In light of the growing authoritarian challenge to human rights, the project investigates the limitations and possibilities for regional human rights regimes to be effective in non-democratic contexts. Beyond Compliance investigates, based on an inter-disciplinary approach combining historical, legal and social science research, how the European, African and inter-American human rights regimes have developed and enforced their norms against states engaging in gross violations, legal repression, and/or systemic rule of law violations. Within this overall framework, the postdoctoral researcher, together with the principle investigator who will work on the European system and the other postdoctoral researcher who will be working on the African system, and based on the same multi-method approach, will investigate:

• how the inter-American system has enforced its norms against states engaging in systemic and gross violations; and
• how, meanwhile, it responded to the legal mobilization of domestic human rights advocates.

Other tasks:

• Design the scope of the postdoctoral research project, and fine-tune the research questions and methodology together with the whole research team;

• Engage autonomously in the collection of data (e.g. document analysis and interviews);

• Present intermediate research results in internal discussions and at workshops and conferences;

• Contribute to project activities, such as organizing academic events or outreach; and communication of research results to activists, relevant communities of practitioners and policy makers; and

• Optionally, and in mutual agreement with the project leader and in line with the teaching needs of the International and European Public Law Department, have teaching responsibilities.

You have:

• (or are about to obtain) a PhD in law, political science, sociology or another social science discipline that enables you to carry out research on the effectiveness of the inter-American human rights regime;

• an interest in conducting multi-method research on a topic related to the broader theme of the project, namely the effectiveness of regional human rights regimes;

• a commitment to work independently and as part of the team to produce outputs that are publishable in international peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes;

• knowledge and insights about the political and legal context in Latin America and about the inter-American human rights regime;

• experience with conducting academic research and academic writing in English;

• very good knowledge of Spanish, in order to read documents and conduct interviews; and

• the ability to set and attain your (own) goals.

• An employment contract for one year with a probationary period of two months, preferably starting on 1 September 2025. The appointment will be extended for another two years upon favourable evaluation, i.e until 31 August 2028;
• for international staff, support in obtaining residence permit, registering with the municipality, finding housing (not guaranteed), learning Dutch and applying for a 30% tax ruling.