The Vrije Universiteit Bruseel (VUB) Fundamental Rights Research Centre is a dynamic hub conducting insightful research on a wide variety of topics ranging from human trafficking and migration to European criminal law. In addition to the fundamental rights expertise of its members, the FRC has also coordinated and centralised many European and national research projects that offer practical applications. FRC is currently involved in:
- the EXIT EUROPE project, aiming at countering and reducing violent extremism by developing locally embedded exit programs across Europe;
- the REBUILD project, a project seeking to help local authorities and communities with ICT-based solutions to address the challenges that come with managing and integrating larger migration flows, thereby also helping migrants to build a new life and integrate with the local comunity;
- the EduLAw project, seeking to enhance education in countries in transition by promoting partnerships between educators and lawyers in order to build rights-based education systems;
- and the LOCARD project, aiming to to provide a holistic platform for chain of custody assurance along the forensic workflow, a trusted distributed platform allowing the storage of digital evidence metadata in a blockchain.
FRC is also the national contractor for FRANET, the multi-disciplinary research network of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). As national contractor, FRC periodically produces state of the art overviews of the human rights situation in Belgium in relation to a variety of topics, thereby helping the FRA monitor the protection of human rights in Belgium.
In the past, FRC has also been part of/coordinated various research projects covering areas as diversified as human trafficking (DESIrE and TRACE projects), criminal justice (LIVE_FORproject), ageism (COST Action), and many more (for more information, please visit our research projects section). Naturally, the expertise of the FRC goes further than then projects it is involved in. Recently defended PhD theses focused on the right of the elderly, the mutual trust and recognition principles in the EU, human trafficking and war crimes.
Thanks to the projects that constitute a privileged platform for academic cooperation, FRC is at the core of an ever-growing and wide academic network, further fueled by the personal projects of its members, be it by the conduct of joint-PhDs and research stays abroad or by their involvement in the edition of international publications. FRC is also a member of the Brussels Interdisciplinary Research Center for Migration and Minorities BIRMM, promoting and truly implementing interdisciplinary research on the topic of migration and minorities. Other regular activities include the organisation and participation of conferences and the co-organisation of a lecture series.