Machteld Geuskens is assistant professor at the VU department of Legal Theory and Legal History. In her research she theorizes the notion of epistemic justice and its relevance for law. In her PhD thesis (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 authoritative sources. 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.
Before starting her PhD in philosophy supervised by prof. Alan Thomas, for which she received an NWO Talent Grant, she 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 (2012). Between 2006-2012, she worked as Programme 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, where she combined the role of science editor and media liaison for socialevraagstukken.nl, with that of external network coordinator, in which role she helped found the Law Schools Global League.
From 2016 until 2021, she worked at Erasmus Law School, first as a teacher and then as an assistant professor, supervising bachelor theses in law, teaching the master course Advanced Jurisprudence, and coordinating the Research Skills Seminar (of 12 EC) for the Master Legal Theory and Legal Methodology.
From 2021, she has worked at VU Amsterdam, where she has been faculty coordinator for the bachelor thesis course up to 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.
Together with prof. Wibren van der Burg, she has supervised Huann-Min (Lester) Chen, who completed his PhD thesis in 2026, entitled: Tolerance: A Moral Virtue.
