Janine Ubink is professor of law, governance and development at the Van Vollenhoven Institute for law, governance and society, of Leiden University. Her research centers around African law and governance, with a primary focus on customary law and its relation to state law, traditional authorities, land law and policy, gender, transitional justice and rule of law reforms and legal empowerment. Her regional focus is on Africa, particularly Ghana, Namibia, Malawi, Somalia, and South Africa, but she has also been involved in comparative research in Asia and Latin America.

She is the President of the international Commission on Legal Pluralism, and also works as a consultant in this field, most recently as an advisor to the Ministry of Justice of Somalia.

Ubink has taught at the law schools of University of California Irvine, New York University and Australia National University as well as at the FHR Lim A Po Institute for Social Studies (Paramaribo, Suriname). She studied law at Leiden University (1995-2000) and acquired her PhD in legal anthropology from Leiden University with her thesis “In the land of the chiefs: Customary law, land conflicts, and the role of the state in peri-urban Ghana” (2008).