Welcome to the website of the Research Group on Transitional Justice. This group was formed in 2005 and is composed of an international team of academics and practitioners who conduct research, teaching and consultancy work in the area of transitional justice at the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.

The Research Group on Transitional Justice formed originally part of the Law and Society Institute which was established in 1972 by Prof. Luc Huyse and has a long tradition of studying law and legal institutions in their sociological and political context. Due to a recent reorganisation at the Law Faculty, the Institute has been admitted to the newly established Leuven Institute for Criminology.

Following Richard Siegel, we define transitional justice as "the study of the choices made and the quality of justice rendered when states are replacing authoritarian regimes by democratic state institutions" (Siegel, R., "Transitional justice. A decade of debate and experience", 1998, 20 Human Rights Quarterly, 431-544).

It is our objective to build bridges between the fields of academic teaching and research and the fields of practice and policy, maintaining the highest standards of quality and commitment.