Lorena Sosa is an expert on intersectional discrimination and gender-based violence. She is an Associate Professor at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) and a member of the research programme on Family & Law (UCERF). 

Through the lens of intersectionality, Lorena's research explores the limits and potential of international human rights law concerning (in)equality, discrimination, and violence. Using comparative and socio-legal methods, she deals with questions of personal autonomy, access to justice, judicial participation and protection from violence. In 2018, she received a Marie Sklodowska-Curie from the European Commission for her research on gender-based violence against trans and intersex persons, which she carried out at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), followed by a VENI from the Dutch Scientific Organisation. She is co-founder and coordinator of the research platform EQUALS, within the law school, and she has been a member of the core team of the UU IOS (In)Equality Platform since 2023. 

Lorena’s work has been published, among others, by Cambridge University Press, Human Rights Quarterly, the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Politics & Governance, Victims & Offenders and the International Review of Victimology, and several edited book volumes. In addition, she actively engages with international organizations and has participated in multiple research projects for the EU, the Council of Europe and the United Nations in the areas of violence against women, children and LGBT rights.

Lorena is also committed to education. She teaches human rights law-related courses in the Legal Research Master, the PIL Master, the Bachelor in Law, and at University College Utrecht. Between 2022 and 2024, Lorena joined the management board of the Center for Global Challenges as Director of Education, and has been acting as community-engaged learning ambassador for the faculty of Law, Economics and Governance since May 2023.

Lorena obtained her PhD at Tilburg University (2015, cum laude). Her dissertation, entitled ‘Intersectionality in the Human Rights Legal Framework on Violence Against Women: At the Centre or the Margins?, received a Max van der Stoel Award for Human Rights (2015). She holds an LL.M. in International Public Law (2009, cum laude) and a law degree from the National University of Cordoba (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba). Prior to taking her post at Utrecht, Lorena worked as a researcher and lecturer at the International Victimology Institute Tilburg (INTERVICT) until 2014 and later as a postdoc at the University of Utrecht (2015-2016), the University of Turku (2017) and the University of Buenos Aires (2018).