Nina Eggens has been associated with the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology (Criminology Department) and the Institute of Private Law (Child Law Department) as a PhD candidate since June 2022.

More information about Nina Eggens

Nina Eggens has been associated with the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology (Criminology Department) and the Institute of Private Law (Child Law Department) as a PhD candidate since June 2022. She completed her bachelor's in Criminology at Leiden University in 2020. She then began the two-year international master’s programme in Advanced Research in Criminology (IMARC) at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She completed part of this research master’s degree at the University of Kent (UK). Her research lasted a full year and focused on the changes in local legislation and policy regarding the Rotterdam sex industry, and the implications for the labour conditions of unlicensed female sex workers. For the purposes of this study, she completed a research internship at the Municipality of Rotterdam. During her master’s, she was a student lecturer at Erasmus University Rotterdam's Science Education Hub and co-editor of the criminology blog Deviance Incubator, to which she also contributed articles.

Research

Nina Eggens' interdisciplinary doctoral research combines the fields of criminology and child law. The overall dissertation focuses on children who have been exposed to violence between their parents, and how these children are treated in criminal proceedings where one or both parents are accused of violence. Although these children are not formally parties to domestic violence cases, international and supranational standards have granted them substantive and procedural rights. Domestic violence is increasingly being recognised as a social problem, and there is also a growing focus on child witnesses and the potentially serious implications for them of exposure to violence. The doctoral research focuses on these children's rights, the government's legal obligations, how Dutch criminal judges and professionals handle these children in practice and which measures they consider necessary. Nina's research also explores alternative dispute resolution in the form of domestic violence courts and the extent to which they handle these children. The findings will provide information and ideas for criminal judges dealing with this group of indirect victims and suggest potential improvements. The doctoral research is part of Institutions for Conflict Resolution (COI), a collaboration between Leiden University, Utrecht University and Radboud University Nijmegen.