FRC co-director, Prof. Dr. Paul De Hert has been appointed to the Scientific Committee of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) based in Vienna. Membership of the FRA Scientific Committee starts in June 2023 for a (renewable) five-year term. De Hert is full professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), director (2005-2021) -now co-director-, of the Fundamental Right Research Centre (FRC) established in the Faculty of Law and Criminology.
In the past, the FRC was a main partner in several consortia collecting data for the FRA and providing research services on fundamental rights issues (2011-2018). In 2018 the research centre of the VUB was confident enough to apply without external partners and became the national contractor for FRANET providing data and research services on nine key fundamental rights themes that are at the heart of the FRA’s work programme in relation to Belgium. These include: access to justice; asylum, migration & borders; gender; hate crime; information society, privacy and data protection; LGBTI; people with disabilities; racism & related intolerances; rights of the child and roma.
Core researchers in the FRA reporting were and are dr. Karen Van Laethem, Karen Weis, dr. Jozefien van Caeneghem, dr. Marijke de Pauw, dr. Amy Weatherburn, Júlia Zomigani Barboza, prof. dr. Ellen De Smet, prof. Dr. Ilke Adam, dr. Carlotta Rigotti, dr. Sibel Top, prof. Dr. Chloé Brière and Nadine El-Dekmak. Many other internal and external experts contributed.