She was a drafter of the South African Children’s Act, and has contributed to child law reform in many southern and eastern African countries (among them, Mozambique, Lesotho, Malawi, and South Sudan). She has published widely on child and family law issues, including in the areas of customary family law, juvenile justice, child-headed households, and access to justice.

Prof Sloth-Nielsen served as a member of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child between 2011 and 2016. Currently she serves as a member of an international expert group on surrogacy, co-convenes an annual summer school in Leiden on the frontiers of children’s rights, and co-convenes an annual conference on child and family law in Cape Town.

A staff member at UWC since 1994, Prof Sloth-Nielsen has extensive postgraduate supervision experience, with more than 70 students having graduated under her supervision, and has also lectured internationally in Belgium, Switzerland, China, and the United Kingdom.

Anthony C. Diala is a legal anthropologist, an advocate, and an associate professor in the Department of Private Law at UWC. His interdisciplinary research focuses on legal pluralism, specifically the interplay of African customary law and state law, and their effect on law reforms and legal emancipation. He has researched, lectured, and advocated across four continents, notably in the International Criminal Court at the Hague, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative, Uganda, the Justice and Peace Commission, Nigeria, and universities in South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda and Somaliland.

Diala is rated as an ‘established researcher’ (C2) by the South African National Research Foundation. He is the 2020 Diaspora Scholar at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, a workshop leader for the Next Generation in Africa programme of the Social Science Research Council of New York, a member of the Research Quality Plus College of Reviewers of Canada’s International Development Research Centre, and a member of the College of Senior Mentors of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa. He has won grants and held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Nordic Africa Institute, the Social Science Research Council of New York, the Institute of International Education, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the South African National Research Foundation.

Leiden Law School is one of Leiden University’s seven faculties. Its research is not limited to one single spearhead; rahter, it strives to conduct cutting-edge research across the full breadth of the law.