Academic staff

Utrecht 木瓜福利影视鈥檚 Legal Research programme is widely renowned. As a Legal Research student, you receive high-quality contemporary teaching in a stimulating and small-scale academic environment. The staff will share their knowledge with you and encourage you to take part in or help organise activities like conferences and seminars. They may also invite you to assist in their own research. Our inspiring and committed researchers, including

  • Professor Sonja Bekker is interested in employment and social policies, within a European context. In particular, her reseach focuses on the labour market position of 'atypical' groups such as people with fixed-term or part-time jobs, young workers and people experiencing in-work-poverty. 
  • Professor Kees van den Bos is Professor of Social Psychology, Professor of Empirical Legal Science. In his research, Van den Bos integrates social psychology and empirical legal research. Together with colleagues, he developed a research program that (1) systematically addresses fundamental questions pertaining to the experience of (in)justice and (2) uses the basic insights thus obtained to understand complex social and societal phenomena that revolve around social conflict, trust and distrust in society, perceived fair and unfair treatment, morality, cultural worldviews, pro-social behavior, radicalization, extremism and terrorism.
  • Professor Elbert de Jong is Professor of Private Law at the Utrecht Centre for Accountability and Liability Law (Ucall) and the Molengraaff Institute for Private Law. In the coming years, De Jong will focus on the interaction between the law of obligations and complex societal challenges. 
  • Professor Rianka Rijnhout has been appointed Full Professor of Institutions, Conflict Resolution and Private Law at Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 (2021). Rijnhout conducts research into the why and how of compensation systems and procedures, such as systems for liability law, compensation funds, no-fault compensation and first-party insurance. 
  • Professor Linda Senden focuses in her research on the institutional and constitutional dimension of EU law, with a specific interest in regulatory and enforcement aspects of the European integration process, in its interaction with the national legal orders. 
  • Professor Rob Widdershoven is professor of European Administrative Law. His teaching and research focus on (Dutch) general administrative law and on the influence of European Law on the administrative law systems of the EU Member States. In particular in the areas of judicial protection (including court administration), enforcement of law and general principles of law/fundamental rights.  
  • Professor Bald de Vries is Professor Interdisciplinary legal education. His focus is on contemporary notions of modernity and related concepts such as complexity and uncertainty, risk, precaution and sustainability, liability and responsibility, and their bearing on legal theory and law, His research helps formulating the theoretical foundations for research carried out in the Utrecht Centre for Liability and Accountability Law (). 
  • Dr Christina Jeppesen de Boer is interested in the legal regulation of family relations. Particularly, the parent-child-state relation and the effect of divorce. 
  • Dr Charlotte Mol forms part of a interdisciplinary research team with colleagues from pedagogy working on a new project focused on child participation following parental separation: 'Hear Hear! Nurturing Children鈥檚 Self-Determination Through Participation in the Context of Parental Divorce'.
  • Dr Luigi Prosperi has mainly conducted research in the field of international and transnational criminal law, including on the prosecution of intentional environmental harms as crimes against humanity, on the avenues for accountability for crimes committed against migrants in Libya (either as international or transnational crimes), and on the implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court at the domestic level (with specific regard to Italy).
  • Dr. Lorena Sosa is an expert on intersectional discrimination and gender-based violence. She is an Associate Professor at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) and a member of the research programme on Family & Law (UCERF). 
  • Dr. Aart de Vries is an associate professor of (European) criminal law. Aart's research focuses primarily on the interface between national and EU criminal and administrative (procedural) law, and the interface between criminal and administrative law enforcement, also from a European perspective. 
  • Dr Karin de Vries works on different themes related to non-discrimination and citizenship, including ethnic profiling, structural (race) discrimination and postcolonial perspectives on citizenship and the rights of migrants.
  • Dr Wendy Yan LLM has been working as a PhD candidate in constitutional law at the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice and the Institute of Jurisprudence, Constitutional and Administrative Law since 2020. As of 2024, she is also affiliated with this department as a lecturer.