Born 23 May 1951, Philippe Van Parijs studied philosophy, law, political economy, sociology and linguistics at the Université Saint-Louis - Bruxelles in Brussels, at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) in Louvain-la-Neuve, at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven) in Leuven, in Oxford, Bielefeld and California (Berkeley). He holds doctorates in the social sciences (Louvain, 1977) and in philosophy (Oxford, 1980).[4]