Meet our new lecturer Eva Deen!
1 October 2024
Can you tell a bit more about yourself?
My name is Eva Deen. I am 50 years old, married and live in Haarlem with my husband and our two children aged 19 and 16. I once enjoyed studying at the UvA myself, when the law faculty was still at Oudemanhuispoort. Shortly after my studies, I also taught a study group there for a short period. That was meant as a kind of ‘in-between job’ before I went travelling, but university teaching captured my heart then. After that, I was a lawyer, worked for years at the VU and at De Letselschade Raad, and from 2017 I worked as an independent health law lawyer and (among other things) member lawyer at the Regional Disciplinary Tribunal for Health Care in Amsterdam. In recent years, I have also always had a line of work with the master's in health law, supervising theses and giving lectures on the importance of openness after medical incidents. In 2023, I decided to switch to the judiciary, starting at team Trade of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal. However, there I realised how much I had become wedded to health law and the versatile portfolio of work I had built up as a self-employed person. So from 1 October next, I will pick up my own practice again and, in addition, become a lecturer one day a week at the master's programme in health law.
What aspect of your new role as a teacher are you most looking forward to?
I find the contact with students who are at the beginning of their careers and still have to make all kinds of choices about how they are going to organise their lives very fun and inspiring. I hope to convey some of my enthusiasm for the profession.
What inspired you to choose this particular field?
Health law, and more specifically medical liability law, is pre-eminently about human interests and relationships. I find the relationship between the healthcare provider and the patient fascinating. It fascinates me how doctors (often) choose their profession because they want to help people, how patients put their health and sometimes their lives in the hands of the doctor, and how the relationship between these people can become strained when something goes differently than everyone had hoped. To be able to play a role as a lawyer in that complicated situation is a privilege for me.