BIOGRAPHY

Martin is the Head of Measuring Justice at HiiL. He strives to integrate both rigorous research and policy making to promote justice and fairness in the world. Martin’s main interests are in the study of fairness of dispute resolution mechanisms, legal needs in everyday life and legal empowerment. His aspiration is to set up a system of valid and reliable indicators to predict where the law of the future will take us.

Martin worked in diverse organisations –private companies, governmental agencies, NGOs and universities. Between 2003 and 2006, he was a coordinator of the Law programme of the Open Society Institute – Sofia, Bulgaria. There he was responsible for the access to justice and reform in police programs. His empirical research in access to justice exposed dramatic gaps in the accessibility to fair processes and outcomes. These findings triggered policy actions, which led to a new legal aid system in the country. In 2007, Martin has conducted the first comprehensive research of the legal needs in transitioning countries. This research triggered similar studies in Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan and several others. In 2006-2007, Martin joined a startup ICT company, which developed an innovative software product that quickly became a commercial success in the market of legal information systems. Since mid-2007, Martin has been senior researcher at TISCO, Tilburg University. There he led a team of experts to create and validate a methodology for measuring the costs and quality of paths to justice. This methodology has been applied for the study of paths to justice in more than 25 countries. Martin is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency.