Maaike Voorhoeve is an assistant professor of Islamic law. She works at the Department of History, European Studies and Religious Studies and is a member of the Modern history section of the Amsterdam School of Historical Studies. She specializes in law in the Muslim world, with a focus on North Africa.  

After her PhD (University of Amsterdam, 2011), Voorhoeve held post-doctoral positions at Harvard Law School, Freie Universität, Humboldt Universität, and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. She was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and affiliated to the EUME programme of the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. Between 2020 and 2024, Voorhoeve was chief editor of the Dutch journal ZemZem on the Middle East, Nort Africa and Islam. Until September 2023, she was co-director of the Amsterdam Centre for Middle Eastern Studies. Voorhoeve teaches courses on Islamic law, Islam and gender, colonialism and postcolonial theory.

Voorhoeve published two books, Family Law in Islam (I.B. Tauris, 2012, 2nd ed. 2016) and Gender and Divorce Law in North Africa (I.B. Tauris, 2014), and a number of articles on legislation and adjudication in the field of family law and gender-coded criminal law in the Muslim world. Her most recent publications are “De ziekte van de Sultan: de koloniale strijd tegen syfilis in de Maghreb (1830-1962)” (ZemZem, 2026) and “Transitional Justice in Post-Arab Spring Tunisia: Law Reform in the Field of ‘Women’s Rights’”, in D. Karic, G. Sibgattulina and M. Davidsen (eds.) Religious Belonging and Interreligious Encounters in Europe and Beyond (Brill, 2026).

Voorhoeve's current research project examines the influence of colonialism on gender laws in Muslim territories. Her focus lies on French colonial rule in the Maghreb and West-Africa, but she's equally interested in the influence of Dutch, British, Russian and Ottoman imperialism and its consequences for the law in Muslim territories, both in the Muslim world and beyond (e.g. the former Dutch colony of Surinam). Her most recent papers on this topic include the invited talk 'Temporalities in colonial abortion law in the French Protectorate of Tunisia (1881-1956)', presented at the University of Freiburg (October 2026).

PhD Supervision:

Lisa Schouten, The sound of Egyptian counterculture: rewriting notions of class, identity and culture through Mahraganat (with Jaap Kooijman)

Mai Abbas, The representation of gender dynamics in Egyptian television series (with Joke Hermes and Jaap Kooijman)

Mariam Hothout, Women's legal capacity in the French Protectorate of Morocco (1912-1956) (With Gerard Wiegers and Moritz Föllmer)

Teaching:

Thinking (post)colonial Europe (with Sudha Rajagopalan)

Decentering EU MENA relations (with Gertjan Hoetjes, Asli Unan and Hanna Mühlenhoff)

Anthropology of Islam, Gender and Law

Research Seminar (law major, European studies; theme: Law and Gender)

Sharia and Halakha and the modernization of religious law (with Valerica van der Geld-Dodan)

De wereld in Delen (with Ronald de Rooij)

European Studies at Work