Lara Bergers is a PhD candidate within Forensic Culture. A Comparative Analysis of Forensic Practices in Europe, 1930-2000 (FORCe), funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant (2018-2024) and led by Dr. Willemijn Ruberg. She researches policing and judicial practices around sexually violent crime in the Netherlands, in the period 1930-1980, and takes a particular interest in how victims, perpetrators and sexually violent acts are enacted through such practices. She has recently contributed to the volume Forensic Cultures in Modern Europe (edited by Willemijn Ruberg, Lara Bergers, Pauline Dirven and Sara Serrano Martínez) which will be published by Manchester University Press in August of 2023. 

Her interest in the history of policing, law, and forensic science predates the current project; during her master's programme she wrote on the history of the so-called Rape Kit and dedicated her master's thesis to Lie Detection's failure to launch in the Netherlands.