Lieselotte Viaene
Klaus Töpfer Sustainability Fellow
Lieselotte Viaene is a Belgian-Flemish legal and environmental anthropologist with a PhD in Law from Ghent University, Belgium (2011). Her research focuses on decolonial human rights, legal pluralism, Indigenous peoples’ rights, transitional justice, and ecological justice, drawing on long-term fieldwork in Latin America and South and Southeast Asia. She was Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant RIVERS – Water/Human Rights Beyond the Human? (2019–2026), an interdisciplinary project exploring plurilegal relations between water, humans, and more-than-human beings in Nepal, Colombia, Guatemala, and at the UN. Her work combines ethnography, Indigenous knowledge systems, legal analysis, and audiovisual methods, including the co-creation of two short cinematographic documentaries with Indigenous collaborators in Nepal and Colombia. She previously held senior researcher positions at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University, and the Department of Social Sciences at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. She was also a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, and worked as a Human Rights Officer with the UN Human Rights Office in Ecuador.
05/2025 - ongoing: Human Rights Centre, Ghent University, senior researcher 05/2019-02/2026: Principal Investigator, ERC Starting Grant Water/human rights beyond the human? Indigenous water ontologies, plurilegal encounters and interlegal translation 02/2019-04/2025: University Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, research professor 09/2016-08/2018: Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow 2011-2018: Human Rights Centre, Ghent University, Associate post-doctoral researcher 2010-2013: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR), Quito, Ecuador, Human Rights Officer 2006-2010: Human Rights Centre, Ghent University, Belgium, PhD researcher 2007: Guatemala Peace Process Support Programme (PCON), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), Consultant 2003-2005: Early professional experience as social worker in refugee protection and asylum support (Belgium)
- decolonial human rights
- more-than-human rights
- transitional justice
- Indigenous peoples' rights
- Audiovisual methods
- legal anthropology
- environmental anthropology
- sociolegal studies
- extractive industries
Publications prior to joining the RIFS
- Viaene, L., 2025, Law, the-more-than-human agency, and audiovisual storytelling: de-centering Western research ethics through working-class scholar-activism and embodied rituality, International Journal of law in context, Vol. 21 issue (4), pp. 638-658 DOI:10.1017/S1744552325100244
- Viaene, L. and González-Serrano, M.X., 2024, The right to be, to feel and to exist. Indigenous lawyers and strategic litigation over Indigenous territories in Guatemala, The International Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 28(4), pp. 555–577. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2023.2279165
- Izquierdo Torres, B. y Viaene, L., 2024, Una im-posibilidad legal: el Territorio-ser viviente, víctima del conflicto armado colombiano. Algunas reflexiones desde un diálogo colaborativo interdisciplinar, Eunomia. Revista en Cultura de la Legalidad, 27, pp. 72-101 https://doi.org/10.20318/eunomia.2024.9001 Viaene, L., 2024, La moda de los derechos de la naturaleza: consideraciones críticas. Revista de Estudios Políticos, 204, 301-328 https://doi.org/10.18042/cepc/rep.204.11
- Viaene, L.; Doran, P. and Lijeblad, J, 2023, ‘Editorial Special Section: Transitional Justice and Nature: a curious silence’, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 17, Issue 1, pp 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ijad007 Viaene, L., Laranjero, C. and, Tom, M. N. 2023, ‘The Wall Spoke When No One Else Would: Auto-Ethnographic Notes on Sexual-Power Gatekeeping within Avant-Garde Academia’, *in Pritchard, E. and Edwards, D. (ed.), Sexual Misconduct in Academia. Informing an Ethics of Care in the University, Routledge, pp. 208-225
- Viaene, L., 2022, Can Rights of Nature save us from the Anthropocene Catastrophe? Critical reflections from the field on the emerging ecological jurisprudence, Asian Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 9, pp. 187-206 https://doi.org/10.1017/als.2022.2 Viaene, L., 2021, Indigenous Water Ontologies, Hydro-Development and the Human/More-Than-Human Right to Water: A Call for Critical Engagement with Plurilegal Water Realities, Water, 13(12), 1660 https://doi.org/10.3390/w13121660
- 2025 Brussels, Belgium, Brussel School of Governance – VUB
- 2024 Barcelona, Spain,Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
- 2023 Kathmandu, Nepal, First National Memory Conference
- 2023 Italy, European Summer Research Institute, Mind and Life Europe
- 2022 Finland, Åbo Akademi University, Living with the Sea seminar program
- 2022 Surket, Nepal, Mid-West University
- 2021 Berlin, Germany, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Lecture Seires Dis/Entangling Perspectives in Material Research (online)
- 2021 Germany, University of Marburg, Conference “Waterworlding. Reflecting on Multiple Waters” (online)
- 2021 Allegra Lab and EASA, Webinar series in honour of Sally Engle Merry (online)
- 2021 USA, Boston College Center for Human Rights; International Justice Boston College Environmental Studies Program (online)
- ERC Starting Grant (2019–2026), RIVERS – Water/Human Rights Beyond the Human? Indigenous Water Ontologies, Plurilegal Encounters and Interlegal Translation, European Research Council (ERC)
- Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (2016–2018), GROUNDHR – Challenges of Grounding Universal Human Rights, European Commission, Horizon 2020