Bernardo Almeida is an Assistant Professor at the Leiden University College (LUC) and a Researcher at the Van Vollenhoven Institute (VVI). He specializes in land, law, lawmaking and development.

More information about Bernardo Ribeiro de Almeida

Bernardo Almeida is an Assistant Professor at the Leiden University College (LUC) and a Researcher at the Van Vollenhoven Institute (VVI). He specializes in land, law, lawmaking and development.

Bernardo has a background in law, and started his professional career as a lawyer in Portugal. He then moved to Timor-Leste in 2009, first as a property rights lecturer at the National University, and later as a Ministry of Justice legal advisor for the land sector, responsible for legal drafting and analysis. Since 2015 Bernardo has also worked as a consultant in Timor-Leste, Afghanistan, Angola, and Laos for organizations including UNDP, UN Habitat, and The Asia Foundation, with special focus on land-related legislation.

Between 2015 and 2020 Bernardo wrote his PhD thesis at the Van Vollenhoven Institute. His research, with the title ‘Building land tenure systems: The political, legal, and institutional struggles of Timor-Leste’, shows how political, legal, and administrative decisions on land administration are made, what and who influences them, which problems and dilemmas politicians and state officials face, and how the Timorese formal land tenure system works in practice. This research also takes a deeper look at lawmaking in the context of a young, developing democracy. His thesis will be published by Routledge in 2022.

As an academic researcher he has conducted two research projects in Timor-Leste and Mozambique, and has published several articles, book chapters, research reports, and policy briefs (see 'Publications´). He currently works with Prof. Janine Ubink (VVI) on the Just Future Programme, a 5-year consortium of various partners from the Global North and South, supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where they focus on effective land justice pathways for the protection of people’s land rights and prevention of conflict in Afghanistan and South Sudan.

His current research interests include land tenure, lawmaking, legal implications of climate change, transitional justice, and justice systems. He is interested in supervising capstones, master and PhD theses in these areas.

At the LUC Bernardo has taught Peace and Justice; Law, Governance and Development; Comparative Justice Systems; International Environmental Law; and Research Design. Since 2018 has collaborated with the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (Erasmus Rotterdam University) on the Urban Management and Development Master.

Publications