Maartje van der Woude (1980) is Professor of Law and Society at Leiden University (the Netherlands) and holds her chair at the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society.

More information about Maartje van der Woude

Maartje van der Woude (1980) is Professor of Law and Society at Leiden University (the Netherlands) and holds her chair at the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society. She is also affiliated with the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo as a visiting professor and member of the NORDHOST: Nordic Hospitalities in a Context of Migration and Refugee Crisis research group. In the past, she has held visiting positions at UC Berkeley’s Centre for the Study of Law and Society, UC Hastings College of the Law and the University of Maryland. Maartje holds a JD in Criminal Law, an MSc in Criminology (cum laude) and a PhD in Criminal Law and Criminology from Leiden Law School.

Current Research

Her research examines the politics of social control and securitisation, both from a more macro – national –  perspective as well as a more micro – local/individual - perspective. In her doctoral dissertation,  she shed light on the politicised and symbolic nature of Dutch  counterterrorism measures and the implications thereof for their legitimacy, necessity and effectiveness. Based on her dissertation and research achievements, in 2015 Van der Woude was awarded the Dutch-Belgian Ada and Paul Cornil Prize by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). This prize is awarded every four years to a renowned foreign researcher with outstanding scientific merits in the field of criminological sociology or criminal policy. Van der Woude’s acceptance lecture 'Chain Reactions in Criminal Justice. Discretion, Crimmigration and the Necessity of Interdisciplinary Research' was published as booklet by Eleven International Publishers (2016).

Her recent work examines the politics and dialectics of terrorism/crime control, immigration control and border control in the European Union and the growing merger of all three, also referred to as the process of crimmigration. She is currently working on a 5-year research project - Getting to the Core of Crimmigration - that was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) by means of one of the competitive VIDI grants. As part of this project she is working on a monograph Tales from European Borderlands (working title) in which she will bring together stories of those who are working in border enforcement and those who are part of the communities affected by it. In doing so, she has a particular interest in the different ways in which local state and non-state actors use their powers and formal and informal rules and regulations to either resist or support European and national policies on the management of cross-border mobility. She aims to address questions of exceptionalism, belonging, race, national identity and sovereignty. Her VIDI research is an expansion of a recent pilot study into inter-Schengen border management by the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee  (Koninklijke Marechaussee) in the Netherlands. The results of this study have been published in various national and international publications.

Van der Woude has published extensively, in the form of books, book chapters and both in national and international peer reviewed journals such as  Law and Social Inquiry, Policing and Society, the European Journal for Criminology and the New Criminal Law Review. She is currently editing a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on decision-making at the ground floor of EU migration policies as well as co-editing a book for Fordham University Press on Trump, Brexit and Fortress Europe. Besides publishing more academically, she is also an active blogger on the Leiden Law Blog and Border Criminologies. An up-to-date overview is available under 'publications'. 

Van der Woude’s research is conducted within the context of the University-wide research programme Criminal Justice: Legitimacy, Accountability, and Effectivity and Effective Protection of Fundamental Rights in a Pluralist World.  

Teaching and Supervision

Van der Woude teaches a variety of courses in law, criminology and sociology of law, both in English and Dutch, at the undergraduate and the graduate level. Van der Woude has always been a highly active member of Leiden University’s Honours Academy: Since 2005 she has been involved in organising and teaching honours courses and summer courses. Since 2013 she has mentored honours students who are participating in the Leiden Leadership Programme. As of January 2017, Van der Woude is director of the Honours College Law. Besides teaching, she is currently also supervising six PhD students. 

Ancillary positions

Van der Woude is on the Board of Directors of the Crimmigration Control International Net of Studies (CINETS), is a board member of the Dutch Law and Society Association, part of the editorial board of the Dutch peer-reviewed critical criminology journal “Tijdschrift over Cultuur en Criminaliteit” and member of the Advisory Board of Oxford Law’s interdisciplinary research platform Border Criminologies. Besides her academic tasks and duties, she also acts as an honorary judge at the district criminal court of Southern-Holland. Between 2012 - 2016, she has served as the co-organiser of the Law and Society Associations Collaborative Research Network on Citizenship and Immigration, of which she is still a member.

Photographer portraitpicture: Liesbeth Dingemans

Activities