Marie DeCock is Assistant Professor in Public Law at the Centre for Government and Law of Hasselt University (Belgium), Assistant Professor in Administrative Law at the Department of Public Law of Maastricht University (the Netherlands), and Postdoctoral Researcher at the FWO Research Foundation Flanders in collaboration with Hasselt University & KU Leuven.
Her current research and teaching focus on public law, the public-private law divide, administrative law (e.g., economic administrative law, administrative organization law), comparative administrative law, municipal law, local government, interlocal cooperation, alternative service delivery, shared services, democratic accountability, and smart cities.
In the fall of 2024, Marie is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Essex (UK). During the 2023-2024 academic year, she was a Visiting Researcher at Yale Law School (USA), where she conducted a one-year research project on the democratic accountability and transparency of interlocal entities, sponsored by prof. Susan Rose-Ackerman and prof. David Schleicher. In the spring of 2021 and the winter of 2023, Marie was a Visiting Researcher at VU Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (the Netherlands).
In 2022, she worked as a legal expert in a consortium studying the evaluation of local governance models in Flanders, on behalf of the Flemish Government.
Previously, Marie was a PhD Candidate at the Law Faculty of Hasselt University, where she wrote a doctoral thesis on interlocal cooperation at the intersection of public and private law, focused on Belgium and the Netherlands (2022), and obtained her master's degree at Ghent University (2017, magna cum laude).
• Title of ongoing research: Inter-local Cooperation in Civil and Common Law Traditions. A Comparative Law Study of Interlocal Entities at The Interface Between Public and Private Law.
🏆 Triennial Doctorate Prize Joseph Merlot-Joseph Leclercq 2023
🏆 Winner PhD Cup 2023
🏆 KVAB-JA Annual Prize Science Communication 2024
🎥🍿 Click here for Marie's most recent video on the outdated legislation on interlocal cooperation.