Looking back at the VSR conference 2024 “Building Bridges”
The annual VSR congress took place on 18 and 19 January 2024 at the Social Impact Factory and Janskerkhof 2-3 in Utrecht. The theme of the congress was "Building Bridges." UCERF researcher Jet Tigchelaar was involved in organising the congress, together with UU colleagues Marc Simon Thomas and Anne Janssen of the Montaigne Centre for the Rule of Law and Justice. She organised a panel on the cooperation between justice, childcare and science in complex divorce cases. And UCERF researcher Charlotte Mol spoke about divorce research that involves a youth expert panel to improve the research.
At the conference, Prof Kees van den Bos gave a keynote on how perceived procedural justice can help build bridges for societal problems. The day continued with a total of 49 individual presentations on how current problems can be bridged, ranging from access to justice for migrants to climate change and complex divorces, to building methodological and interdisciplinary bridges – in doing research but also in teaching. Several UCERF researchers contributed to the conference.
Complex divorces
Jet Tigchelaar organised a panel on behalf of UCERF entitled: 'Complex divorces: building bridges between justice, care and science.' The panel addressed the following questions: What do judges and lawyers in complex divorce cases notice about violence in families? Can it be discussed? To what extent can empirical knowledge about, for example, family profiles of patterns of violence support judges in making decisions or deploying interventions in a concrete case? And how do you evaluate the effect of committed interventions?
Together with the audience, the panelists from legal practice and science built bridges towards possible solutions in complex divorce cases. For example, Marion Beckers (counsel at the Amsterdam Court of Appeal and lecturer at the SSR) outlined potential solutions for the judiciary. Katinka Lünnemann (senior researcher at the Verwey-Jonker Institute) called for more attention to patterns of violence/family profiles in decisions over visitation rights and emphasised a right to safety. And Ariane Hendriks (lecturer in Family and Juvenile Law at Tilburg University) shared her experiences as a former lawyer about not being able to discuss domestic violence in custody and visitation decisions.
Hear, Hear!
UCERF researcher Charlotte Mol spoke in a panel about building bridges between research and society. In her presentation, she discussed how the ‘Hear, Hear!’ researchers collaborate with a youth expert panel to improve the research. The expert youth panel consists of approximately 20 young people between 12 and 20 years old who have themselves experienced the divorce of their parent. The panel critically assists with the entire research process, from the development of questions to the analysis of outcomes. In her presentation, Charlotte discussed the benefits and challenges experienced so far.