Marieke Hopman (M.J.)

Children's rights researcher Marieke Hopman (1988) combines philosophy, social sciences,  law, and (a little) psychology, in an attempt to better understand how to prevent children's rights violations. In her research, she gives special attention to children who are least heard in society, and tries to involve them actively in her different research projects.

Marieke graduated as a PhD in May 2019 with her doctoral thesis "Looking at Law Through Children's Eyes". 

From 2019-2024 she was a project leader for the NWO-WOTRO funded project "Invisible Children: a rights-based approach to development for children living in unrecognized states". From 2025-2027 she is leading a follow-up project, the "CHILD-WAR" project, that studies the rights of children livign in de facto states during or directly after armed conflict. Case studies for the CHILD-WAR project are Gaza, Nagorno Karabakh and the Sanaag/Sool region.

In the past, Marieke has conducted fieldwork on children's rights in the Central African Republic, Cyprus, Israel, the Netherlands, Palestine, Rwanda, Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (refugee camps in Algeria), Somaliland, and Western Sahara. 

For more info, see: www.childrensrightsresearch.com

In addition, she is a course developer and teacher for the BA global studies (semester 5: peace and justice), and the chair of the Maastricht University Children's Rights Research group.

For my publications,  see: https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/en/persons/marieke-hopman