prof. dr. A.L. (Alette) Smeulers

Alette Smeulers (1967) is a passionate scholar and lecturer who studies internationals crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and terrorism. She takes an inter- and multidisciplinary aproach. She studies perpetrators such as war criminals, genocidaires and terrorists, the context in which they commit their crimes in order to figure out the causes of their behaviour but she also studies the international criminal justice system. In her reserach she for instance focuses on the question: what lessons that we can draw from the the social sciences (for e.g. psychology of perpetration) which might have an impact on the individual criminal responsibility?

Smeulers is a professor since 2011 and can be considered one of the founders of the criminology of international crimes. She has published extensively in the field and with excellent publishers such as OUP, Routledgde, Elgar, Brill/Martinus Nijhof and Intersentia. Her most important and recent book is 'Perpetrators of mass atrocities - terribly and terrifyingly normal?' (Routledgde 2024).

She has presented her research at prestigious universitues such as Harvard Law School and at conferences and in universities all over the world such as in Argentina, Chili, Cambodja, Rwanda, South Africa, Canada, United States and many countries within Europe.

She gives regular public lectures such as in Paradiso, Amsterdam in the series Science & Cocktails, Studium Generale, Movies that Matter, Amnesty International as well as lectures to professionals such as the International Criminal Court, the ADC-ICTY, the distict court in The Hague, the international crimes squad in the Netherlands and the municipality in Groningen, Nuremberg Forum and the Asser Institute.