Interview with Camille Teirlynck and Romy Babtist – Max van der Stoel Human Rights Award

On 10 December 2025, International Human Rights Day, the Max van der Stoel Human Rights Awards 2025 were presented to the best doctoral dissertation, the best Master’s thesis, and the second-best Master’s thesis. The 2025 award-winning publications address a range of pressing human rights issues:

• Masuma Shahid (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Queering courts: Analysing equal marriage rights cases before the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the United States Supreme Court
• Camille Teirlynck (KU Leuven), A procedural view on individual academic freedom: A comparative-evaluative research on the legal and judicial protection of individual academic freedom against institutional interference
• Romy Babtist (VU Amsterdam), At the gate of Europe: Unveiling the newly introduced Pre-entry Phase under the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum through the lens of the German Airport Procedure

In the interviews below, Camille Teirlynck, winner of the best Master’s thesis, and Romy Babtist, winner of the second-best Master’s thesis, reflect on their research, the significance of receiving the award, and the broader human rights questions their work seeks to address.

Photo Credit: Camille Teirlynck

1. What does receiving the Max van der Stoel Human Rights Award mean to you personally and professionally at this stage of your academic career?

C.T.: Receiving the Max van der Stoel Human Rights Award is an incredible honour, especially at this early stage in my academic career. My research on academic freedom has always felt like more than an academic exercise in the context of my master’s thesis. For two years, I was – and I still am – deeply passionate about this topical, complex and multilayered subject. Seeing this work receive recognition within the broader human rights community is therefore highly rewarding. This award also serves as a special encouragement. As an early-career researcher, I often wondered whether my work could have impact. It is inspiring that the Max van der Stoel Human Rights Award acknowledges that, even at an early stage, researchers can contribute meaningfully to important legal and societal debates on human rights issues. Moreover, this award motivates me to continue advancing scholarship in this area of human rights law. I remain intrigued by the many open questions that the topic of academic freedom raises and I am eager to draw on my own academic freedom as a PhD researcher to continue publishing on it. Finally, I am particularly pleased that this topic is receiving the attention it deserves. In Belgian scholarship, this subject remains underexplored, with only a handful of contributions. This stands in stark contrast to the extensive literature on the subject in the United States, for example, where entire libraries have been dedicated to it. I am delighted that this award helps further increase its visibility within academic circles.

R.B.: Receiving the Max van der Stoel Human Rights Award is an honour and a very special moment for me. I spend months working on my thesis and often questioned whether my ideas make sense and whether my work would contribute to legal discussion on fundamental right, legal procedure and the Pact on Migration and Asylum. Receiving the Award boosted my confidence in my work, even at such an early stage in my career. During my research, I realised how important legal analysis can be. By analysing how aspects of the German airport procedure have been codified in the EU Pact, I could improve my understanding of how national practices can influence the design of European rules. Professionally, the award encouraged me to continue working in EU migration and human rights law. Shortly after finishing my thesis, I moved to Brussels for a fellowship. This has enabled me to stay closely connected to the ongoing discussions around the Pact on Migration and Asylum.

2. Why did you consider procedure to be a crucial and underexplored dimension of the right to academic freedom?

C.T.: Most scholarship on academic freedom tends to focus on substantive questions relating to this right: what it means, which activities it protects and why it is important to safeguard. Much less attention, however, is devoted to questions relating to its enforcement in practice. What particularly intrigued me during my literature review on academic freedom was that decisions affecting academic freedom often arise rather subtle and under the guise of disciplinary proceedings and employment-related decisions. In such contexts, robust procedural frameworks with clear provisions, accessible forums and meaningful remedies to enforce academic freedom are of paramount importance for the effective protection of academic freedom. To better understand this procedural dimension, I compared the European and Canadian approach. By comparing two systems that both claim to comply with UNESCO norms of 1997 on academic freedom but are fundamentally different in design, the research revealed that the way these norms are operationalised in practice can have implications for the legal and judicial protection of academics. The practical impact is significant. Depending on the procedural framework in place, the academic freedom of professors that are dismissed in a European country may be protected differently than that of their counterparts in Canada, despite both systems claiming to abide by the same standards.

R.B.: Examining the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum in light of the German airport procedure revealed that some human rights risks associated with the new pre-entry phase stem from its legal design, rather than from explicit violations. While formally compliant with human rights, the pre-entry phase creates legally ambiguous spaces where the scope of rights is unclear. My case study illustrates how the 'fiction of non-entry' operates as a significant legal instrument. Member States can direct migrants towards accelerated procedures and restrict their freedom of movement by treating them as if they have not legally entered the territory, despite their physical presence. In practice, this may result in confinement that is often not formally recognised as detention. A central concern relates to the right to liberty. Without a clear classification of confinement during the pre-entry phase as detention, key safeguards under the European Convention on Human Rights and the EU Charter may not be fully invoked. The German experience demonstrates how long-standing ambiguity, can limit the practical effectiveness of these guarantees, particularly when national courts diverge from the European Court of Human Rights. What surprised me most during the research was not necessarily that restrictive practices exist, but how gradually they can become normalised through European Union Law. The German Airport Procedure began as a rarely used mechanism yet gradually became structurally embedded in European asylum governance.

