cooperation (see inter alia oral evidence on Brexit and security to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, on Brexit and dispute resolution to the House of Lords EU Justice Sub-Committee, on Brexit and data protection to the House of Lords EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee, and on the Trade and Cooperation Agreement to the House of Lords EU Security and Justice Sub-Committee and to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee).

    Professor Mitsilegas is actively involved in collaborative projects with think-tanks, civil society and NGOs. He is a member of the Research Advisory Group of the Howard League for Penal Reform and was guest editor to the Open Democracy week on Surveillance and Privacy in 2016. He has established long-standing collaboration with the Centre for European Policy Studies, (https://www.ceps.eu/) resulting in the publication of a number of joint reports on Brexit, on removal of online content and on Digital Evidence and Digital Justice (Report on Access to Electronic Data by Third-Country Law Enforcement Authorities and Report on Cross-Border Data Access and the Future of Digital Justice). He has made regular media appearances including on BBC Radio 4, and in the Times Higher Education Supplement, the New Statesman and the New York Times.

    You can download a Full List of Publications by Professor Valsamis Mitsilegas (PDF)