Alexandra Timmer is associate professor human rights law at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM). Her research focuses on equality and non-discrimination, in EU law, the ECHR, international human rights treaties, and Dutch law. Alexandra has a particular interest in gender and law. In 2017 she was awarded a prestigious Veni grant by the Dutch Scientific Organization (NWO) for her research project entitled Gender Injustice: Historical Development and Contemporary Challenges in European Human Rights Law.

Alexandra teaches human rights law, public international law, and non-discrimination law, at BA and LLM level. She was program coordinator and later leader  of UU's Legal Research Master (2019-2025).

Alexandra is co-director of the Utrecht Centre for Regulation and Enforcement in Europe (RENFORCE).  In addition, Alexandra is appointed as Member of the Dutch State Commission against Discrimination and Racism. She is also senior coordinator gender equality of the European network of legal experts in gender equality and non-discrimination, since 2015.

Alexandra was appointed visiting Gianformaggio Chair at Ferrara University (Italy) in the spring of 2025. Alexandra was Chair of the LEG Faculty Commission on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), and  member of the UU EDI Steering Group (2022-2025).  She was also a member of the core team of the interdisciplinary UU Institutions Gender, Diversity and Global Justice Platform.  She was work package leader in a large-scale international EU FP-7 funded project FRAME (2013-2017). In 2017 she won the G.J. Wiarda Prize.

Before joining Utrecht University in 2013, Alexandra Timmer worked as a PhD researcher at Ghent University in Belgium (2010-2013). In February 2014 she obtained her PhD from that university, with the title Strengthening the Equality Analysis of the European Court of Human Rights: the Potential of the Concepts of Stereotyping and Vulnerability. She has studied both law (LL.M. 2009; cum laude) and history (M.A. 2011) at Leiden University. She also studied law as a Fulbright scholar at Columbia University School of Law (LL.M. 2009, Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar). Alexandra has been a visiting scholar at Emory University in the U.S., and Toronto University in Canada (both 2012). She was a guest lecturer at the University of Maputo in Mozambique (2013). She was a founding member of the Strasbourg Observers blog.