Biography

After her law studies at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Laura attended the European Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation in Venice and spent the second semester at the Danish Institute for Human Rights in Copenhagen. She also holds a degree from Stanford Law School, in socio-legal research. She has teaching experience in comparative law (taught at Bachelor level) and comparative constitutional law (taught at Master level).

Laura is interested in the relationship between civil society organisations and jurisdictions, socio-legal research methods and the interpretation of fundamental rights.

Using a comparative approach, her PhD thesis empirically examined the role of ‘public interest litigants’ in the circulation of arguments before the European Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court of the United States and the South African Constitutional Court concerning the interpretation of fundamental rights.

So far, she has examined mainly how NGOs contribute to the work of the European Court of Human Rights. During the MW Programme, she will reverse the direction and examine the contribution of the Court to the vibrancy of civil society in these challenging times.