Christina Peristeridou (C.)

Dr. Christina Peristeridou is an Associate Professor at the criminal law department. She is currently the Director of the Maastricht Insitutute for Criminal Sciences (MICS).  She is also a lawyer, admitted to the Bar of Thessaloniki since 2008. Christina specialises in comparative and European criminal procedure. She works on virtual criminal procedure, the theories of procedural justice and human-centered criminal justice, and topics of European criminal procedure related to mutual trust, such as the European Arrest Warrant. Her current project "Beam me up, Scotty! Effective participation to virtual criminal proceedings" investigates the right to effective participation when defendants appear remotely to hearings by looking into socio-legal scholarship and employing empirical research (2025-2026). The project, won funding by the NWO Open Competition XS. 

Holding a PhD from Maastricht University funded by the NWO, her research has made a substantial contribution to the modern understanding of the principle of legality. Her book  The Principle of Legality in European Criminal Law (Intersentia, 2015) uniquely integrated relational theory, constitutional pluralism, comparative criminal law and EU institutional law. Building on this foundation, she has advanced a theory for applying the principle of legality within EU law. 

Since then, her work has spanned a wide range of topics in comparative criminal procedure, including pre-trial detention, criminal cooperation in European criminal law, and digitalisation of justice. She has published with prof. A. Klip the book Comparative Perspectives of Criminal Procedure (2023, Intersentia), which offers a unique comparative and critical analysis of the most salient concepts of criminal procedure. The book, which is used as literature at the educational programs of several Universities, is the product of a long-term project which combined classical comparative law research with courtroom ethnography and empirical research. 

She is co-founder of the Virtual Criminal Justice Network (VCJN) an interdisciplinary international network of more than 100 scholars in the field of remote proceedings. Christina is also co-coordinator of the inter-faculty Maastricht University Science in Court (MUSiC) initative which gathers researchers from different UM faculties working on science and technology in criminal procedure. She serves on various committees at the University, including the LAC (loopbandadviescommissie) of the Faculty of Law. She has served as the Chair of the Educational Committee and was its member for many years. She is also member of the steering committee for the revision of the BA program of the European Law School of the Faculty of Law, UM. She has co-founded and chaired the Female Empowerment Maastricht (FEM), a UM wide organisation which promotes inclusivity and diversity within academia, and she has served in its board since its creation.  

Dr. Peristeridou has conducted impactful projects such as the EU-funded ImprovEAW that studied the practice of the European Arrest Warrant, the WODC project Citius Altius Fortius regarding digitalisation in criminal justice, and an interdisciplinary project on an evidence-based approach to pre-trial detention. She has served as executive editor of the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law and she is currently in the editorial board of this journal and in the advisory board of the European Journal of Crime Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, inter alia.