Bernardo Almeida is an Assistant Professor at the Leiden University College (LUC) and at the Van Vollenhoven Institute (VVI). He works as a researcher and practitioner in land tenure, law, lawmaking and development and is currently researching the nexus between climate change response and land rights.

Bernardo has a background in law and started his professional career as a lawyer in Portugal. He then moved to Timor-Leste in 2009, first as a property rights lecturer at the National University, and later as a Ministry of Justice legal advisor for the land sector, responsible for legal drafting and analysis. Since 2015 Bernardo has also worked as a consultant in Timor-Leste, Afghanistan, Angola, and Laos for organizations including UNDP, UN Habitat, the World Bank, and The Asia Foundation, with special focus on land tenure issues.

Bernardo has conducted research on land-related issues in Timor-Leste, Mozambique, Afghanistan and South Sudan, and has published several articles, book chapters, research reports, and policy briefs (see ‘Publications´) based on this work.

His PhD thesis analysed the development of the formal land tenure system in Timor-Leste particularly how political, legal, and administrative decisions on land administration are made, what and who influences them, which problems and dilemmas politicians and state officials face, and how the formal land tenure system works in practice. This research also takes a deeper look at lawmaking in the context of a young, developing democracy. His thesis was published by Routledge in 2022 as ‘A Sociolegal Analysis of Formal Land Tenure Systems Learning from the Political, Legal and Institutional Struggles of Timor-Leste’.

In 2023 Bernardo was awarded a Veni grant by the NWO to research the implementation of climate change response laws and policies and their impacts on vulnerable people's land rights in Mozambique and South Sudan (2024-2028).

Bernardo is interested in supervising capstones, master and PhD theses in all above-mentioned research areas.

At the LUC Bernardo has taught Peace and Justice; Law, Governance and Development; Comparative Justice Systems; International Environmental Law; Research Design; and is developing a course on Natural Resource Management. Since 2018 he has collaborated with the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (Erasmus Rotterdam University) on the Urban Management and Development Master.

Publications