Dirk Visser 25-year anniversary on 1 September
This year Dirk Visser will celebrate working at the faculty for 25 years. During this period he has progressed from being a student assistant to becoming an expert in information and copyright law in the Netherlands. This event will be marked with a symposium to be held on 2 September as part of the annual Alumni event ‘Leiden Revisited’.
Dirk Visser started working at the faculty on 1 September 1991 as a student assistant for Professor D.W.F. (Feer) Verkade, working at the university building located on 59 Rapenburg. The previous year, Verkade had come to Leiden from Nijmegen as Professor Information and Intellectual Property Law. One year later Dirk became a trainee researcher (AIO). To outsiders, that sounds lower in rank than a student assistant and the salary was indeed lower. The ‘training’ for researchers at that time consisted of once every six months drinking coffee with Anneleen Broekhuijsen-Molenaar (currently Justice at the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam) together with other PhD students including Isabeth Mijnarends and Koen Caminada, both now also professors in Leiden. Dirk obtained his doctorate in 1997 on a dissertation about copyright law and internet and since 1996 he had been working as a lecturer one day a week. Besides this he was also still working in the legal profession. In 2003 he became a part-time Professor of Intellectual Property Law. To this day he finds the combination of teaching, research and practice highly inspirational. His most positive experience in the past 25 years was the move to the KOG building in 2006 which brought staff closer together, both physically and academically. In 2041 Dirk hopes to celebrate his 50-year work anniversary, since his retirement age will by then no doubt have been raised to above 71. But this is still some time away.
First, on 1 September there will be celebration cake for his colleagues at the Institute of Private Law. And on 2 September a symposium on ‘The most important thing about IP that you need to know’ with countless prominent Leiden IP alumni during ‘Leiden Revisited’.
For further information please visit the Legal Post Academic Education website (Dutch).