Professor Parmentier (Belgium) is Director of the Law and Society Institute at the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) where he teaches law, human rights, sociology of crime, criminology, criminal justice, and crime prevention. His research interests include political crimes, transitional and retroactive justice as well as human rights and the administration of criminal justice.
He has been the editor-in-chief of the Flemish Yearbook on Human Rights since 1998, and has served as an advisor to the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, the Belgian Minister of the Interior, the King Baudouin Foundation, and Amnesty International.
From 1999 to 2002, he was the vice-chairman of the Flemish section of Amnesty International. He has been a visiting professor at the International Institute for Sociology of Law in Oñati (Spain), a visiting scholar at the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa) and the University of New South Wales (Australia).
He publishes extensively on criminal justice, human rights and criminology. Professor Parmentier holds degrees in law, political science and sociology from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), and a degree in sociology and conflict resolution from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (U.S.A.).