Dr. Nina Holvast

Biography

Nina Holvast is an interdisciplinary researcher who employs multi-method research approaches to study the law in action. Her research focuses on courts, judicial decision-making, and the legal profession. She holds an LLM in Criminal Law and an MSc in Criminology, both with distinction, from Leiden University. She completed her doctoral research at the University of Amsterdam, where her dissertation explored the role of judicial assistants in judicial decision-making. Before her PhD, she worked at the Research Documentation Centre of the Ministry of Justice and Security and served as a part-time law clerk at the District Court of The Hague. Currently, her research investigates the functioning of judicial institutions and the impact of extra-legal factors on judicial decision-making and legal socialization in law schools. Holvast is frequently invited to speak at seminars on empirical legal research methods and has served on supervisory committees. She is also an editor for the journal Recht der Werkelijkheid, a member of the editorial board of the Erasmus Law Review, and an academic visitor at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University and the Judicial Institute of University College London.

Research Interests

Courses