As an Associate Professor of Legal Sociology, Jeff Handmaker teaches law, human rights, development and social justice and leads a research project on Legal Mobilization at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, which forms part of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

In the Leiden MSc Programme in Law and Society, Jeff teaches the Elective Course on “Mobilizing Rights and Social Justice”.

As a socio-legal scholar, his research explores the social and political dimensions of mobilizing law in relation to a variety of contexts and themes. Jeff has a long-time association with South Africa and Southern Africa and is a research fellow in the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and an Editor of the South African Journal on Human Rights.

From the early 1990s until early 2000, he held various positions for the South African organisation Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR). From 2000-2007 he pursued an international legal practice. He trained government officials, police officers, military personnel, lawyers, NGOs and journalists and advised governments, the United Nations and civil society organisations in the development sector, developing particular experience in: Bulgaria, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Morocco, the Netherlands, Uganda, Malawi, Senegal, Suriname and Zimbabwe.

Profile page: https://www.iss.nl/en/people/jeff-handmaker

Email:  handmaker@iss.nl