Machteld Geuskens is assistant professor at the VU department of legal theory and legal history. Before starting her PhD supervised by prof. Alan Thomas, for which she received an NWO Talent Grant, she had obtained a BA and MPhil degree in philosophy at University College London (2003) and Birkbeck College London (2006), and an LLB and LLM in law at Erasmus University Rotterdam. While studying law in Rotterdam (2006-2012), she worked as Manager for the postexperience Master Financial Management at Rotterdam School of Management, as a paralegal at Bird and Bird LLP, and for three years at Tilburg Law School as media liaison and external network coordinator. From 2016-2021, during her PhD completion and after, she worked at Erasmus Law School as a methodology teacher for the bachelor thesis, and as assistant professor, teaching the philosophical course Advanced Jurisprudence (reading work of Iris Young) and coordinating the Research Skills Seminar for the Master Legal Theory and Legal Methodology. There she also co-supervised the PhD thesis of Huann-Min (Lester) Chen, who completed his PhD thesis in 2026, entitled: Tolerance: A Moral Virtue.
dr. mr. Machteld Geuskens
In her research she theorizes the notion of epistemic justice and its relevance for law. In her PhD (Tilburg, 2018) she has argued that epistemic justice is to be understood via the notion of epistemic power - the ability to influence what passes as knowledge in society, including who qualify as knowers (or as sources of knowledge). In her view, epistemic justice is best understood as a critical theoretical notion that concerns the use and allocation of epistemic power. In recent work, she has explained that epistemic justice can be seen as a rationale for freedom of speech and information, whereby epistemic power is secured through an appeal to law. Her work builds on the works of Miranda Fricker, Bernard Williams, J.S. Mill, Wittgenstein and Iris Young.
At the VU where she has worked from 2021 onwards as an assistant professor, she has been faculty coordinator of the bachelor thesis until August 2026, and has taught philosophy of law (Ency I) as well as three other first year courses: Introduction to Law and Legal Academic Skills A and B. From 2026 onwards, she is coordinator of the Research track for Master students in law and of the master course Academic Writing Lab.
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