Prior to her appointment in Tilburg, she has held positions as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg, and as a Lecturer in Law at Oriel College, Oxford. Vanessa has law degrees from Erasmus University Rotterdam (LL.M 2001, cum laude) and from the University of Oxford (M.Jur 2002, with distinction; M.Phil 2003; D.Phil 2006), where she obtained her D.Phil on Performance-Oriented Remedies in European Sale of Goods Law (published with Hart Publishing, 2009).