Dr Kartica van der Zon appointed special professor of Family Law, Law of Persons and Juvenile Law

Dr Kartica van der Zon has been appointed special professor of Family Law, Law of Persons and Juvenile Law. She will hold this position alongside her current appointment at the Department of Child Law and Health Law at Leiden University. She succeeds Prof Fatih Ibili, who held the position between 2017 and 2024.

Family Law and Juvenile Law

Family and child law is constantly evolving. Although families are a vital foundation of society, the concept of the family and the role of children within families are increasingly being debated.

The traditional image of the family—on which much of our legislation is still based—no longer reflects today’s reality. There are single-parent families, blended families, same-sex families, multi-parent families, foster families, and more.

Moreover, the expectations placed on caregivers within these families, as well as the expectations they place on themselves, are growing. Van der Zon will explore the roles and expectations of parenting and their implications for the law.

Curriculum Vitae

Next to her appointment in Groningen, Van der Zon works at the Department of Child Law and Health Law at Leiden University. In Leiden, she has conducted research on foster care, child participation in care proceedings, the revision of the Dutch Child Protection Act, and the prevalence and characteristics of surrogacy in the Netherlands.

Van der Zon’s research is often interdisciplinary, as she collaborates regularly with researchers from other fields. After all, doing justice to children and the families in which they grow up requires more than just legal expertise. She looks forward to strengthening cooperation between Leiden and Groningen in this area.

Van der Zon teaches in both the Bachelor of Laws programme and the Master’s in Juvenile Law, as well as the Advanced Master’s in International Children’s Rights. In addition to her academic roles, she serves as a Deputy Children’s Judge at the District Court of The Hague. She also provides training on children’s rights for SSR, the training institute for the judiciary and the Public Prosecution Service.

After studying law at VU University Amsterdam, Van der Zon worked for Defence for Children and the Amsterdam Court of Appeal, among others. In 2020, she earned her PhD with a dissertation on the rights of foster children at Leiden University, where she has worked ever since.

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This article was published by the Faculty of Law.