Acknowledgements
This book was long in the making. As ‘life’ continued to happen – from an expanding portfolio of professional responsibilities to a global pandemic – each successive iteration required ever more changes, more restructuring, discarding old chapters for more relevant new ones, and adding more than a few years to the whole process. While it is for the reader to judge whether the outcome merits the effort, there would be no outcome at all without the generous help from colleagues, friends, and family, as well as substantial institutional support.
During the years-long writing process, it was first and foremost the N-EXTLAW project, generously funded by the European Research Council (ERC), that has enabled me to dive deeper into the question of how law relates to, and can facilitate, social change. To get to the product you hold in your hand (or on the screen – again the courtesy of the ERC), special credit is due to N-EXTLAW research assistant Finn Sands Robinson, who has edited the entire manuscript – having read perhaps a bit too much of it. My other dear colleagues in N-EXTLAW – including Nena van der Horst, Mario Pagano, Vladimir Bogoevski, Kinanya Pijl, Angus Fry, and Amy Lazell – have been crucial interlocutors in getting closer to understanding the role of law as a vehicle of social change, all the while providing me with the most congenial intellectual home.
Three other institutions have been crucial on this path. First, my home, Amsterdam Law School (ALS), has generously granted me a significant research leave, without which this book would not have been possible. Beyond that, however, it was the extremely vibrant intellectual community at ALS, and in particular at the Amsterdam Center for Transformative Private Law and within the project Sustainable Global Economic Law, that provided caring criticisms at the junctures when I most needed them. While I can’t mention all the names who deserve my gratitude, I want to specifically give thanks to a number of my marvellous friends and colleagues, in no specific order, Chantal Mak, Aukje van Hoek, Christina Eckes, Mirthe Jiwa, Olga Gritsai, Yannick van den Berg, Laura Burgers, Aart Jonkers, Selma de Groot, Marco Loos, Iris van Domselaar, Joti Roest, Francesca Episcopo, Anna van Duin, Rolef de Weijs, Solmaz Esmailzadeh, Jessica Turco, Marleen van Uchelen, Sjef van Erp, Alessio Pacces, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, Göran Sluiter, Benjamin van Rooij, Nik de Boer, Kati Cseres, Ivana Isailovic, Giacomo Tagiuri, Ingo Venzke, André Nollkaemper, Andrea Leiter, Kiki Brölmann, Kristina Irion, and Balázs Bodó. Beyond ALS, I want to specifically acknowledge the important exchanges with Poul Kjaer, Isabel Feichtner, Jonathan Zeitlin, Vanessa Mak and her team in Leiden, ‘TEGL community’ and the fine people at ENLENS, and above all Bob van der Zwaan. At different stages, each of these colleagues has either made suggestions or shown care that made my heart and mind sing.
Second, the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence has always provided me with immense bounty. Not only did it surround me with the most inspiring intellectual and cultural environment in which to write a PhD, it did so again for the present book. Writing is always hard, but it was made easier by a wonderful office overlooking Florence, inspiring lunches, coffees, or drinks with brilliant EUI staff (Joanne Scott, Mathias Siems, and of course Martijn Hesselink), and having a chance to receive early feedback on my work during the faculty seminar, with Bruno de Witte’s incisive comments. Finally, the Institute of Advanced Studies in Nantes, which kindly hosted me in 2018, was the place where the idea for the N-EXTLAW project, as well as the book that aims to flesh out its central theoretical aspect, emerged during inspiring interdisciplinary exchanges with colleagues from across the world, further articulated during long runs (at least for me) with Jocelyn Olcott (Duke University).
Scattered across countries and institutions, many other colleagues have made an important impact on this book journey. Intense and inspiring conversations with Joana Mendes, Harm Schepel, Agustin Menendes, and Rebecca O’Rourke, when launching European Law Open, have sensitised me to numerous concerns that otherwise might have escaped a private lawyer. The ‘Green Academies’ at Vis in Croatia, organised by the team at the Institute for Political Ecology – most prominently by Vedran Horvat, and frequented by many transformative political thinkers and social activists – have helped broaden my horizon beyond my (necessarily limited) disciplinary and social container. The yearly ‘Mountain Seminar’ organised by Jan Komárek and Marco Dani, with the regular presence of Sacha Garben, Jacco Bomhoff, Elise Muir, Pola Cebulak, and many others, has been an inspiring setting for the discussion of various chapters of this book. The start of the new ‘Society for European Law Unbound’ project, together with Daniela Caruso, Joseph Weiler, and a number of other colleagues, has given me hope that we can work to avoid some of the scarier scenarios presented in the book through genuinely inclusive discussions about EU law and integration.
Perhaps my most important fellow traveller on this journey was my exceptional friend and colleague, Candida Leone, who alone has read countless drafts and revisions and spent hours patiently brainstorming appropriate titles or covers. Sidney Richards, my wonderful versatile partner, has also responded to numerous last-minute demands for reading, commenting, and editing – even if he always preferred to defer to Candida in aesthetic matters. Martijn Hesselink, dear friend and mentor, has made the most important intervention in the writing process, first by urging me to convene and then generously by helping to organise a ‘manuscript workshop’ at the EUI. Once I had committed to this event, a great deal of writing discipline necessarily (and nervously) ensued, as I wished to benefit from the characteristically brilliant comments from friends and colleagues who have endowed the book with their presence – including Hans W. Micklitz (my inspiring and caring PhD supervisor), Agustin Menendes (a brilliant mind and my European Law Open co-traveller), Daniela Caruso (a dear friend and leading contract law scholar), Jiří Přibáň (a great legal theorist, who was one of the first to use ‘social imaginaries’ in EU law scholarship), Evelyn Terryn (the authority on consumer law aspects of ecodesign and circularity – and the most committed train traveller), Paul Blokker (a political theorist with a lot of patience for law and lawyers, and the leading scholar on social imaginaries), Alice Pearson (a brilliant anthropologist of corporate activity and a fellow at the EUI), Or Rosenboim (an EUI historian who has generously offered comments even as a different generative process demanded much of her energies), and Mathias Siems (the EUI professor of comparative law and a wonderful host during my stay there). Anna di Biase, with her competent, warm, and resolute support, has ensured that we had two truly great days.
Finally, it was my Croatian and Dutch families, as well as close friends such as Dražen and Marija, who have cared for me during various holidays-turned-writing retreats and provided the most nourishing environment for writing. Throughout the writing process, my forever-young mum Đurđica has continued to instil in me (if not always with success) the sense that life is also about fun, sun, and music. My nephew Alex at the same time made sure I was also sufficiently challenged from the less compromising Left. In between these familial treats, my partner Sidney offered often much needed care in the moments of self-doubt and tiredness. Without all the continuous encouragement and patient support of all these people who were ready to provide care ‘no questions asked’, this would certainly be a far worse book – if it were a book at all.
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