Judith van Uden is a PhD candidate at the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance, and Society, contributing to the research project Living on the Other Side: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of Migration and Family Law in Morocco. Her research examines how migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia navigate both formal and informal dimensions of significant life events—marriage, divorce, birth, and death—within the Moroccan legal and social framework. The overarching aim of her work is to develop a legal anthropology of South-South migration, offering insight into how migrants shape their most intimate private lives in relation to state, customary and religious laws.

Judith began her academic trajectory with a BSc in Cultural Anthropology and International Development Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, followed by an MSc in International Development Studies at Wageningen University, where she specialized in the Sociology of Development. Her master's research focused on how Syrian forced migrants in Turkey leveraged their social networks and community ties to access public services and humanitarian aid. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and an internship with the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants, her findings highlighted the crucial role of social connections—particularly in the context of displacement—as sources of essential information and financial support. Given that individuals belong to multiple, overlapping networks based on factors such as ethnicity and place of origin, the fluidity and complexity of these networks proved advantageous in navigating the challenges of displacement.

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