Thomas Spijkerboer (1963) studied law at the Universiteit van Amsterdam (1981-1986). Between 1982 and 1986, he was a volunteer at the Stichting Rechtswinkel Amsterdam, where he specialised in housing law. From 1986 until 1993, Thomas worked at the Advokatenkollektief Zaanstreek, specialising in asylum law. From 1993 until 2000, he was a lecturer in migration law at the Katholieke (now Radboud) Universiteit Nijmegen, where he defended his PhD Gender and Refugee Status in 1999. Since 2000, he is professor of Migration Law at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, part of the Amsterdam Centre for Migration and Refugee Law and one of the teachers of the master’s programme International Migration and Refugee Law. In 2017-2020, he was Raoul Wallenberg professor of international human rights and humanitarian law at Lund University (Sweden), in 2020-2021 International Franqui professor at Ghent University (Belgium), and in September-December 2022 visiting researcher at the Institut de recherche en droit international et européen de la Sorbonne in Paris (France). Thomas is a member of Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities since 2016 the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2017.