Jonathan Bernaerts holds BAs in Philosophy and Law from the University of Antwerp (Belgium), and obtained MA degrees in International Law from the University of Antwerp and Comparative International Law from the University of Toulouse Capitole 1 (France). He was awarded the European Master Degree in Human Rights and Democratization by the European Inter University Centre in Venice (Italy).

Jonathan’s doctoral research, Linguistic Diversity and administrative Interactions in Belgium and Germany: a legal and empirical Analysis, conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, dealt with the interaction between public authorities and non-majoritarian language speakers. The research provided an insider’s perspective – from the point of view of both non-majoritarian language speakers and public authorities – on how the legal system is dealing with linguistic diversity in administrative settings. He obtained a Joint PhD from the University of Antwerp and the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg for this research in 2020.

Currently, Jonathan is an assistant research professor at the University of Antwerp, postdoctoral researcher at the Leuven Centre for Public Law (KU Leuven) and a research partner of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Department ‘Law and Anthropology’. He is also a member of the CUREDI coordination team.