Hemme Battjes has received the prestigious Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship 2019-2020. This high distinction provides a framework for established academics with an international reputation to pursue their research at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. Battjes will stay in Florence from September until December 2019, where he will explore the tension between the idea of universal rights and local practices in European asylum law.

Hemme Battjes is Professor of European asylum law at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and, from 2015 until 2019, member of the faculty board responsible for education. He received his master’s degree in Russian language and literature in 1995 at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and his LLM (2000) and his PhD (2006, cum laude) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Hemme is involved in master courses on migration and human rights law and offers on a regular basis training courses for professionals in the field of migration law. His research focuses on the intersections between asylum, Union and human rights law. Hemme Battjes has published widely on international, Union and Dutch asylum and migration law, on human rights law and on Dutch administrative and constitutional law in both international and Dutch journals and books. His dissertation analysed the relation between international asylum law, human rights law and Union law on asylum. Recently he has published on the development of the concept of protection and the instrumentalization of territoriality in asylum law.