Emma Freedman ’23, a Political Science/International Relations major and History minor, studied abroad this past Fall with EuroScholars at Leiden University (Netherlands), where she conducted a research project titled “Climate Justice through the Courts.”
To learn more about the research that Emma conducted while abroad, read through a quick synopsis of her work and watch the presentation that she gave at the end of the project.
Hello! My name is Emma Freedman, and I am a junior Political Science/International Relations major and History minor.
This fall, I lived in Leiden, a small city in the Netherlands located between Amsterdam and The Hague. I worked as a research assistant to Dr. Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, who is as assistant professor of public international law at Leiden University. After writing State Responsibility, Climate Change, and Human Rights in 2019, Dr. Wewerinke-Singh received a NWO Veni-grant for her project “Climate Justice through the Courts.” The project employs socio-legal research to explore the benefits and shortcomings of rights-based climate litigation. My role was to help conduct the socio-legal research for the project. I investigated the methodological approach of “practice tracing,” competed background research for several literature reviews, and interviewed key individuals involved in the Milieudefensie et al. v. Royal Dutch Shell court case.
While I was in the Netherlands, I also enrolled in several elective law courses at the University of Leiden Law School, including “Law, Governance, and Development” and “European Migration and Asylum Law.” Aside from the academic opportunities it provided, my time in the Netherlands gave me the invaluable experience of living and working abroad.
Watch Emma’s “Climate Justice through the Courts” Presentation (9:56 video)