Research on intercountry adoption and pesticide legislation receives Dutch Research Council funding

Between Gratitude and Grief: Multivoiced Justice Claims of Intercountry Adoptees

By dr. Elvira Loibl

Intercountry adoption has long been framed as humanitarian care, yet recent inquiries in the Netherlands have exposed systemic abuses and renewed debates on recognition and redress. These debates often struggle to accommodate adoptee experiences marked by ambivalence, in which care and harm coexist. This project examines how intercountry adoptees negotiate multiple, sometimes conflicting inner voices about adoption, harm, and care, and how these negotiations shape justice claims. Using a dialogical narrative approach and in-depth interviews, the project reconceptualises justice claims as provisional outcomes of ongoing internal negotiation, offering insights relevant for policy debates on recognition and redress.

Science in court: how judges manage scientific complexity in pesticide litigation in the Netherlands

By prof. dr. Mariolina Eliantonio

EU and Member State courts are increasingly called upon to review pesticide authorisation decisions, requiring them to navigate complex scientific evidence while confronting the limits of their legal expertise. This project examines how Dutch administrative courts address scientific complexity in disputes over pesticide authorisations. Through systematic mapping, categorisation, and qualitative analysis of case law under Regulation 1107/2009, it investigates judicial approaches in authorisation-related disputes. By delivering the first comprehensive empirical overview of Dutch pesticide litigation, the project establishes a foundation for comparative research, with a conceptual and methodological framework transferable to other jurisdictions and regulatory sectors facing scientific uncertainty.