News and Events 2025

On 5 June 2025 Leontine Bruijnen will be defending her PhD on How can private international law bridge the gap between the recognition of unknown family relations such as kafala and child marriage for family law and migration law purposes?

At this occasion, we will have an expert seminar on Child marriage: root causes and questions of recognition

• 11.00: Welcome and introduction by Thalia Kruger, University of Antwerp
• 11.10: The Role of Customs and Traditions in Addressing Child Marriages in Tanzania: A Human Rights-Based Approach, by Esther Kayamba, Mzumbe University and University of Antwerp
• 11.25: The link between climate change and child marriage in Tanzania, by Agripina Mbilinyi, Mzumbe University and University of Antwerp
• 11.40: Framings used to Translate and Contextualize Global Norms on Child Marriage: The Case of Two Kebeles, Quarit Wereda, Amhara Region, Ethiopia, by Yitaktu Tibetu, Human Rights Lawer, Senior Gender Adviser and councillor psychologist
• 12.00: Perspective from Europe by Bettina Heiderhoff, University of Münster and Trui Daem, PhD researcher Ghent University
• 12.20: Debate and Q&A
• 12.50: End

This three-day training introduced early-career legal scholars to creative, participatory and interdisciplinary research methods. Keynotes and workshops addressed positionality, interviews, participatory action research, legal design, coding and critical approaches to international law.

The Re-Empower project was officially launched at Mzumbe University in Tanzania. The VLIR-UOS-funded collaboration examines how positive engagement with customs and traditions can help address socioeconomic and environmental risk factors for child marriage.

Members of the Law and Development Research Group presented research at the Network’s seventh General Conference in Belo Horizonte. Ysaline Reid received the Koen De Feyter Prize for the best junior-scholar paper in English for her work on the EU Deforestation Regulation and Brazil.

PhD candidate Michael George Marcondes Smith received the 2025 Matthieu et al. Prize for Young Researchers. The €2,000 award supports the validation and dissemination of his doctoral research on issues connected with human suffering.

The 2025 Memorial Lecture Series honoured Professor Koen De Feyter’s life, scholarship and commitment to justice. Four colleagues explored themes central to his work, including human rights, development, self-determination and global inequality.

26 March 2025 — Koen De Feyter and the Evolution of Law and Development in the 21st Century

Liliana Lizarazo Rodriguez and Deborah Casalin reflected on Koen De Feyter’s contribution to law and development. The lecture examined how the field has evolved over the past 25 years and highlighted his influence on legal education, research and international academic networks.

18 March 2025 — The Right of Peoples to Self-Determination

Dana Farraj explored self-determination from legal and emancipatory perspectives. The lecture considered the right’s collective dimensions, its application beyond the traditional nation-state and the consequences of its violation.

13 March 2025 — States and the Right to Development

Professor Carol Chi Ngang examined whether states can claim the right to development. His lecture revisited continuing debates about the right’s origins, extraterritorial dimensions and role as both a human right and a global development framework.

26 February 2025 — Human Rights in Investment Arbitration

Daniel Mathew examined how international investment tribunals engage with human rights. With particular attention to India, the lecture considered the legal and practical barriers to integrating human rights into investor–state dispute settlement.

View the original lecture-series page · Visit the lecture-series video channel

Wouter Vandenhole, current spokesperson of the Law and Development Research Group, delivered the first Koen De Feyter Memorial Lecture at the Belo Horizonte LDRn Conference. The lecture, entitled Geographies of Shared Responsibility for Sustainable Development for Subaltern People(s), highlighted Koen De Feyter’s academic legacy in human rights and global development law. It identified some of the core themes in his written work: a human rights approach to development, including the right to development; the rights of indigenous peoples; shared responsibilities of state and non-state actors for development; human rights and the market; the perspective on human rights by ordinary, subaltern people; and literature, music and film. It showed how Koen De Feyter’s teaching and research cross-pollinated each other: teaching fed research, and research shaped teaching. It mapped Koen’s research onto places where he had institutional affiliations. Those places, and the people there, co-shaped Koen’s thinking and writing: they represent geographies of his legacy.

You can find a recording of the lecture here.