Florenz Volkaert

Florenz Volkaert (°1995) has a Ph.D. in Law from Ghent University. He studied law at Ghent University (2018, summa cum laude) and obtained an LL.M/MSc. in Law and Economics (2018-2019, receiving the award for best student in the program) from the Universität Hamburg, Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research as part of an Erasmus Mundus program. During his law studies in Ghent, he also spent a semester at the University of Waikato (New Zealand), where he won the Law of International Trade Prize for best essay. He furthermore interned twice at the international trade department of an international law firm.

From November 2019 to October 2023, Florenz was a PhD Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) under the joint supervision of Prof. Dirk Heirbaut and Frederik Dhondt (VUB). He successfully defended his thesis 'Commercial treaties (1860-1914): a history of international law and trade' on 3 November 2023 and received the 2022 ESIL Young Scholar Prize for a part of his doctoral research. He obtained a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Belgian-American Educational Foundation (boat 2023-2024) and is currently researching the history of international cartels and currency unions at Yale Law School, on the invitation of Prof. Samuel Moyn. His broad research interests are the history of international economic law (trade, cartels, and money), economic diplomacy, and law and economics (both micro and macro).

Florenz is the co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal for Digital Legal History and a member of the Coordinating Committee of the European Society of International Law's Interest Group for the History of International Law.