I am a legal scholar with two fields of expertise: asylum and migration law and legal education.

I have been working in the field of  asylum and migration law for more than twenty years and it still fascinates me. I have worked as a policy officer for the Dutch Council for Refugees (2001-2006), where I have mainly worked on proposals to improve the Dutch asylum procedure. I used this experience during my PhD project (2007-2013) concerning the role of Article 47 of the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights in asylum procedures. This resulted in the monograph 'EU Asylum Procedures and the Right to an Effective Remedy', which I defended at Leiden University in 2013. The monograph was published by Hart Publishing in 2014 (see the review here).    

I am an academic who likes to be in close contact with legal practice. I am interested in EU procedural law and its application in the field of asylum and migration. I have published on questions such as: how intensive should a judge review a negative asylum decision?  How does the speed of an asylum procedure affect the applicant's access to an effective remedy? How to ensure the rights of the defence in cases in which confidential information is used? And what is the role of medical evidence in an asylum procedure? As a result of my work for the Migration Law Clinic of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam (2014-2023) and the Strategic Litigation Committee of the Dutch Council for Refugees, I have been involved in may cases brought before the Court of Justice of the EU and the European Court of Human Rights. 

My interest for legal education was sparked when I set up the Migration Law Clinic of the VU in 2013. In this Clinic, students work on complex questions of European migration law, which occur in real cases. The Clinic has not only been an important support for migration lawyers and NGO's, but has  also provided a valuable experience to students. It is great to see how students enjoy this special form of education and to see them grow during the academic year. I became a fan of Clinical Legal Education. My mission is to design innovative educational projects, which give students control over their own learning, invite them to reflect about the law and their learning process, help them to develop their personal skills and, most importantly, make them enjoy law.

In my current position as Director of legal skills at the UvA,  I have the opportunity to work, together with a very committed team of teachers, on this mission for a large group of students . In the past two years I have set up the new Amsterdam Law Firm: a two-year legal skills programme for first and second-year students of the Bachelors of Law and Tax Law. In this programme, students practice their writing, research and personal skills while working on a real or simulated case file or assignment. They write legal analyses, letters, pleadings and research papers, present in moot courts and practice interviews, while improving their cooperation and reflection skills. This prepares them for the bachelor thesis and legal practice.