Role: Assistant Professor, Utrecht University of Law
Utrect, Netherlands

  Contact: a.s.h.timmer@uu.nl

  Research Interests:
European Court of Human Rights | Equality | Human Rights Law | Stereotypes | Gender

Alexandra Timmer is assistant professor at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM). She conducts research within the framework of a large-scale international FP-7 funded project entitled Fostering Human Rights Among European (external and internal) Policies (“FRAME”). In addition, she is assistant-coordinator gender equality in the European network of legal experts in gender equality and non-discrimination. She teaches human rights law courses.

Before joining SIM, Alexandra Timmer worked as a PhD researcher at Ghent University in Belgium (2010-2013). In February 2014 she obtained her PhD from that university, with the title Strengthening the Equality Analysis of the European Court of Human Rights: the Potential of the Concepts of Stereotyping and Vulnerability. She has studied both law (LL.M. 2009; cum laude) and history (M.A. 2011) at Leiden University. She also studied law as a Fulbright scholar at Columbia University School of Law (LL.M. 2009, Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar).

Timmer’s research explores questions of equality and discrimination in European human rights Convention law. More specifically, she seeks to develop innovative ways of integrating the specific concerns of non-dominant groups into the legal tests used by the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’). She recently published ‘Toward an Anti-Stereotyping Approach for the European Court of Human Rights’, 11 Human Rights Law Review (2011), p. 707-738; and will publish ‘From Inclusion to Transformation: Rewriting Konstantin Markin v. Russia’, in: Eva Brems (ed.), Diversity and European Human Rights: Rewriting Judgments of the ECHR (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2012). Timmer holds an LL.M. and M.A. from Leiden University (the Netherlands) and an LL.M. from Columbia University (New York). She is co-founder of and regular contributor to a blog commenting on ECtHR case law; www.strasbourgobservers.com.

Timmer came to Emory together with Lourdes Peroni. Their research project explored the ways in which the ECtHR uses vulnerability reasoning. ‘Vulnerable groups’ is an emerging and rapidly evolving concept in the ECtHR’s case law that has so far escaped sustained scholarly attention. Peroni and Timmer highlight the potential usefulness of this concept, through a close analysis of ECtHR case law and by reference to theoretical debates on vulnerability.