Name Boudewijn Sirks | ||
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Books The Theodosian Code: A Study, Food for Rome Education University of Amsterdam, Leiden University | ||
Adriaan Johan Boudewijn Sirks (born 14 September 1947, The Hague), known as Boudewijn Sirks and as A. J. B. Sirks, is a Dutch academic lawyer and papyrologist specializing in Roman law. He was Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford from 2006 to 2014.
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Early life
Sirks was educated in law at the University of Leiden, then in theology and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, where he later graduated as a doctor of philosophy in law.
Career
Sirks's first academic position was as research assistant in philosophy at Amsterdam. However, in 1978 he was appointed as Lecturer in Legal History at the University of Utrecht, where he was later promoted Senior Lecturer in Legal Techniques. At the same time, he was writing a thesis for a doctoral degree in law at the University of Amsterdam. He returned to Amsterdam in 1989 as Reader and acting Professor of Legal Techniques.
In 1997, Sirks became Professor of the History of Ancient Law, of the History of European Private Law, and of German Civil Law, at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main. In 2002 Sirks became a correspondent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In December 2005, HM The Queen appointed him as a Regius Professor at Oxford, with effect from 1 February 2006. At the same time, he was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. The appointment was announced from 10, Downing Street, as follows:
Sirks has also been a visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York, and Visiting Professor at the University of Kansas, has served as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Legal History, and has lectured for the Edinburgh Roman Law Group, which was founded by his predecessor as Regius Professor of Civil Law, Peter Birks.
He is a member of the Studia Amstelodamensia.
Published work
Professor Sirks's research interests span civil law, European private law, the ancient history of law, and papyrology. He has published work on a variety of subjects related to law, papyrology, and the ancient world, including archaic Roman law, matters of classical private law, the administrative and public law of the later Roman Empire and the reception of Roman law in Europe and in the former Dutch East Indies. He is co-author of the standard edition of the Pommersfelden Papyri.
His Food for Rome: the Legal Structure of the Transportation and Processing of Supplies for the Imperial Distributions in Rome and Constantinople (1991) developed from the thesis for his doctoral degree at Amsterdam, completed in 1984. Following the death of the Dutch papyrologist Pieter Johannes Sijpesteijn in 1996, Sirks edited with K. A. Worp a collection of previously unpublished papyri dedicated to Sijpesteijn's memory by his fellow papyrologists, including papyri from the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods, to reflect Sijpesteijn's wide interests.