Prof. Catrien Bijleveld

Board member

Biography by Prof. Catrien Bijleveld

I am more than honoured having served as President of ESELS in the past year.

Trained as a research methodologist and lawyer, I worked mainly in criminology and only recently discovered the bubbling arena of empirical legal studies. I currently conduct research in family law and protection measures for elderly persons. My teaching focuses mainly on research methods and statistics. My recent textbook “Research Methods for Empirical Legal Studies: An Introduction” aims to provide an introduction to qualitative and quantitative methods for ELS. Analysing the impact of interventions (such as laws) has my particular interest, something which may be quite a challenge in the ELS field where it is hard to conduct experiments and data are mostly observational. But it is exciting when creative methods can be used to uncover the working of laws and regulations.

In addition to being a researcher and professor of research methods in ELS and Criminology, I am also a member of the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy.

ELS has the potential to enrich and innovate the legal discipline. I hope as President to contribute to strengthening and expanding our ESELS Society, in a gender-, methodological and geographically inclusive manner, for it to be a vehicle for this promise of empirical legal studies in Europe.