Antoine Buyse appointed Professor of Human Rights and new director of SIM

Antoine Buyse has been appointed full professor in human rights in a multidisciplinary perspective, starting 1 October 2014. As of that date he will also be the new director of the renowned Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) at the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance. Buyse is a member of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also co-chairs Utrecht University’s research focus area ‘Cultures, citizenship and Human Rights’. He will deliver his inaugural lecture on Tuesday 16 June 2015 at 16h15.

“As a historian and international legal scholar, I have always worked at the intersections of academic fields, both in teaching and research. It is there that innovation and interesting academic cross-fertilization happen.”

Buyse’s research focuses, amongst others, on applying insights from other field of academia, such as history and conflict studies, to the study of human rights law. This approach led to a PhD defended with the highest honors and to the conferral of a number of academic prizes, including the Erasmus research prize and the Max van der Stoel prize, as well as grants from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). He is an expert on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and human rights in post-conflict and transitional justice situations.

International outlook
“The study of human rights is a very international area of enquiry. It is enriching to have a classroom full of students from a diversity of backgrounds.”

Buyse is an internationally very active scholar. Every year, he teaches in the European Master programme on human rights and democratization in Venice. He is a member of the executive board of the Association of Human Rights Institutes. Buyse has been a visiting researcher in Heidelberg, Geneva, Vienna Ghent, Copenhagen, and Belfast. He has also coordinated a large EU-funded project on human rights education in Indonesia and Mongolia..

University and society
“I greatly value the need to popularize academic knowledge beyond the confines of the university itself.”

Through the Young Academy and Utrecht University itself, Buyse has lectured on human rights to larger audiences including primary and secondary school pupils. He is the co-initiator of the kennis op straat (kennisopstraat.nl), an online platform connecting university researchers to the general public. He has contributed to the interactive exhibition Peace of Cake, on the dilemmas of making peace, in Utrecht’s university museum. Buyse also hosts a widely read blog on the European Convention on Human Rights (echrblog.blogspot.com)

Utrecht University Research
The chair of professor Buyse aims to connect the human rights research conducted within the various distinct fields of law at Utrecht University. In addition, Buyse participates in the University’s interdisciplinary strategic research theme ‘Institutions’ and he cooperates with researchers from the humanities and social sciences in Utrecht’s research focus area ‘Cultures Citizenship and Human Rights’.

More information :
Antoine Buyse:
Netherlands Institute of Human Rights: www.uu.nl/sim

Strategic theme ‘Institutions’: www.uu.nl/institutions