About
The European Criminology Group on Atrocity Crimes and Transitional Justice (ECACTJ) provides a network for European criminologists who are engaged in research on atrocity crimes and transitional justice, whether in or on Europe, or globally. The aim of this Working Group is to enhance the contribution of criminology and criminologists in this field, to stimulate research in and on Europe and to promote exchange between European and international researchers. The group collaborates with other networks and research groups in the field. The Supranational Criminology Network is represented in the group by its founder, Professor Alette Smeulers, Tilburg University, Netherlands. With its focus on researchers in Europe, it is nonetheless global in its perspectives. The group was founded in 2013, and has thrived since then with an increasing membership.
Why this group?
Europe as a region has witnessed unspeakable mass atrocity crimes and genocide, and Europeans have been involved as perpetrators in mass violence across the globe. However, Europe was also the site of the Nuremberg Trial, where for the first time perpetrators were brought to justice. Europe has played a decisive role in the proliferation of legal instruments, and procedures ever since then, including International Criminal Tribunals and the International Criminal Court. The world owes the term 'genocide' to Raphael Lemkin, a Polish migrant in the US.
Chair
Contact
- Mail: b.hola@vu.nl
- Phone: 31205983350
Research focus
- International sentencing
- Transitional justice
- Empirical legal studies
"Barbora Hola works as Senior Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR) and as Associate Professor at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at VU University of Amsterdam. She has an interdisciplinary focus and studies transitional justice after atrocities, in particular (international) criminal trials, sentencing of international crimes, enforcement of international sentences, rehabilitation of war criminals and life after trial at international criminal tribunals. Barbora has published extensively on these subjects and presented at international conferences and universities in Europe, Africa and the America’s. In 2013, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded Barbora the prestigious VENI grant for a research on sentencing of international crimes by national courts in Bosnia and Rwanda. In 2015 Barbora, together with Lily Rueda, received a Research Talent Grant for a project focusing on the role of sanctions in the ICC complementarity assessment. In 2016, the NWO WOTRO funded a project on cycle of violence in post-conflict settings, in which she cooperates with colleagues from the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement and the Prison Fellowship Rwanda. In 2017, Barbora was one of the four candidates who received the highly competitive ‘WISE’ (Women in Science Excel) fellowship from the NWO to develop her research line on empirical studies of international criminal and transitional justice after atrocities. Besides her research and teaching in the Master’s programme International Crimes and Criminology, Barbora is a co-director of the Center for International Criminal Justice, a knowledge centre dedicated to interdisciplinary studies of mass atrocity crimes and international criminal justice (www.cicj.org)."
Contact
Research focus