Diete Humblet

Diete Humblet is a Research Professor in the Department of Criminology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and an affiliate of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law. She is the Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant project CAGED (2025–2030), which investigates the existential dimensions of carceral ageing. She holds master’s degrees in both Law (UAntwerpen, 2010) and Criminology (UGent, 2012) and obtained her PhD in Criminological Sciences (VUB, 2018), with a dissertation titled The Meaning of Imprisonment in Later Life. From 2021 to 2025, she held a senior postdoctoral fellowship from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), focusing on ageism in prison. She previously collaborated with the Centre of Expertise on Older Adult Care at Odisee University of Applied Sciences, where she led research on professional development in correctional aged care. She initiated a European research network on Ageing and the Criminal Justice System and is currently involved in developing a GEROCRIM knowledge hub, which seeks to strengthen the convergence between criminology and gerontology. She is also the co-founder of a Flemish think tank advocating penal reform for older adults. Her work has garnered international acclaim and recognition. She is the recipient of the Perrie Lectures Essay Award (2015), the author of The Older Prisoner (2021) in the Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology series, and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of European Penology (2025).

Research Line

Penality and Society

Past Research Projects

Ageism in prison

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