3. Given the current context, what lessons should policymakers and academic institutions draw from your research?

C.T.: Academic freedom is increasingly at risk, both in Europe and across the globe. In societies marked by growing polarisation and challenges to democracy, academic freedom becomes a particularly vulnerable right. In response, recent years have seen a proliferation of policy initiatives aimed at protecting academic freedom. At the national level in European countries, constitutional provisions have played a key role in shaping academic debates and informing policy initiatives. My research, however, showed that there is no single model for protecting academic freedom. Contrary to European countries, the Canadian legal system deliberately chooses to protect academic freedom through collective agreements and arbitration. Studying different procedural frameworks to protect academic freedom revealed that the procedural design may importantly impact the extent of legal and judicial protection of academic freedom. These insights can guide European policymakers in considering current reforms. Even without overhauling the European system, lessons from foreign legal systems can broaden perspectives and be translated into the European context. At the very least, this debate should be opened.

R.B.: This research is particularly timely, as the new border procedures will come into effect in June 2026. Currently, the Member States are in the implementation phase. Therefore, I see my thesis contributions as identifying structural challenges in the legal design of the pre-entry phase before it is fully operational. By analysing the German airport procedure as a precedent, the thesis highlights how the 'fiction of non-entry' can create legal ambiguity, particularly regarding detention, access to safeguards, and judicial review. It is important to raise awareness of these challenges because once practices are institutionalised across Member States, they become much harder to contest. Additionally, the research provides a case study on the normalisation of restrictive models that practitioners, NGOs and policymakers can use to scrutinise EU policies and the national implementation measures. In this way, I hope the thesis will contribute to better informed implementation.

4. What did you personally learn through this research process, and how has it shaped your future academic or professional ambitions?

C.T.: First and foremost, this research confirmed my passion for academic inquiry. Dissecting technical legal questions while engaging in critical and original analysis capable of leaving a creative mark on society is indeed what I am most passionate about. This realisation has directly shaped my path to my current role as a PhD researcher. The research process also underscored the importance of pursuing a research topic that genuinely motivates you. Although the topic of academic freedom did not necessarily align with my private and European law specialism as a master student, I used the freedom afforded by my research master track to explore a human rights topic I believed was of significant societal relevance and, remarkably, remained highly underexplored in Belgian legal scholarship. This mindset led me to my current PhD topic, which focuses on punitive contract law. Finally, I learned that academic inquiry often defies our initial expectations. The hypothesis I formulated at the beginning of my research proved to be incorrect, revealing the topic to be far more complex than I had anticipated. Rather than viewing this as a setback, I came to appreciate it as a lesson in nuanced analysis – an essential quality that I am currently applying in my current PhD research.

R.B.: For me, EU migration law is a fascinating field, particularly for students interested in the intersection of law, politics, and human rights, as well as the interaction between national, European, and international legal frameworks. It can be both challenging and rewarding because it is a constantly evolving area with ongoing debates, space for research and new ideas, and room for criticism. My main advice would be to engage with the field in a practical way. Working with NGOs, legal clinics or community initiatives, for example, can provide an important perspective that cannot be gained from legal frameworks alone. These experiences help to see how migration law operates in practice and the effect that policies have on people’s daily lives. It was practical experience that really sparked my interest in migration law. I first became interested in the field while working with asylum-seeking children, which made me curious about their legal status and the broader legal framework shaping their situation. While studying, I continued to be involved in the field through several projects, such as the Refugee Law Clinic.

At the same time, migration is a highly politicised topic and debates surrounding it often become polarised. Given the increasingly heated nature of debates on this topic, it is also important to examine migration through a multidimensional lens. Reading and reflecting on a variety of sources can help to better understand the broader dynamics shaping migration law. Students wishing to engage critically with EU migration law should therefore avoid oversimplified narratives and approach the subject as the complex field that it is, gaining a good understanding of the legal framework. This also involves paying attention to how legal concepts are designed and applied. Even seemingly technical terms can have significant practical consequences. In my thesis, for instance, I examined the concepts of 'non-entry' and the 'pre-entry phase', which determine the applicable legal safeguards in migration procedures. Although these terms may sound technical, they can strongly influence how rights and procedures are implemented at the border. More broadly, my research showed that certain national procedures rarely used in national migration law were initially introduced in response to exceptional situations but now became part of the European legal framework. Given that migration law directly affects the rights and dignity of individuals, I would encourage students to stay critically and well-informed about developments in the field while maintaining a strong human rights perspective.