mr. dr. L.J.J. (Laura) Peters

Dr. Laura Peters (LLM) is associate professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure at the University of Groningen. Her main research topics concern national and foreign criminal law and justice. In particular, she is interested in studying methods and ways to increase the effectiveness of the criminal process. The problems of undermining crime form a starting point for various studies.

In 2005, Peters graduated (cum laude) from the Faculty of Law of the Radboud University Nijmegen with a degree in Dutch law, with a specialisation in Criminal Law and Comparative Criminal Law. During her studies, she studied a year at the Libera Università degli Studi Sociali Guido Carlo in Rome (Italy, 2002 - 2003, cum laude) as part of the European Union's Socrates programme and completed the Sommerhochschule at the University of Vienna (Austria) in 2004 (cum laude).

Peters obtained her PhD from the Radboud University Nijmegen in 2012. She wrote an extensive research on negotiated justice in criminal cases in Italy, Germany and France. During this research, she worked for a total of seven months as a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institut für ausländisches und internationales Strafrecht in Freiburg (Germany). As part of the European Union's Life Long Learning Programme, she worked for three months at the Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche 'Antonio Cicú' of the University of Bologna (Italy), where she also taught master courses to Italian law students. During her PhD research, she conducted a large number of interviews with foreign (German, French and Italian) judges, prosecutors and lawyers on criminal procedure topics.

In 2011, she joined the Department of Criminal Law of the University of Groningen as a postdoctoral researcher in Substantive Criminal Law. She organised an international conference on the topic of co-perpetration and complicity in 2014. In 2018, she published her research 'Acting Together in Crime. A Comparative Analysis of Joint Perpetration of and Assistance to Criminal Offences under French, German, Austrian and Italian Criminal Law in light of Five Dutch Supreme Court Cases.' The same year, she was appointed assistant professor of Criminal (Procedural) Law at the same department, followed by a promotion to Associate Professor in 2023.

Peters teaches the Dutch and international bachelor and master students. She also works on various research projects in the field of criminal (procedural) law, comparative criminal law and the topic of undermining/organised crime, and advises on topics that require an in-depth knowledge of foreign criminal (procedural) law. In addition to Dutch (mother tongue), she is fluent in English, German and Italian. She has a good command of French and a basic command of Spanish.