Contact
Biography
Dr Klara Polackova Van der Ploeg is Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham School of Law, specializing in international law and international dispute settlement. She is the Head of the Business, Trade and Human Rights Unit of the Human Rights Law Centre and a member of the Nottingham International Law and Security Centre and the University of Nottingham Commercial Law Centre.
Dr Van der Ploeg's work focuses on transformations of international law with respect to collective non-state entities; international legal regulation and dispute settlement of global coordination problems; interface between private law and international law; international investment law; business and human rights; and international law in domestic courts. Her research includes both basic theoretical and empirical research and policy-oriented work.
Dr Van der Ploeg completed her PhD in international law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland with highest distinction (summa cum laude avec les félicitations du jury). She also holds an LLM degree from the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, USA (having attended as Michigan Grotius Fellow), and Master's and Bachelor's degrees from Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. She has held visiting fellowships at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge, the British Institute for International and Comparative Law in London, and the Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context, Queen Mary University of London.
Dr Van der Ploeg is also a dual-qualified attorney-at-law (State of New York; Czech Republic) and has advised States and private parties on a wide range of public international law and international dispute settlement matters. She served as a judicial assistant to Judge Sir Christopher Greenwood at the International Court of Justice and practiced public international law for several years with leading global law firms in the City of London, United Kingdom, and Prague, Czech Republic.
Her Linked-in profile may be found here.
Teaching Summary
Dr Van der Ploeg teaches International Investment Law, International Dispute Settlement and Business and Human Rights at the postgraduate (LLM) level. She also lectures in the Introduction to Law and… read more
Research Summary
Dr Van der Ploeg's first project, "Collective Non-State Entities in Contemporary International Law," for which she received the 2019 SNIS Award, explored the adaptations of international law to a… read more
Selected Publications
Dr Van der Ploeg teaches International Investment Law, International Dispute Settlement and Business and Human Rights at the postgraduate (LLM) level. She also lectures in the Introduction to Law and Legal Theory undergraduate module in the spring semester.
Please note that Dr Van der Ploeg will not teach in the 2024/25 and 2025/26 academic years.
Current Research
Dr Van der Ploeg's first project, "Collective Non-State Entities in Contemporary International Law," for which she received the 2019 SNIS Award, explored the adaptations of international law to a globalized environment by exploring direct regulation of collective non-state entities through rules of international law. Through an examination of primary sources in multiple substantive areas of international law (including law of peace and security, law of the sea, international human rights law, international investment law, and international humanitarian law), the research traced the ongoing processes of normative change and demonstrated that contemporary international law had developed to set forth direct rights and obligations for collective non-state entities without the interposition of any state.
Dr Van der Ploeg also edited a book exploring the relationship between international law and time, entitled "International Law and Time: Narratives and Techniques" (Springer 2022). Divided into five parts and 21 chapters, the book puts the spotlight on time's fundamental significance for international law as a legal order and as a discipline.