Yussef received the PhD scholarship at the EUI in 2017. He is currently researching the notion of identity and belonging in human rights law, combining legal and theoretical methodology. His research interests include human rights, social theory, (psychological) citizenship, sense of belonging, and the role of affect in democracy. Before the EUI, Yussef was a junior lecturer at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and worked with the Dutch State Attorney. He authored ‘Human Rights and the Excess of Identity: A Legal and Theoretical Inquiry into the Notion of Identity in Strasbourg Case Law’ in Social & Legal Studies while he was a junior lecturer at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Yussef holds a cum laude LLM in Constitutional and Administrative Law and MA in Philosophy of Law from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His thesis on the notion of vulnerability in human rights law was awarded the Max van der Stoel Human Rights Award and the Jan Brouwer Award for best thesis in the field of human rights in the Netherlands and Belgium and was cited in a report by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe. In 2016, Yussef completed the MSc in Comparative Social Policy at the University of Oxford, gaining a distinction for his thesis on social citizenship and higher education reforms.
