RESEARCH PROFILE & INTERESTS
Elke Evrard is a postdoctoral fellow at the Human Rights Centre and a member of the Justice Visions research team. She holds a PhD in Law and was recently awarded an FWO Junior Postdoctoral Grant. In the domain of human rights, she focuses on transitional justice and reparations, with particular expertise in interdisciplinary mixed-method research. Her work examines how justice mechanisms operate within society, emphasizing victim participation and mobilization, societal outreach and communication, and the role of non-victimised groups in redress processes.
During her PhD, Elke conducted fieldwork in post-conflict contexts including Guatemala, Cambodia and Tunisia. Building on this foundation, her current research expands to justice mechanisms addressing widespread historical colonial and political rights violations in Canada, Spain and Belgium. She has published extensively and is co-editing a forthcoming volume on Victim Engagement in Transitional Justice (Cambridge University Press), based on a 2024 international conference on the same topic.
In addition to her core focus on transitional justice and reparations, she also explores how new data technologies offer possibilities to enhance the agency and activism of those affected by rights abuses, engages with emerging approaches to co-creative and participatory research ethics, design and valorisation, and supports training and capacity building to strengthen interdisciplinarity in human rights research.
Beyond research, she serves as Assistant Editor for the Journal of Human Rights Practice (Oxford University Press), co-lectures on Transitional Justice and Human Rights, supervises master’s theses, and has delivered guest lectures at institutions including LSE, Sorbonne, and Turin UNICRI. Elke also brings five years of private sector experience as a Senior Research Manager, developing 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)
Elke was awarded an FWO Junior Postdoctoral Grant to investigate how and why public support for victims’ reparations claims arises — or fails to — in the aftermath of historical colonial or authoritarian violence. The project focuses on the underexplored role of non-victimised groups and employs a mixed-methods design, including text mining, nethnography, focus groups, interviews and survey design. It involves a comparative study of the cases of 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)
As co-coordinator of RedressHub, together with colleague Dr Cira Palli-Aspero, Elke developed this societal valorisation project under the supervision of professor Tine Destrooper. The project addresses the growing but fragmented landscape of society-driven initiatives tackling the enduring legacies of colonialism across Belgium and Europe. It aims to create an interactive online platform that maps and connects redress efforts among diaspora and cultural organisations, social justice NGOs, museums and heritage actors, municipalities, researchers, and more. RedressHub combines a co-creation process engaging directly with redress actors with a technical track that leverages advanced data-retrieval techniques.
Innovation and Documentation. Reconstructing the Paradigm of Transitional Justice from the Ground Up – ERC Consolidator Grant (2025-…)
Elke supports the ERC Consolidator Grant project led by Professor Tine Destrooper, which explores innovative documentation practices and ambitions of grassroots justice actors across multiple contemporary transitional justice cases. Using an ecosystemic analytical framework, the project seeks to rethink the transitional justice paradigm from the ground up by examining how innovations in documentation interact with and influence other transitional justice initiatives. Elke co-supervises PhD researchers, contributes to theoretical and methodological development, and supports the organisation of academic and practitioner-focused events.
Strengthening Capacity for Interdisciplinary Human Rights Research – Initiative by the UGent Human Rights Research Network (2024-…)
Together with HRRN coordinator Dr. Giselle Corradi, Elke conducts this small project aimed at building capacity for interdisciplinary approaches to human rights research, teaching and outreach at Ghent University. Addressing conceptual, methodological, and value-based challenges, the study employs literature review, interviews, and bibliometric research to produce practical tools and guidance (such as knowledge clips, policy advice) to encourage and support meaningful interdisciplinary engagement across faculties and research groups.
PUBLICATIONS & OUTPUTS
Destrooper, Tine, and Elke Evrard. 2025. “The (Many) Afterlives of Transitional Justice : Practice-Based Insights on Continuity, Impact and Evolving Justice Struggles.” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE 19 (1): 151–171. doi:10.1093/ijtj/ijae049.
Evrard, Elke, and Gretel Mejía Bonifazi. 2025. “Supporting Reparations after Armed Conflict: How Discursive ‘memory Battles’ Affect Political Solidarity with Guatemalan Indigenous Survivors.” JOURNAL OF PEACE RESEARCH. doi:10.1177/00223433241312069.
Evrard, Elke, and Tine Destrooper. 2025. “Learning from the Past? How the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Civil Society Initiatives and Survivor Stories Shape Young Cambodians’ Understanding of Non-Recurrence.” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 29 (5): 889–915. doi:10.1080/13642987.2024.2432946.
Evrard, Elke. 2024. “The Language of Inclusion: Using Critical Corpus-Based Methods to Study the Presence and Representation of ‘women, Children and Vulnerable Groups’ in Liberia’s Truth Commission.” SOCIAL JUSTICE RESEARCH 37 (2): 149–179. doi:10.1007/s11211-023-00411-z.
Destrooper, Tine, Elke Evrard, and Brigitte Herremans, eds. 2024. “Victims and Transitional Justice: Participation, Mobilisation, Resistance.” Ghent: Faculty of Law and Criminology, Research Group Justice Visions.
Destrooper, Tine, Elke Evrard, and Brigitte Herremans. “Driving Justice: Victims’ Participation and Mobilisation in Tunisia’s Struggles for Redress (Podcast).” Justice Visions, vol. Season 5, no. Episode 4, Justice Visions Research Group Ghent University, 2024.
Evrard, Elke. 2023. “Transitional Justice as Communicative and Deliberative Process: A Multi-Method Exploration at the Intersection of Expressivism, Participation and Outreach.” Ghent, Belgium: Ghent University. Faculty of Law and Criminology.
Destrooper, Tine, Gretel Mejía Bonifazi, and Elke Evrard. 2021. “How Do We Talk about Participation? (Podcast).” Justice Visions. Ghent: Justice Visions Research Group Ghent University.
Evrard, Elke, Gretel Mejía Bonifazi, and Tine Destrooper. 2021. “The Meaning of Participation in Transitional Justice : A Conceptual Proposal for Empirical Analysis.” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE 15 (2): 428–447. doi:10.1093/ijtj/ijab013.
Postdoctoral Researcher – Ghent University (2024–present)
PhD in Law – Ghent University (2019–2023)
Senior Research Manager – Kynetec (2014–2019)
Doctor of Laws – Ghent University (2019–2023)
Transitional Justice as Communicative and Deliberative Process: A Multi-Method Exploration at the Intersection of Expressivism, Participation and Outreach
MSc in Comparative & International Politics (magna cum laude) – KULeuven (2012–2014)
MA in European Studies (magna cum laude) – KULeuven (2011–2013)
BA in Language & Area Studies: Sinology – KULeuven (2008–2012)
