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George Azzopardi and Guru Swaroop Bennabhaktula from the Faculty of Science and Engineering have won the Ben Feringa Impact Award 2023 for their project ‘4NSEEK; Forensic Against Sexual Exploitation of Children’. In the ‘students’ category, Nine van den Wijngaard of the Faculty of Law was the clear victor.

In the coming weeks the nominees for the Ben Feringa Impact Award (BFIA) 2023 will introduce themselves and their impactful research or project. This week: Laura Peters in the category reaseacher for her research project 'agreements for the sake of judicial economy in criminal cases.'

During the past few years, the government has increased the energy tax on natural gas and lowered it for electricity. In doing so, the government wants to stimulate households to choose for electrical options, such as heat pumps or electric stoves, to generate heat. That's a nice idea, says Marlies Hesselman, lecturer of International Law, but we need to be careful in order to ensure that everyone can participate. In the case of energy, we are not concerned with the decisions people want to make, but with the decisions people can make.

In the coming weeks the nominees for the Ben Feringa Impact Award (BFIA) 2023 will introduce themselves and their impactful research or project. This week: Nine van den Wijngaard, nominee in the category student for her master thesis, 'Complaining about lawyers as occupational therapy'

Two professors nominated by the University of Groningen have been awarded Royal Decorations on Tuesday 26 April. Professor K.U. Loos is appointed Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. She received this honour from Mayor K. Schuiling at Groningen City Hall. Professor G.J. Vonk is appointed Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau. He received this honour at his home in Steenbergen from Mayor K. Smid of the municipality of Noordenveld.

Paulien de Winter has been awarded a grant from the Gratama Foundation for her research on strengthening the human dimension in the enforcement of the Fraud Act in practice.

Inviting students to offer advice in an ongoing legislative procedure for the House of Representatives; that is what Professor of Sociology of Law Marc Hertogh proposed doing. Hertogh’s students nominated the course unit for the 2023 Best Practice in Teaching & Learning Award. To his great surprise, Hertogh won the award for his Policy Analysis seminar, in which active learning, legal practice, and the students’ practice-oriented skills form the main spearheads. 

The Dutch court system is severely backed up. The number of cases is increasing and court proceedings are dragging on. For nearly two decades now, Laura Peters, lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen, has studied — and advocated — the introduction of plea bargaining in the Netherlands to serve as a bypass. ‘Other countries have used plea bargaining for years. The Netherlands is running behind.’

Dr Francesco Giumelli, associate professor of International Relations and International Organizations at the Faculty of Arts, and Dr Pim Geelhoed, associate professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure at the Faculty of Law, are participating in an international research project on informal economies that was recently awarded a European grant of €3.8 million. The project funds 15 PhD students, two of whom are appointed at the University of Groningen: one in the Faculty of Arts and one in the Faculty of Law.