Antoine Buyse is director of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam. Next to that, he is, at Utrecht University, part-time chair (full professor) of human rights from a multidisciplinary perspective within the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) of which he was the director between 2014 and 2026. Within the university, he is connected to the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice and the strategic theme 'Institutions for Open Societies'. He was the founder of and still runs the ECHR Blog. His current research focuses on the ECHR, human rights of civil society, human rights defenders, ‘shrinking civic space’, and the rule of law from below. He teaches in the field of human rights, including in the master Public International Law, and has co-developed the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the ECHR: human rights for open societies.

Next to his academic work, he is a member of the human rights commission of the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV) and a board member of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation.