prof. dr. A.E. (Elianne) Zijlstra

Elianne Zijlstra (1979) is Professor at the Department of Pedagogy and Educational Sciences, within the Social Welfare and Children’s Rights unit at the University of Groningen. She is also Head of Orthopedagoog-Generalist education, a legally recognised and BIG-registered post master education programme in the Netherlands. She is involved in various research projects and initiatives and serves on several advisory and supervisory committees.

She leads the Research and Expertise Centre for Children and Migration Law at the University of Groningen. The Centre develops knowledge on children involved in migration and residence procedures, including both accompanied and unaccompanied children arriving in the host country. Best Interests of the Child (BIC) Assessments are coordinated and conducted in collaboration with a pool of behavioural scientists affiliated with the Dutch Association of Educationalists and Pedagogues (NVO) and the Netherlands Institute of Psychologists (NIP).

Elianne graduated in 2003 from the University of Groningen with a degree in Orthopedagogy. She subsequently started working as a partime researcher at the same university on the research project The Best Interests of the Child in Migration Law. Alongside her research, she worked until 2012 as a behavioural scientist at Elker, a youth care organisation providing foster care, ambulant and residential care. In 2007, she completed the post master eduaction as Orthopedagoog-Generalist (BIG)

In 2012, she obtained her PhD with a dissertation entitled In the Best Interest of the Child? A Study into a Decision-Support Tool Validating Asylum-Seeking Children’s Rights from a Behavioural Scientific Perspective. Following her PhD, she appointed at the University of Groningen full-time as an Assistant Professor and subsequently Associate Professor.