Bea Verschraegen - Biography#

Bea Verschraegen was born in Belgium and learned German during her law studies at the University of Vienna. Today, she serves as chair professor of Private International Law and Comparative Law at Vienna Law Faculty and fulfills a variety of functions.

She founded the Interdisciplinary Association of Private International and Comparative Law (IACPIL) in 2009 and has been heading IACPIL since then. Verschraegen has been invited as guest professor by many universities world-wide. She has been serving on numerous evaluation commissions and law reform institutions world-wide, and developed innovative educational law programs. She is a member of the Consultative Groups on the Restatement of the Law, Children and the Law, and on the Restatement of the Law Third, Conflict of Laws (ALI).

After her term as President of the “Commission Internationale de l’Etat Civil”, she was nominated “Présidente honoraire” in 2002.

In the beginning of her career she became co-opted member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (1985, Commission for European Law, Foreign Law and Private International Law) and participated in all activities until the commission closed done in 1998.

Her publications cover Private International Law, Comparative Law, European Law; Mediation and ADR and Civil Law. Many of the publications were the first dealing with the topic, at least in the region or in the language in which they were published (e.g. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in German, 1996, 122 pp; Same-sex „marriages“, in German, 1994, 286 pp; Divorce by mutual consent, in German, 1991, 737 pp; “Private International Law. Loose-leaf Collection of the International Encyclopedia of Laws.

She is an enthusiastic violoncellist, opera fan, and she loves biking.

For more information see http://homepage.univie.ac.at/bea.verschraegen.