prof. dr. mr. Britta van Beers

Britta van Beers is professor of law, ethics and biotechnology at the department of legal theory and legal history. She is the Director of the Faculty of Law's Graduate School. In her research she explores the legal-philosophical dimensions of the regulation and governance of biomedical technologies.

She graduated in law and philosophy (cum laude) at the University of Amsterdam and studied at New York University School of Law. After graduation she worked and studied in Tokyo as part of a 1-year post-graduate programme of Japanese language and culture, organised by the University of Leiden.

Since 2002 she has been part of the law faculty of the VU. She was a visiting scholar at the Parisian universities Panthéon-Sorbonne and EHESS in 2005. In December 2019 she was appointed as full professor on the VU University Research Chair. In 2022-2023 she was appointed on a Francqui chair at the Faculty of Law of the University of Antwerp.

One of the main themes in her re­search con­cerns the legal and le­gal-philo­soph­i­cal mean­ing of con­cepts such as per­son, hu­man­ity and dig­nity, es­pe­cially in the light of  bio­med­ical de­vel­op­ments. Of spe­cial in­ter­est to her are the sym­bolic di­men­sions and functions of the law within the reg­u­la­tion of new tech­no­log­i­cal is­sues. Good il­lus­tra­tions are the in­ter­na­tional books that she co-edited on the con­cept of hu­man­ity across in­ter­na­tional law and bi­o­law (Van Beers, Cor­rias & Werner 2014), on the sym­bolic di­men­sions of law in gen­eral, and bi­o­law in par­tic­u­lar (Van Klink, Van Beers & Poort 2016) and on personalised medicine, individual choice and the common good (Van Beers, Sterckx & Dickenson 2018). She is par­tic­u­larly in­trigued by the legal and philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions raised by the reg­u­la­tion of as­sisted re­pro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies, such as wrong­ful birth and wrong­ful life ac­tions, human germline gene editing, sur­ro­gacy, and re­pro­duc­tive tourism.

Main publications:

• B.C. van Beers & L. Bosch, 'A Revolution by Stealth: A Legal-Ethical Analysis of the Rise of Pre-Conception Authorization of Surrogacy Arrangements', The New Bioethics 2020.
• B.C. van Beers, 'Rewriting the human genome, rewriting human rights law? Human rights, human dignity, and human germline modification in the CRISPR era', Journal of Law and the Biosciences 2020.
• B.C. van Beers, S. Sterckx & D. Dickenson (eds.), Personalised Medicine, Individual Choice and the Common Good, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2018.
• B.C. van Beers, 'The Changing Nature of Law's Natural Person. The Impact of Emerging Technologies on the Legal Concept of the Person', German Law Journal 2017.
• B.C. van Beers, 'Van slaapkamer naar vruchtbaarheidskliniek. Deseksualisering van voortplanting en de 'uitbarsting van verantwoordelijkheid', Ars Aequi 2016.
• B.C. van Beers, 'Is Europe 'Giving in to Baby Markets?' Reproductive Tourism in Europe and the Gradual Erosion of Existing Legal Limits to Reproductive Markets', Medical Law Review 2015.
• B.C. van Beers, Persoon en lichaam in het recht. Menselijke waardigheid en zelfbeschikking in het tijdperk van de medische biotechnologie (dissertatie VU, The Hague: BJU, ISBN 978-90-8974-177-6).   

Van Beers teaches the following courses:

• Recht, ethiek en biotechnologie (Law, ethics and biotechnology, B3, part of the legal minor Juridische uitdagingen van de 21e eeuw)

• Bioethics, technology and law (master)

• Law and ethics of reproductive technologies (B3, part of the university minor Technology, law and ethics)

• Encyclopedie II (Philosophy of law, B3)

Additionally, she coordinates the university minor Technology, law and ethics

• Gezondheidsraad | Den Haag | lid beraadsgroep | 2024-05-14 - present

Ancillary activities are updated daily

Contact details