Prof. Dr. Marie-Claire Foblets is managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and the director of the Department of Law & Anthropology, which she founded in 2012. She is also Professor of Law at the University of Louvain (KUL) and an Honorary Professor at the Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg. She has been teaching law as well as social and cultural anthropology at the universities of Antwerp and Brussels for over twenty years. Before becoming a member of the Max Planck Society in March 2012, she was professeur ordinaire (full professor) at the Catholic University of Leuven, where she headed the Institute for Migration Law and Legal Anthropology. She has also been a member of various networks of researchers focusing either on the study of the application of Islamic law in Europe or on law and migration in Europe, including the Association française d’anthropologie du droit (AFAD), where she served as co-president for several years. In2001, Professor Foblets was elected to the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB). In 2004, she received the Francqui Prize, the most distinguished scientific award in the humanities in Belgium. Prof. Dr. Jean-Yves Carlier is Professor of Law at the University of Louvain (UCL) and at the University of Liège in International Private Law, European Law, Human Rights Law and Migration Law. He is a highly esteemed scholar who has published extensively in the field of human rights, international private law and personal autonomy.  He has been teaching in the capacity of visiting professor at Paris 2 (Panthéon-Assas), Caen, Strasbourg, Aix-Marseille, Montréal, Den Hague Academy of International Law, Rabat, Tunis, Ouagadougou, Cotonou, Bujumbura and Bukavu. He is also a practicing lawyer as the member of the bar in French speaking Brabant (Nivelles, Belgium).