Mr Aryan Nijhara, PhD Researcher (A.)

Aryan Nijhara is a PhD researcher in the Criminal Law and Criminology Department at the Faculty of Law, Maastricht University. He is an integral part of the interdisciplinary project COMCRIM (COMbatting CRIMes that undermine democracy and the rule of law in a comprehensive and smart manner). COMCRIM is a public-private research consortium that brings together 22 partner organizations to study systemic crimes such as human trafficking, money laundering, and corruption and their impact on democracy and the rule of law in the Netherlands.
Aryan began his PhD in September 2024 under the supervision of Prof. Jill Coster van Voorhout, Prof. Frank Pijpers, and Dr. Ana Barros. His research lies at the intersection of criminology, statistics, and law, focusing on developing quantitative methods to analyze and interpret complex criminal networks. Within this project, Aryan designs statistical tools that help reconstruct and evaluate hidden social and economic networks using official statistics, particularly those from Statistics Netherlands (CBS). These tools aim to reveal the structures and dynamics of criminal operations, identify key actors and linkages, and measure their broader economic and societal effects.
As part of COMCRIM, Aryan's work contributes to understanding and modeling intervention strategies and evaluating their impact at the micro(individual), meso(network), and macro(societal) levels.