Mr. Dr. Tamar de Waal is associate professor (universitair hoofddocent) at the Amsterdam Law School of the University of Amsterdam. She is director of the Amsterdam Honours College of Law and chair of the (UvA-wide) University Forum. In addition, she is programme leader of the SSH-sectorplan Digital Citizenship. She is editorial board member of the journal Beleid & Maatschappij. She also writes the In Den Haag-column in De Groene Amsterdammer (triweekly). 

She is an expert in citizenship, the constitutional democratic state and its values, civic education, and immigrant 'integration' using interdisciplinary legal research methods. 

Background

Tamar de Waal is specialized in legal and political philosophy, with a focus on matters of citizenship. De Waal has published in a variety of national and international journals and law journals on citizenship and civic integration in EU Member States (see publications). She is the author of Integration Requirements for Immigrants in Europe - A Legal-Philosophical Inquiry that was published in 2021 by Hart Publishing (Bloomsbury). (For a review by prof. Dora Kostakopoulou, see here.)

In the winter of 2025, De Waal was fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University in Florence. In 2021-2022 she obtained the Urban Citizen Fellowship at NIAS-KNAW and conducted research on urban citizenship and education.  In 2019 she was a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. In that year, she also wrote a booklet on the importance of citizenship and citizenship education for Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei. 

De Waal is a renowned advisor and (keynote) speaker, frequently invited to share her expertise at academic institutions, government bodies, and public platforms like De Balie and Pakhuis de Zwijger. She also regularly comments on current affairs and her research in the media. For more, see her website (Dutch).

In 2018, De Waal was the founder of Stichting Civic (Foundation Civic), a legal platform and think tank on matters of civic integration in the Netherlands. She chaired the foundation for five years and is currently in its advisory board. She is currently also in the scientific advisory board of the Mobile Futures (research consortium in Finland) and of the thinktank of Groenlinks (the Dutch Green party). In 2022-2024 she was in the scientific advisory board of the Parlementairy Inquiry into fraud policy and public services. 

For her dissertation, Conditional Belonging, De Waal won the biennial VWR-dissertation prize for best dissertation in legal philosophy in the Netherlands and Belgium (2019).

Research interests

• Citizenship
• The constitutional democratic state and its values
• Multi-layered citizenship (city, national, EU and world)
• Integration requirements in EU Member States
• Civic education 
• Research methodology; specifically interdisciplinary legal research combining law, theory and empirics 

Teaching areas

• Law, Justice & Morality, PPLE
• Citizenship honoursmodule law
• Legal Research, law bachelor

Links 

• Personal website 
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky