ACMRL is happy to welcome Emma Peute to our team at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Emma holds a bachelor’s in political science and law with a minor in Philosophy from University College Utrecht. They then completed a master’s in political theory at the University of York, where their first thesis, entitled 'If you encounter enemies, you're on the right track', explored the structure-agency debate, free will and meaningful action through the lens of video game play. In addition to their MA in Political Theory, Emma also completed an LLM in Legal Research at the University of Utrecht. In their second thesis, titled ‘Playing the fiddle while the world burns? Three dialogues in human rights'. Here, they used a Socratic dialogue to examine institutionalised human rights in the climate crisis from the perspective of embodied emotionality and affect. During this time, Emma also published an article, ‘The Dead Body as Queer Necropolitical Metaphor in the Dutch Legal Framework on Death, Funerals and Disposal’ in the book In Corpore.
In addition to their impressive academic work, Emma has practical experience, having represented marginalised communities through the York Human Rights City network and worked with Extinction Rebellion, developing deliberative democratic governance strategies. They also interned at the Ministry of Justice's Human Rights Cluster, contributing to research for the European Court of Human Rights.
With us, Emma is starting as a junior teacher. We are impressed that Emma's teaching background spans some five years, with roles including tutoring, student counselling, and designing and teaching an introductory political theory course at University College Utrecht. Emma looks forward to developing their teaching skills and expanding with us their interests in interdisciplinary qualitative research methods, focusing on democratic empowerment, collaborative decision-making, and an empathetic approach to human collaboration in society.
We are glad to have Emma join our team, as their work will contribute to our ability to offer this variety of courses to our students.