Maria Jose Luque Macias is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellow, conducting research at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University, under the supervision of Prof. Clara Burbano Herrera.
After obtaining her first law degree at the UCSG, in Ecuador, she relocated to Germany to pursue her LL.M at Universität Potsdam. Here, she successfully drafted and submitted her master thesis in German, on “The EU Accession to the ECHR and the Impact on the Protection of Individual Rights” (original title: “Der Beitrit der EU zur EMRK und Ihre Auswirkung auf den Individualrechtsschutz”). Subsequently, she conducted her doctoral research at the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. Under the title Re-Politicising International Investment Law in Latin America through the Duty to Regulate Paradigm, she published her doctoral monograph in Springer (2021), as a part of EYIEL Monographs – Studies in European and International Economic Law.
Since her post-doctoral stage, she has engaged with the human rights and environment debate. At the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, she preliminarily explored the implications of the Right to a Healthy Environment’s Recognition for Accessing the Inter-American Human Rights System, whereas, at Trier University, she dealt with the role of procedural environmental standards in the delineation of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights within the context of OECD specific instances.
Under the MSCA fellowship, her project NGOsteertIACtHR will now explore the influence of NGOs’ agenda-setting power on the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) relating to environmental matters. This includes contentious cases involving indigenous people, human rights defenders, the right to a healthy environment, as well as the Advisory Opinion on Human Rights and the Environment.
She is a member of the Programme for Studies on Human Rights in Context.
Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral (MSCA) Fellow, Ghent University, Belgium, October 2023-present
Visiting Post-Doctoral Researcher, Trier University, Trier, Germany, May 2021-May 2023
Visiting Post-Doctoral Researcher, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany, April 2020-April 2021
Rapporteuer, Oxford International Organization (OXIO) Project, Oxford University Press, Remote, April 2019-March 2020
Doctoral Reseacher, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany, January 2012-December 2018
Research Associate, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany, April-September 2015
Visiting Scholar, Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. Heidelberg, Germany, June-August 2013
University Degrees
Doktor der Rechte (Dr. iur.), FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2019 (magna cum laude)
Magister Legum (LLM), Universität Potsdam, 2011 (magna cum laude)
Abogada de los Tribunales y Juzgados de la República del Ecuador, Universidad Catolica Santiago de Guayaquil, 2008
Additional training
Summer School ‘Human Rights Law in Context Special Focus: Business and Human Rights’, Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg (CHREN) and European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), Online format (7-10/9/2020)
Webinar ‘Mecanismos de Reparacion de Instituciones Financieras (IFIs) y Puntos Nacionales de Contacto (PNC)’ (ABC Reparations Mechanisms of Financial Institutions and National Contact Points), Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, within the framework of the CERALC Project, Online format (19/5-9/6/2020)
Workshop on ‘Mobilization for Change: Promoting and Defending Justice for Marginalized People’, Right Livelihood College (RLC) Campus Bonn, Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung (ZEF), DAAD and Robert Bosch Stiftung, Bonn/ Germany (08-13/9/2018)
Graduate DAAD Academy: Making Sustainability international: ‘Ecosystem-Based Development and Adaptation to Global Change in Latin America’ DAAD and Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, Berlin/Germany (25-29/9/2013)
UNCTAD International Investment Agreement University Mapping Project 2013 (January-May/2013)
Global Network on Human Rights and the Environment
International Economic Law (IEL) Collective
