Elke Evrard

RESEARCH PROFILE & INTERESTS

I am a socio-legal scholar focused on human rights, transitional justice and reparations, with expertise in interdisciplinary and mixed-method research. My work as postdoctoral researcher at Justice Visions examines how justice mechanisms function within society, with particular attention to victim participation and mobilisation, societal outreach and communication, and the role of non-victimised groups in processes of redress. I combine advanced qualitative and quantitative research approaches, grounded in ethical, collaborative engagement with justice actors.

During my PhD, I conducted fieldwork on justice processes in post-conflict contexts including Guatemala, Cambodia and Tunisia. Building on this foundation, my current research expands to examine justice mechanisms addressing widespread (historical colonial and political) harms in Canada, Spain and Belgium. I have published widely and am co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Victim Engagement in Transitional Justice based on contributions from a large international conference in 2024.

Alongside my core focus on transitional justice and reparatory processes, my work also engages with the possibilities for new data technologies to enhance the agency and activism of those affected by rights abuses; with navigating research ethics in complex and sensitive contexts; and with training and capacity building to strengthen interdisciplinarity in human rights research.

Next to my research, I serve as Assistant Editor for the Journal of Human Rights Practice (with Oxford Uni Press), co-lecture the course “Transitional Justice and Human Rights,” supervise master’s thesis students, and have delivered guest lectures at various institutions, including programs at LSE, Sorbonne and Turin UNICRI. I also bring five years of experience from prior work as a Senior Research Manager in the private sector, where I developed strong skills in project management, stakeholder engagement, and applied research design.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Supporting Reparations in the Aftermath of State-Sponsored Harm: A Socio-Legal Mixed Method Approach to Theory Building – FWO Junior Postdoctoral Fellowship (2025–2028)

I was awarded an FWO grant, starting in the Fall of 2025, to investigate how and why public support for victims’ reparations claims emerges – or fails to – in the aftermath of historical colonial or authoritarian violence. Focusing on the underexplored role of non-victimised groups, the project examines the interplay between socio-legal contexts and individual beliefs in shaping attitudes and behaviours toward reparations. Combining conceptual models from transitional justice, social psychology, and socio-legal studies with a mixed methods research design (incl. text mining, nethnography, focus groups, interviews and survey design), the project will comparatively study dynamics in Canada and Spain to develop an empirically grounded theory of public engagement with reparatory justice.

RedressHub: Colonial Legacies and Redress. A Digital Mapping Solution for Europe – ERC Proof of Concept Grant (2025-2026)

Under the supervision of Professor Tine Destrooper, and in collaboration with my colleague Dr Cira Palli-Aspero, I developed the Proof of Concept proposal for RedressHub, a societal valorisation project for which I serve as co-coordinator. RedressHub responds to the growing but fragmented landscape of society-driven initiatives addressing the enduring legacies of colonialism across Belgium and Europe. The project will develop an interactive online platform to map and connect redress efforts across a diverse ecosystem of diaspora and cultural organisations, social justice NGOs, museums and heritage actors, municipalities, researchers, and more. It combines a co-creation track that engages directly with redress actors in shaping the platform’s conceptual and practical design, with a technical track using innovative data-retrieval methods.

Innovation and Documentation. Reconstructing the Paradigm of Transitional Justice from the Ground Up – ERC Consolidator Grant (2025-…)

I provide support to the new ERC project of my supervisor professor Tine Destrooper. The project analyses innovative documentation practices and ambitions of grassroots justice actors in different contemporary transitional justice cases. It seeks to rethink the transitional justice paradigm from the ground up, employing an ecosystemic analytical framework to explore how innovations in documentation interact with and influence other transitional justice initiatives. I co-supervise a PhD examining Indigenous approaches to documenting ecoterritorial violence in the Brazilian Amazon.

Strengthening Capacity for Interdisciplinary Human Rights Research – Initiative by the UGent Human Rights Research Network (2024-…)

Together with HRRN coordinator Dr Giselle Corradi, this small project seeks to build capacity for interdisciplinary approaches to human rights research, teaching and outreach at Ghent University, addressing the conceptual, methodological, and value-based challenges of such work. Based on literature review, interviews and bibliometric research, we aim to produce practical tools and guidance (knowledge clips, policy advice, etc) for encouraging and supporting meaningful interdisciplinary engagement in human rights research across the faculties and research groups at Ghent University.