Last week we held the second meeting of a reading club my students started this year, “Critical Approaches to Environmental Law and Technology”, at the Maastricht University Faculty of Law.
The idea, and the work, came from them. Soojeong Ahn, Tobias Kains, and Lučka Koprivnjak organised it from the ground up, choosing the readings, framing the sessions, and bringing together students and staff from across the faculty. We met for the first time in February, around a paper on intellectual property and green technology transfer, and reconvened in May to discuss a postcolonial critique of European digital sovereignty.
The themes overlap with my own research on AI and marine environmental policy, but my part in this has been minor: a room, some logistics, sandwiches or vlaai, and a seat at the table as one more reader. The substance is theirs.
I find this some of the most rewarding work we do as teachers. More than delivering content, we get to create the conditions for students to take the lead in their own education, and then trust them to run with it. Given the room, they tend to go further than any syllabus would have taken them.
Looking forward to the next one.
Henrique Marcos 