Collaboration

The LDRG collaborates in research and teaching with academic partners at the national and international level:

• Law and Development Research Network | LDRN 
  As a founding member of this global community of 21 university partners since 2017.
  
  
• Other Research networks
  The LDRG also participates in the Flemish Interuniversity Research Network Law&Dev and the Association of Human Rights Institutes.
  
  
• Privileged Academic PartnersThe LDRG prioritises joint research and collaborative teaching with Global South higher education, nonacademic institutes and legal scholars. The LDRG cooperates closely with its six “privileged” partners, including for the LLM Cluster on Sustainable Development and Global Justice: 
  • The National Law University | NLU | Delhi | India 
  • The Pontifical Catholic University of Peru | PUCP Peru
  • The Centre for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria | South Africa
  • The Human Rights Centre “Antonio Papisca” University of Padua | Italy
  • The University of Eastern | Finland
  • Muwatin Institute for Democracy and Human Rights | Palestine
    

Besides these, our members have academic contacts and joint research projects in Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, DR Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Lesotho, Tanzania, and more. 

These include: 

• Durable solutions through a human rights-based approach for displaced women and children in the Omo-Gibe river basin, Southern Ethiopia (2026-2031), TEAM project funded through VLIRUOS, with Wolaita Sodo University (WSU) School of Law in Ethiopia and Ghent University Projecto CrEA (2017-2027) funded through VLIR-UOS with the Universidad Catolica de Bolivia, where we lead Sub-Project 4 on collective rights, Indigenous Peoples rights, environmental justice and the role of legal clinics. 
  
• In 2024, the LDRG, with the Muwatin Institute for Democracy and Human Rights, Birzeit University, initiated the collaborative research project “Emancipatory Human Rights.” This entails common research and policy briefs, and student and staff exchange.
• The Re-Empower Project Resilience through empowerment: overcoming socioeconomic and environmental risk factors for child marriage in Tanzania through a positive engagement with customs & traditions (2022-2027), a TEAM project funded through VLIRUOS and jointly implemented by the Faculty of Law at Mzumbe University in Tanzania, the Law and Development Research Group at the University of Antwerp and Hogeschool Gent in Belgium
• The ContainerHavens research-action project, funded by FWO, that has been developed together with colleagues from NYU Shanghai and the Universidad del Rosario de Colombia, in Bogota.