Synnøve Ugelvik

The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is seeking a postdoctoral researcher for the international ENACT project, which investigates how international police cooperation against transnational organised crime is organised in law and how it works in practice. The project uses a comparative design centred on the Netherlands and Norway, allowing the researcher to examine how different institutional and legal positions shape cross-border cooperation. As part of an international research team, the postdoc will contribute to two core strands of the project. One strand examines how European rules and arrangements for police cooperation are implemented in national legal systems, with attention to both formal legal frameworks and their practical operation. Another strand studies how the European police-cooperation network functions in everyday practice from a Dutch perspective, mapping how professionals and organisations collaborate and how international agreements and structures are translated into implementation. The position is embedded in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration within the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at VU Amsterdam. The wider project is led by the University of Oslo and involves partners in Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The work combines legal analysis, policy analysis, and qualitative empirical research, and the successful candidate will contribute to project publications and to the development and execution of the broader research programme. The topic is situated at the intersection of criminology, law, public administration, and police studies, with a strong focus on the relationship between formal rules and daily practice in international policing.