dr. M.M.E. (Marlies) Hesselman

Expertise

Dr. Marlies Hesselman is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Transboundary Legal Studies of the Faculty of Law. She teaches in the areas of public international law, human rights law, international environmental / climate law, and environmental health. She holds an LLB in Dutch Law from Leiden University; and LLM in International Law, specialization human rights (cum laude, top 2%); LLM European Law; and PhD in International Human Rights Law on modern energy services access from Groningen University. Hesselman also studied at Copenhagen University and has been a GLOTHRO-funded Visiting Scholar at the London School of Economics.

Hesselman currently acts as Chair of the Groningen Center for Health Law and sits on the Scientific Steering Committee of the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health. She is also the academic co-coordinator of the Joint Summer School on Global Governance of Health Vulnerabilities in Africa in Tanzania and co-founded the new Working Group on Human Rights and the Climate Crisis at the Netherlands Network of Human Rights Research. She has been part of the Global Peer Network for the Climate Case Chart of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law of Columbia University since 2021.

Hesselman’s research addresses the intersections of socio-economic human rights law, energy, climate change and environmental health, with a strong focus on international human rights law practice and rights-based legal moblization on new socio-environmental struggles. Presently, she concentrates on the 'transnational' legal development of the "right to energy" as a newly emerging right in the 21st century, including as related to just transitions. She further leads and supervises research on the health-related dimensions of climate change at the Groningen Center for Health Law, with a specific interest in litigation and the interaction between international climate law and human rights law, through a lens of 'global health law'. In the past, Hesselman wrote extensively on the human rights dimensions of disaster settings. As a founding co-editor of the Yearbook of International Disaster Law (Brill Nijhoff) in 2017-2022, she contributed to the establishment of a new field of study called 'international disaster law'.

Hesselman has published widely in her areas of interest, in leading publications, including The Lancet (IF 168,9), the BMJ (IF 107.2), Energy Research and Social Sciences (IF 11,6), Sustainable Development (IF 12.5) and iScience (Cell), Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Nederlands Juristenblad (NJB), Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Energierecht, or with OUP, CUP, Routledge, Edward Elgar, Brill, TMC Asser. She was a lead-editor of the edited volume 'Socio-Economic Human Rights in Essential Public Services Provision' (Routledge, 2017) and co-authored the first evidence-based analysis of the new phenomenon of 'Just Transition Litigation' with fellow-members of Columbia Law School's Global Peer Network on Climate Litigation.

Hesselman currently holds funding for several research projects through the NWO Sectorplan REPP, EU CERV and YAG-SER. Between 2018-2022, she acted as co-lead for WG3 of EU COST Action ENGAGER: European Energy Poverty: Knowledge Innovation and Agenda Co-Creation funded by the EU Cooperation on Science and Technology Scheme. ENGAGER was an international multidisciplinary network of 200+ acadmics and practioners working on a joint research agenda for energy poverty in Europe. As part of ENGAGER, she organized a major conference on the Right to Energy in Groningen, and led and co-produced the novel COVID-19 Energy Map: a major visual database of 380+ emergency energy poverty policies adopted in 120+ countries world-wide during the pandemic. The map's method and initial findings were published in Energy Research & Social Sciences. In 2022, she wrote a seminal entry on the 'Right to Energy' for the Edward Elgar Encyclopedia on Human Rights.

Hesselman co-authored the influential TNO White Paper on Energy Poverty and the Energy Transition in the Netherlands, which was the basis for the development of novel national indicators for energy poverty measurement in the Netherlands. Based on her research, Hesselman regularly advices the Landelijk Onderzoeksprogramma voor Energiearmoede (a network of TNO, Ministries SZW, EZK and BZK, VNG, RVO, CBS and Provinces) on rights-based perspectives on energy poverty and just energy transtion.

More information here about past and ongoing research projects.

See here for full list of 75+ publications // Google Scholar.

Engaging with practice:

Finally, Hesselman enjoys engaging with practice and greatly values the societal impact of her academic research. She held several positions within government and NGO sectors, incl. traineeships at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in China and EU Delegation in China, Beijing, (Development Cooperation sections), and as legal advisor at the International Law Division (DJZ) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs'. She has also advised refugees and asylumseekers at Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland (Dutch Refugee Council) and has been active as human rights expert for the Dutch Section of the International Commission of Jurists, NJCM, coordinating WG International Human Rights Protection from 2011-2013, and acting as coordinator of national joint coalition shadow reports for UN Human Rights monitoring procedures. She was a NGO-coalition representative at the UN Human Rights Council (2012) and UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (in 2009-2010 and 2016-2017) and gave trainings to international human rights defenders on UN human rights monitoring.

Hesselman's publications have informed and been cited by several UN human rights monitoring bodies: e.g. drafts of CEDAW's General Comment 37 on Disaster Risk Reduction in a Changing Climate (2018); the annual report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food on "Right to Food and Natural Disasters" (2018); studies of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights related to 'Human Rights and the Environment' (2011) 'Human Rights in Post-Disaster Settings' (2014) and 'The Right to Health and Climate Change' (2015-2016).