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mr. dr. Sanne Buisman

Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Criminal Law

Associate Professor, Kooijmans Institute

Associate Professor, Research Programmes - Law, Empirical and Normative Studies

Personal information

Sanne Buisman is an Associate Professor of Criminal Law at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She has broad expertise in criminal law, with her work focusing particularly on the relationship between criminal law and the rule of law. In 2021, she obtained her PhD from Tilburg University with the dissertation Contract, Tort and Crime, in which she examined the criminalisation of shopping fraud by buyers and sellers in the Dutch and EU legal orders.

Buisman is a member of the Executive Board of the Department of Criminal Law. She is also the portofolioholder Valorisation & Impact, through which she promotes an academic culture in which valorisation activities are recognised and valued not as ancillary work, but as an essential and visible part of academic practice.

Research

Buisman’s research starts from the question of how criminal law can retain its rule-of-law constraints in a period of technological, societal and institutional change. It focuses on the conditions for criminalisation, on how the modernisation of the new Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure can be reconciled with effective legal protection, and on the consequences of the growing interconnection between criminal law and other fields of law.

From this perspective, she pursues a coherent line of research on criminalisation, the modernisation of the Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure, and hybrid forms of adjudication. This research agenda enables her to undertake in-depth work across the full breadth of criminal law (substantive criminal law, criminal procedure and penal law) while linking these areas to interdisciplinary and multidimensional perspectives. Through doctrinal legal research, comparative legal perspectives and perspectives from adjacent disciplines, her research contributes to a better understanding of the working, legitimacy and future resilience of criminal law.

Teaching

Buisman has extensive experience in designing and teaching courses at bachelor’s, master’s, honours level, and post-academic professional education (PAO). Her teaching centres on the development of future legal professionals who critically engage with the law and actively contribute to a resilient rule-of-law-based society.

She has been involved in several major curriculum reforms, including the introduction of the Master’s thesis track at Tilburg University, the revision of the criminal-law curriculum within VU Amsterdam’s Bachelor’s programme in Law, and the Visible Learning Pathways project within VU Amsterdam’s Bachelor’s programme in Law. She was the coordinator of the criminal law curriculum in the Bachelor programme in law from 2020-2026.

Ancillary activities

Tijdschrift Bijzonder Strafrecht & Handhaving | Utrecht | Redactielid | 2020-02-01 - present
Stichting tot steun Commissie Meijers | Amsterdam | Bestuurder | 2023-05-01 - present
Commissie Meijers/ Meijers Committee | Utrecht | Voorzitter | 2019-08-01 - present

Ancillary activities are updated daily