dr. M.M.E. (Marlies) Hesselman

About

Dr. Marlies Hesselman is Assistant Professor at the Department of Transboundary Legal Studies of the Faculty of Law and chairs the Groningen Centre for Health Law since 2023. She teaches in the areas of public international law, international human rights law, international environmental / climate law, and environmental health. She holds an LLB from Leiden University; and LLM International Law, specialization human rights (cum laude, top 2%); LLM European Law, spec. human rights; and PhD in International Human Rights Law on modern energy services access from Groningen University. Hesselman also studied at Copenhagen University and was a funded Visiting Scholar at the London School of Economics.

Hesselman sits on the Scientific Steering Committee of the interdisciplinary Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health and is founder and academic co-coordinator of the Joint Summer School on Global Governance of Health Vulnerabilities in Africa in Tanzania. She also recently co-founded the new Working Group on Human Rights & Climate Crisis at the Netherlands Network of Human Rights Research.

Research interests and expertise

Hesselman's research concentrates on the intersections of socio-economic human rights law, energy, climate change and environmental health, with a strong focus on international human rights law practice and human rights-based legal moblization in relation to new socio-environmental struggles. Presently, she concentrates on the 'transnational' emergence of the "right to affordable, reliable and clean energy" as a new legal right in the 21st century, including as tied to just transitions. She also leads and supervises research on health and climate change at the Groningen Center for Health Law, with a specific interest in health arguments in climate litigation and the interaction of climate law and human rights law through the lens of 'global health law'. Hesselman is part of the Global Health Law Consortium and the ESIL Interest Group on Energy and International Law. She has been a member of Global Peer Network for the Climate Case Chart of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law of Columbia University since 2021.

In the past, Hesselman wrote extensively on the human rights dimensions of disasters. As a founding co-editor of the Yearbook of International Disaster Law (Brill Nijhoff) in 2017-2022, she contributed to the establishment of a new field of study called 'international disaster law'.

Publications

Hesselman publishes widely in her areas of interest, in leading publications, incl. The Lancet (IF 168,9), the BMJ (IF 107.2), Energy Research and Social Sciences (IF 11,6), Sustainable Development (IF 12.5) and iScience (Cell), Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Nederlands Juristenblad (NJB), Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Energierecht, and OUP, CUP, Routledge, Edward Elgar, Brill, TMC Asser, Palgrave McMillan. She was a lead-editor of the edited volume 'Socio-Economic Human Rights in Essential Public Services Provision' (Routledge, 2017) and co-authored the first evidence-based analysis and conceptualization of the new phenomenon 'Just Transition Litigation' with fellow-members of Columbia's Global Peer Network on Climate Litigation.

In 2020, Hesselman co-authored the influential national TNO White Paper on Energy Poverty and the Energy Transition in the Netherlands, which was the basis for the development of novel national indicators for energy poverty measurement in the Netherlands. Based on her research, Hesselman regularly advices the Landelijk Onderzoeksprogramma voor Energiearmoede (a network of TNO, Ministries SZW, EZK and BZK, VNG, RVO, CBS and Provinces) on rights-based perspectives on energy poverty and just energy transition.

See here for full list of 75+ publications // Google Scholar.

Research projects and networks

Hesselman currently holds funding for several research projects on the topics of human rights law, energy, climate, and planetary health, e.g. through the National Starting Grant, NWO Sectorplan REPP, EU CERV, YAG-SER, and Stanford University Children's Hospital (see here). She is also part of several national and inter-national research networks.

In 2024, Marlies joined the new interdiscplinary EU COST Action CLIMENT (Climate Change and Mental Health Impacts). Between 2018-2022, she acted as a co-lead for EU COST Action ENGAGER (European Energy Poverty: Knowledge Innovation and Agenda Co-Creation) funded by the EU Cooperation on Science and Technology Scheme. Both ENGAGER and CLIMENT are multidisciplinary networks of 200+ acadmics and practioners working on joint research agenda's across Europe. As part of ENGAGER, Hesselman was elected to co-lead WG3 on Dialogues: Co-producing emancipatory research and practice on energy poverty and organized the first-ever international academic conference on The Right to Energy in Theory and Practice in Groningen in January 2020. She additionally initiated and led the novel COVID-19 Energy Map project: a major visual database of 380+ emergency energy poverty policies adopted in 120+ countries world-wide during the pandemic. The map's method and initial findings were published in Energy Research & Social Sciences.

More information here about past and ongoing research projects.

Engaging with practice and societal impact:

Finally, Hesselman enjoys engaging with practice and greatly values the societal impact of her academic research. Prior to her academic career, she held several positions within government and NGO sectors, incl. traineeships at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in China and EU Delegation in China, Beijing, (Development Cooperation sections), and as legal advisor at the International Law Division (DJZ) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs'. Between 2009-2017, she was active as socio-economic human rights expert within the Dutch Section of the International Commission of Jurists, NJCM, coordinating their WG International Human Rights Protection from 2011-2013, and acting as coordinator of national coalition shadow reports and NGO-coalition representative for UN Human Rights monitoring, incl. at the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (in 2009-2010 and 2016-2017) and UN Human Rights Council (2012). Hesselman also provided trainings to international human rights defenders.

Hesselman regularly consults with international governmental and non-governmental bodies, including the WHO, EC DG-Energy, UN OHCHR and Brussel-based NGOs. Her academic publications informed and have been cited by several UN human rights monitoring bodies: e.g. drafts of CEDAW's General Comment 37 on Disaster Risk Reduction in a Changing Climate (2018); the annual report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food on "Right to Food and Natural Disasters" (2018); studies of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights related to 'Human Rights and the Environment' (2011) 'Human Rights in Post-Disaster Settings' (2014) and 'The Right to Health and Climate Change' (2015-2016).