Since 1997 Sjef van Erp has been professor of civil law and European private law at Maastricht University. Throughout his career he established the field of comparative and European property law not only as a field of research, but also as a field to teach in. His pioneering work in comparative property education has been an example throughoutthe world. His work to gather property experts to make a Ius Commune Casebook on property law, widely used throughout the world as one of the first and very few books on comparative property law, underlines these efforts.
In the last decade Sjef van Erp has also been instrumental in bringing researchers together in the European Law Institute that he co-founded, as well in various international working groups focusing on the challenges brought forward by technological developments on the law of property. He has become recognized as an international scholar in the field of PropTech (or property and technology). Throughout all these international activities, he has retained his teaching post at Maastricht and introduced generations of students into the field of property law from a comparative and European perspective.
In January 2021 Sjef van Erp has retired as professor of civil law and European Private Law at Maastricht University. On the occasion of his retirement a group of international authors have come together to prepare and offer him a book to commemorate this occasion.