Jannemieke Ouwerkerk is Professor of European Criminal Law at Leiden Law School's Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology.

More information about Jannemieke Ouwerkerk

Jannemieke Ouwerkerk is Professor of European Criminal Law at Leiden Law School's Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology. Within the institute, she is also Head of the Department of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure.  

Professor Ouwerkerk joined Leiden University in August 2016. She previously worked at Tilburg Law School, where she obtained her PhD in 2011 for her dissertation on the principle of mutual recognition in cross-border criminal justice cooperation between European Union Member States.  

Research 

Professor Ouwerkerk’s main research interest is EU criminal law and its impact on Dutch criminal law and criminal procedure. This includes agreements for the purpose of cross-border cooperation in criminal cases (e.g. the European Arrest Warrant and the European Investigation Order) and the development of EU regulations in the fields of formal criminal law (and especially defence rights) and substantive criminal law (criminalisation and sanctions).

Professor Ouwerkerk’s research in the area of criminalisation focuses on the development of normative underpinnings for the legitimate exercise of EU criminalisation powers, on the basis of which Member States can be held to create criminal prohibitions (e.g. in the areas of terrorism, environment, EU fraud) in their national criminal laws. With funding in the form of an NWO Veni grant (2011-2014), Jannemieke explored the exact scope of EU criminalisation powers and examined which grounds were relied on to underpin adopted EU-level criminalisations under the Lisbon Treaty. Through her current project, ‘The Moral Limits of EU Criminal Law: A Rechtsguts-theory for the European Union’, Jannemieke has entered the next stage of this research. This project essentially comprehends a translation of the national law-based Rechtsguts-theory to EU criminal law, thereby offering a new perspective on criminalisation within the EU context. In 2020, this project was awarded a Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers from the German Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, in the course of which Jannemieke has held visiting positions at the University of Bonn and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (both in Germany). 

Teaching 

Professor Ouwerkerk teaches bachelor's courses (in Dutch: Materieel strafrecht, Substantive criminal law) and master’s courses (in Dutch: Europees strafrecht, European criminal law). She also supervises master’s theses. She regularly gives postgraduate guest lectures and courses for professionals such as defence lawyers and judges both in the Netherlands and abroad.  

Activities