Lara Bergers is a PhD candidate within, funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant (2018-2024) and led by Dr. Willemijn Ruberg. She researches policing and judicial practices around sexually violent crime in the Netherlands, in the period 1930-1980, and takes a particular interest in how victims, perpetrators and sexually violent acts are enacted through such practices. She has recently contributed to the volume which will be published by Manchester University Press in August of 2023.
Her interest in the history of policing, law, and forensic science predates the current project; during her master's programme she wrote on the history of the so-called Rape Kit and dedicated her master's thesis to Lie Detection's failure to launch in the Netherlands.