At VU Amsterdam, I hold a part-time position at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, where my main responsibility is coordinating and teaching the course Victimology. My main position is as Senior Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR).
As a victimologist and anthropologist, my research focuses on how people experience and give meaning to harm and victimisation, and on what justice and repair mean in their everyday lives. Much of my work has been situated at the intersection of victimology and transitional justice, focusing on survivors of political violence, international crimes, and gross human rights violations, and on the effects of judicial and non-judicial justice and reparation processes.
My research is also informed by long-term engagement beyond academia. For more than a decade, I was co-founder and board member of Niños del Futuro, a foundation working with internally displaced families affected by political violence in Peru. This experience contributed to my interest in how people affected by political violence navigate questions of mass victimisation, participation, justice and repair.
My research has included work in Peru, Colombia, Guinea-Conakry, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Guatemala, and Cyprus, addressing issues such as the construction and labelling of victim identities, survivor representation and participation, and the longer-term effects of legal and reparative interventions. More recently, I have developed an interest in green victimology, particularly in how environmental harm is experienced and understood, and what meaningful forms of justice and repair might entail. This emerging interest connects to a broader question running through my work: how do institutional understandings of harm, victimhood, justice and repair relate to the lived experiences of those affected?
Previously, I hold positions at various institutions in the Netherlands, including CEDLA (Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation, University of Amsterdam), the department of Social and Cultural Anthropology (VU Amsterdam), and INTERVICT (International Victimology Institute, Tilburg University).
My methodological background is rooted in ethnographic and participatory research, complemented by experience with visual and mixed-methods approaches. This methodological breadth informs how I approach questions of harm, victimisation, justice and repair.
I am also a member of the Ethics Committee for Legal and Criminological Research (CERCO) at the Faculty of Law, VU Amsterdam.
