Paulien de Winter works as an associate professor of Legal Theory at the Institute of Constitutional, Administrative Law, and Legal Theory at Utrecht University. She conducts empirical legal research with a focus on enforcement and supervision. Among other things, she investigates how executive employees apply rules in practice, for example, in the social domain. Additionally, she is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Empirical Research on Law in Action ("Recht der Werkelijkheid", RdW ) and the European Journal for Empirical Legal Studies (EJELS). Between 2014 and 2024, she was employed at the University of Groningen. In 2019, she obtained her Ph.D. with the research titled 'Between the Lines,' a socio-legal study on the enforcement of social security legislation.