Dr. Sonja Snacken

Emeritus Professor of Criminology, Penology and Sociology of Law, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

Sonja Snacken is Emeritus Professor of Criminology, Penology and Sociology of Law in the Department of Criminology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Her research focuses on (comparative) penality and different forms of (extreme) institutional dependency. She has been involved in over 40 (inter)national research projects, with a special emphasis on the integration of empirical social science with human rights approaches. She was Research Fellow at the Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice, New York University, and Collaborateur-membre of the Centre International de Criminologie Comparée, Université de Montréal. She was awarded the Belgian Francqui Chair at the Université Catholique de Louvain (2008-2009), the Ernest-John Solvay Prize for Scientific Excellence in the Human and Social Sciences by the National Science Foundation (FWO, 2010), and the European Criminology Award by the European Society of Criminology (2015). She is recipient of Honorary Doctorates by the Université de Liège (2021) and the University of Glasgow (2022).