Professor Maartje van der Woude received the Heineken Young Scientists Award in the Humanities 2018 for investigating the interplay between the law and public debate concerning such issues as terrorism, migration, and cross-border crime.
Maartje van der Woude focuses our attention on such issues as ethnic profiling and the reception of refugees. The jury praised her as an exceptional and inspiring research talent, a unique, passionate scientist who also seeks to connect with the public, for example in debates and a blog.
Maartje van der Woude is professor of Law and Society at Leiden University. She is also affiliated with the Centre International de Criminologie Comparée at the University of Montreal (Canada) and the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo (Norway).
Van der Woude studied criminal law and criminology at Leiden University and received her PhD there in 2010 for her dissertation on the drafting of Dutch counterterrorism legislation.
Research
Maartje van der Woude’s work focuses on the interplay between the law and real life in a changing society. She examines different facets of the law – for example terrorism and counterterrorism, border control, migration, public order and security – to study how political and public debate on the one hand and the law on the other influence each other and to explore how essentially separate policy domains such as migration and security become intertwined.
For example, in her VIDI-funded research project she is studying how the various EU member states deal with the Schengen agreements on open internal borders and the free movement of persons in a social and political climate in which the fear of ‘dangerous others’ is an overriding concern.