Clara Cotroneo is a PhD Candidate at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University.

More information about Clara Cotroneo

My name is Clara, and I am a doctoral student at the ISGA. Here, I also have the immense pleasure of teaching in the Master in Crisis and Security Management a course on the EU's approaches to Transnational Organized Crime. 

My teaching draws on  heavily on my research, which focuses on  the EU's approaches to trafficking in human beings in particular. Beside being a mature doctoral student in Leiden, I am a full time lecturer at the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) in Maastricht and at the European Centre for Judges and Lawyers (ECJL) in Luxembourg. 

In my teaching and research, I am particularly interested in addressing issues related to the development of holistic approaches to justice (and their implementation), based on the belief that security concerns and fundamental rights' protection cannot be separated. 

Research project

My doctoral research examines the nature, characteristics, and limitations of the European Union’s approach to tackle trafficking in human beings (THB). My objective is to assess how, and to what extent, the EU has balanced the prevention of rights’ violations and the protection of the EU’s internal security interests, in anti-trafficking measures. How EU measures in the area of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA), including criminal law and policing, address the protection of rights on the one hand, and concerns about the Union’s internal security on the other, has been a central issue in scholarly debates. So far,  analyses of EU measures in specific fields of JHA, such as asylum and migration, have often highlighted the prioritization of border control and security management, over fundamental rights’ protection. Because of its dual nature/dimension – a crime-related issue, which involves the violation of fundamental rights – THB represents a particularly fitting case for assessing EU’s efforts at conciliating rights’ obligations and security concerns.