Dr F.G.H. Kristen (b. 1972) has been appointed professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure at the Faculty of Law of the Universiteit van Amsterdam.

François Kristen carries out research on Dutch substantive criminal law and criminal procedure. Within this field he focuses among other things on research topics such as legality and guilt as conditions for criminal liability and its consequences for elements of an offence. Another topic of Kristen’s research activities is views raised during the criminal trial by defence and by public prosecution service, and the question how the judge should respond to this. The same goes for financial criminal law and interpretation methods that the criminal law judge and others could use for dealing with legal questions.

Kristen furthermore examines European criminal law and the way in which European rules relating to criminal law affect national criminal law performance. Suspects for instance can under certain circumstances invoke a European Community directive for preventing a conviction. With respect to financial criminal law Kristen specializes in the topic of insider dealing on financial markets. Kristen wrote a PhD thesis on the European prohibition on insider trading with which he obtained his PhD degree cum laude at Tilburg University in 2004. He was awarded the 2005 prize for the best thesis defended at Tilburg University in the academic year 2004-2005.

Kristen has been employed at Tilburg University since 1996, and has been associate professor at the department of Criminal Law of the Faculty of Law since 2005. Furthermore, he is deputy judge at the District Court of Dordrecht. Kristen is also editor of the authoritative loose-leaf commentary on all articles of the Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure (Wetboek van Strafvordering), the publication A.L. Melai & M.S. Groenhuijsen et al (eds.), Het wetboek van strafvordering.