Elise Dermine

Elise Dermine is professor of labour law at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of the Université Libre de Bruxelles since October 2016. Her research is structured around three main topics: (1) the links between law and inequality in the workplace, (2) the relationship between labour law and ecological transition, and (3) access to law and justice for vulnerable people. She conducts these activities within the Centre for Public and Social Law and TRANSFO, an interdisciplinary research centre on social change.

Since March 2025, Elise is leading a research project, ERC RethinkingWork, on which she will team up with four researchers for five years. This ERC project explores how national systems of labour law can contribute to redefining work beyond productivism, a shift seen as essential for ecological transition. Instead of abstract proposals, it investigates existing legal mechanisms and social practices that already, at the margins, deviate from the dominant productivist paradigm. By mapping these resources and uses across Europe, the project will develop grounded, legally robust trajectories and proposals for a sustainable, post-productivist future of work.

She founded and is still head of the Street Law Clinic en droit social. This is a legal clinic in which law students learn to communicate the law in clear language to vulnerable audiences, so that they understand their rights and can claim them. Since September 2023, she is also president of the Belgian association for labour and social security law (ABETRASS/Begasoz). Finally, since February 2024, she is vice-chair of the Commission responsible for studying the feasibility of codifying Belgian labour law, which was set up by the Minister of Employment within the Federal Public Service of Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue.