Alison L. Fischer is a PhD candidate jointly appointed at the van Vollenhoven Institute and the KITLV (Royal Dutch Academy of South Asian and Caribbean Studies). She is examining how concepts of race play a role in Dutch legal education, and how legal education fits into ongoing discussions of race and ‘post-colonial community’ in the Netherlands. Her supervisors are Dr Esther Captain and Professor Rosemarijn Hoefte from the KITLV, and Professor Maartje van der Woude from the Van Vollenhoven Institute.

Alison has a BA in Political Science from the University of North Carolina (1999) and a JD (doctorate of jurisprudence) from Columbia University (2005). She practiced criminal law in the United States, and at the Special Court for Sierra Leone before relocating to the Netherlands and teaching at the University of Amsterdam from 2012-2020.