Ms M. Boersma LL.M (Ph.D. candidate)
Bouillonstraat 1-3
Room C2.103
Maastricht
P.O. Box 616
6200 MD Maastricht
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 43 3883109
Fax: +31 43 3884907
E-mail: martine.boersma@maastrichtuniversity.nl
List of publications: Metis
Education
Martine Boersma (1984) studied Law at Maastricht University. In 2005, she completed her Bachelor in Dutch Law (cum laude), and in 2006 she finished the Master’s programme in Commercial & Corporate Law (cum laude). Her thesis dealt with the complicity of international IT-corporations such as Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google in human rights violations committed by the Chinese State. Subsequently, she enrolled in the Master Law, Labour and Health (cum laude). In this respect, she wrote a thesis about the compliance with the ILO’s core labour standards in Chinese sweatshops in the clothing, footwear and toys industry.
During her studies, Martine also volunteered as a legal advisor at the Women’s Law Centre Maastricht (St. Vrouwenrechtswinkel), and did an internship within the company law department of a major law firm.
Research
As of 1 September 2007, Martine is employed as a PhD candidate with the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights. Her four-year research project is titled ‘Corruption through the lens of international human rights law and international criminal law’, and is supervised by Prof. dr. Menno Kamminga (Dept. of International and European Law) and Prof. dr. Hans Nelen (Dept. of Criminal Law and Criminology). The dissertation focuses on corruption within the public sector, commonly defined as the abuse of public power for private gain. Corruption is widely perceived as one of the most serious challenges facing developing countries, since valuable resources are massively diverted away from the State. Although corruption has been studied frequently by scholars from various disciplines such as economics, political science and national criminal law, the perspectives of international human rights law and international criminal law have rarely been used to study this complex phenomenon. Martine’s research will therefore examine whether (certain forms of) corruption can be conceptualised as a violation of human rights, and/or as a crime under international criminal law. Thus, the responsibility of States as well as individual criminal responsibility will be considered, both under lex lata and lex ferenda.
Furthermore, Martine is a Board Member of the Netherlands School of Human Rights Research and of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights, representing the interests of junior-researchers working in the field of human rights.
Teaching
- International Law and the Netherlands (Faculty of Law ’09/10 and ’08/’09)
- Internationaal en Europees Recht (Faculty of Law ’09/’10 and ’08/’09)
- Introduction to Law (University College Maastricht ‘07/’08)
– Lectures in various courses
Expertise
- Corruption
- International Human Rights Law
- Public International Law