Elvira Loibl (E.C.)

- Illegal Intercountry Adoption

- Illegal Markets

- Transnational Organized Crime

- Crimes against Children

- Empirical Legal Research

- Interdisciplinary Research

Dr. Elvira Loibl is an assistant professor at the department of criminal law and criminology. She received her law degree (Mag. iur.) at the University of Vienna and her LL.M. in Forensics, Criminology and Law at Maastricht University. Her research interests lie in transnational organized crime, illegal markets, and crimes against children. She conducts comparative and interdisciplinary research, combining legal analysis with empirical qualitative research methods and cultural studies. Her main focus is on illegal intercountry adoptions, a carefully carved niche topic within the domain of organized crime that she has approached from different perspectives, covering human rights law, family law, anthropology, criminology and criminal law. 

In 2019, Elvira Loibl defended her dissertation titled "The Transnational Illegal Adoption Market: A Criminological Study of the German and Dutch Intercountry Adoption System" ), in which she identified and explained the pitfalls and weaknesses within the German and Dutch adoption systems that encourage and facilitate illegal intercountry adoptions. It was awarded the distinction cum laude, received an honourable mention from the selection committee of the Modderman Prize 2021 for the best dissertation in the field of criminal law and was shortlisted for the Willem Nagel Prize 2022 for the best criminological dissertation. 

Since her defence, Elvira Loibl further developed this line of research, focusing on the aftermath of illegal intercountry adoptions. She has published her research widely in books and peer-reviewed journals from diverse disciplines and in different languages, e.g., The Palgrave International Handbook of Human Trafficking, Childhood, Tijdschrift voor Familie- en Jeugdrecht,and Das Judgendamt. In 2024, she co-edited the book “Facing the Past: Policies and Practices for Responses to Illegal Intercountry Adoptions” together with David Smolin. Bringing together contributions from international scholars from various disciplines and adoptees themselves, the book offers insights and recommendations to guide the process of reconciliation in the aftermath of illegal intercountry adoption.

Her academic work is frequently cited in commissioned inquiries and studies on illegal intercountry adoption. She has been interviewed and submitted content on the subject to the Dutch and international media, including the NRC Handelsblad, Trouw, De Telegraaf, Zembla, NDR, Deutschlandfunk, Deutsche Welle and the Norwegian state channel NRK. In 2024, Elvira Loibl was awarded the prestigious Edmond Hustinx Prize for her groundbreaking research on illegal intercountry adoption.