Marieke Hopman
Marieke is the initiator of the Children’s Rights Research project. Her personal mission is to improve the lives of children by giving them a voice, and by understanding what can be better in their lives by carefully listening to all relevant actors (children, parents, teachers, politicians, etc.)
Fons Coomans
Fons holds the UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Peace at the Department of International and European Law at the Faculty of Law, Maastricht University. Since 2019 he is the leader of the WOTRO-funded project on Development Rights of Children Living in Unrecognised States.
Amal de Chickera
Amal is a co-founder and co-director of the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion. He has researched, advocated, written, spoken, delivered training and served as an expert on statelessness and related issues for the UN, NGOs and academia. Amal is particularly interested in the nexus between statelessness and discrimination and its implications on access to other rights.
Sarah McGibbon
Sarah is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of International and European Law at Maastricht University. Her research examines the international legal capacity and responsibility of non-state effective territorial entities. Sarah is a member of the WOTRO-funded project on Development Rights of Children Living in Unrecognised States.
Emmanuel Achiri
Emmanuel is a humanitarian crisis response analyst and a PhD candidate at the Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus (northern Cyprus). He researches on the intersection between migration, externalization and technology. He is also co-founder of VOIS Cyprus, an organization representing migrants in Cyprus, and has worked with the European Programme for Integration and Migration, and Urban-A as an independent consultant.
Selman Aksünger
Selman is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of International and European Law at Maastricht University. His research concerns the impact of sea-level rise on a displaced nation's sovereignty rights over natural resources. Selman have led the Parliament of Earthquake Children in Türkiye (PECT) project with funding provided by Maastricht University’s Children’s Rights Research Fund.
Guleid Ahmed Jama
Guleid is part of the research project Development Rights of Children Living in Unrecognised States as a PhD candidate researching children's rights in Somaliland at the Department of International and European Law at Faculty of Law of Maastricht University. He is the former chairperson of the Human Rights Center, a human rights watchdog organisation based in Somaliland.
Julieta Marotta
Julieta holds a PhD from Maastricht University/United Nations University on access to justice and legal empowerment of victims of domestic violence. Her research interest is on inclusive forms of access to justice and legal empowerment for disadvantaged groups through empirical legal research. Currently, she is researching access to justice for children, and undertaking fieldwork in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Özlemnur Ataol
Özlemnur is an urban planner, designer, and researcher specialized in her PhD on participatory urban research and collaborative urban planning with children. She dedicates her research to empowering children in urban planning since children are a distinctive user group of urban environments and because the built environment is a significant indicator of children's physical and mental development starting from birth.
Ambra Borne
Ambra completed a LLB in European Law from Maastricht University. She worked as a children’s rights researcher for the MaRBLe project The Child's Right to Nationality in an unrecognized state. Ambra is currently enrolled in the Erasmus Mundus NOHA Master’s degree in Humanitarian Action from University College Dublin and Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
Victoria van Heesewijk
Victoria grew up in Belgium and is a half-Dutch, half-Spanish European Law student doing a minor in Dutch law in order to get her civil effect. Next to her studies, she runs a blog with some friends which aims at explaining law-related topics to laymen, engages in climate activism and dances. Her academic interests lie in property law and European law.
Marie Vounelakos
Marie is a half-Austrian, half-Greek student of the Bachelor European Law at Maastricht University. Her interests lay in the fields of human rights and the law of armed conflict. She is supporting Marieke Hopman in her research on the child’s freedom of expression in Moroccan-Controlled Western Sahara.
Simona Urbaničová
Simona is a Slovak student in her third-year at the European Law School at Maastricht University. Since September, she has been working on the sub project which focuses on the interaction between the United Nations and unrecognised states as part of the MaRBLe project. Her academic interests lie in the fields of human rights as well as European Public law and governance.
Emilia Klebanowski
Emilia is a final-year student at the European Law School. She is born in Germany. Emilia is part of the honours programme and works as a student tutor at the Law Faculty. Her academic interests lie in the field of international human rights law. In particular, she is interested in how to ensure the right to education for children of minorities.
Laura Zsarnai
Laura is from Hungary and is currently a third-year student of the Bachelor European Law School at Maastricht University. She participates in the Honours Programme, and is an intern at the private law research institute of the faculty. In the context of the MaRBLe project, she researched the notion of development rights of children under the supervision of Professor Fons Coomans.
Blánaid Sheeran
Blánaid is an Irish student in her third-year at the European Law School in Maastricht. She has been working on the sub project which focuses on children's right to live free from violence in the SADR since September as part of her university MaRBLe project. Blánaid plans to pursue a career in international human rights law.
Minka Halász
Minka is a final-year European Law student doing a minor in business law. She has been working with refugee kids for several years now and is particularly interested in family law and children's rights. She is currently an intern at the Hungarian UNICEF Committee, which she really enjoys.
Tajra Smajić
Tajra is a student of the Bachelor European Law at Maastricht University, coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her interests lay in the fields of Maritime Law and International law, with focus on Law of the Sea and Human Rights. Tajra is participating in the ELSA European Human Rights Moot Court. She also worked on a research project on the topic of development rights of children in unrecognized states.
Marius Ungureanu
Marius is a student from Republic of Moldova in his third-year of the European Law Bachelor at Maastricht University. His work relates to Transnistria, a self-proclaimed republic in the eastern part of Moldova. Through his research he is trying to determine in what ways the children living in that area are being denied the Right to Nationality and how it affects them.
Florentina Pircher
Florentina worked as a researcher for the project on Development Rights of Children Living in Unrecognised States. She supported the Western Sahara case study, including by conducting field research alongside Marieke. She is pursuing an LLM at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, a joint centre of the University of Geneva and of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.
María Prieto Sánchez
Originally from Spain, Maria is currently a final-year student pursuing a Double Degree in European and Spanish Law at Maastricht University. Her academic interests center around human rights, with a keen focus on women's rights and humanitarian action. She works as a student assistant at Children’s Rights Research.
Esther Hertog
Esther Hertog is a freelance anthropological documentary filmmaker specialised in working in Israel and the Westbank. Her films focussing on children growing up in conflict zones have been internationally awarded. She joined Marieke Hopman in spring 2023 on her research in the West Bank and made the vlogs for the website of the Children's rights project. Esther is currently working on making a documentary series on children’s rights in de facto states. As a visual anthropologist Esther attempts to “step into the shoes” of her protagonists in an attempt to gain a better understanding of their worldview and capture it from an insider’s point of view.
Tara O'Sullivan
Tara is an Irish student of the Criminology, Forensics and Law Master at Maastricht University. She is also a graduate of the European Law School. Her academic interests include artificial intelligence, child labour, and modern slavery. She supports the Children’s Rights Research Project as a student assistant.
Fons Coomans
Fons holds the UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Peace at the Department of International and European Law at the Faculty of Law, Maastricht University. Since 2019 he is the leader of the WOTRO-funded project on Development Rights of Children Living in Unrecognised States.
Christiane Verfuurden
Christiane is a lawyer, specialized in inheritance law and family law. She is an active member of the Association of Family- and Inheritance law Lawyers & Divorce Mediators (vFAS).
Andrea Broderick
Prof. dr. Andrea Broderick is a Professor at Maastricht University, and holds the UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Peace at Maastricht University, since September 2022. She holds a Ph.D. in international and comparative (European) human rights law, specifically on disability equality law. Andrea is also a qualified lawyer, who has previously worked in professional practice. She has done some research and practical legal work on children’s rights. Since May 2022, Andrea is the Co-director of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights.
