Joni Van Laeken started as a Meijers PhD Candidate at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies in September 2023. Her PhD research is titled 'Transformative Reparations for International Crimes: An Actor-focused Analysis Across International, Hybrid and National Criminal Justice Mechanisms'.

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Joni Van Laeken holds an LLB and an LLM in Criminal Law from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium. She also obtained an Advanced LLM in Public International Law with a specialisation in International Criminal Law at Leiden University in 2022. Afterwards, from September 2022 until March 2023, she did a legal internship at the Trust Fund for Victims of the International Criminal Court in The Hague where she was mainly working on reparations related matters in the situation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Her PhD research titled 'Transformative Reparations for International Crimes: An Actor-focused Analysis Across International, Hybrid and National Criminal Justice Mechanisms' examines the extent to which reparations for international crimes can achieve transformative effects. Through comparative and empirical analysis, her works aims to provide greater clarity on both the potential and limitations of existing institutional reparative practices in achieving such effects through reparations, and this from an actor-focused perspective. To this end, Joni studies three criminal justice mechanisms that exemplify different approaches to the process, design and implementation of reparations at the international, hybrid and national level.