Welcome back everyone to the Auxiliary Chamber with your host Bram Burger and today I am honoured to present episode 39, with the inspiring and retiring Leiden University Professor Dr. Niels Blokker. In today's episode titled: Institutions, Negotiations, and the Classroom: A Life in International Law with Dr Niels Blokker, we are starting with a retrospective on the most important and favourite movements of his career spanning over four decades at Leiden University and the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs. We discuss how times at the university, ministry and within international law have changed and his decades-long process of writing the famous International Institutional Law textbook after taking over the project from Professor Dr. Schemers. Finally, we end the episode with a discussion on the importance of working in practice within international law and the future of multilateralism in these uncertain times. As a brief background to Dr. Blokker’s illustrious career, Dr. Niels Blokker was an Emeritus Professor of International Institutional Law at Leiden University’s Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, holding the Schermers Chair since 2003. Alongside his career at Leiden, he formerly worked as Deputy Legal Adviser at the Dutch Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and is widely known for his work on International organisational Law and authored multiple versions of the "International Institutional Law" textbook (whose 7th edition, has come out this year 2025). Dr. Blokker was also a pivotal professor in Leiden University's Public International Law regular and advanced LLM.