HENDRIK SCHOUKENS

Hendrik Schoukens obtained a Licentiate degree in Law with great distinction at the Catholic University of Leuven in 2005. He was a member of the team that represented the Catholic University of Leuven at the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition in Washington in 2004.

In 2007 he received a Master’s degree in Environmental Law with greatest distinction at Ghent University.

Since January 2006 he has worked as an environmental lawyer at the Belgian Law Firm LDR, where he focused on files regarding nature conservation and files with a cross-sector approach.

He has extensive expertise with regard to the effect of water, air, nature and landscape regulations in the spatial planning sector. The implementation of the complex project and planning EIA (environmental impact assessment) regulations belongs to his field as well. In 2010 he received his complementary Master’s Degree in Environmental Law with great distinction at the Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis and the Catholic University of Louvain. There he wrote his dissertation on the new European Marine Strategy Framework Directive.

Since June 2007, Hendrik has been a voluntary research assistant at the department of International Public Law of Ghent University and in January 2012 he joined the department as a fulltime teaching and doctorate assistant. In the previous years he has written many articles on the effect of international and European nature conservation law on the spatial planning sector, and on access to justice in environmental matters, mainly in Belgian and Dutch Law Reviews. Currently he is working on a PhD on the legal aspects of Ecological Restoration in Union Law.