On 18–19 June 2026, Ljubljana hosted the fourth annual conference of the European Society for Empirical Legal Studies (ESELS), bringing together scholars from around the world to discuss the latest developments in empirical legal research. The conference highlighted the growing international reach and methodological diversity of empirical legal studies. Researchers from approximately 30 countries participated, representing institutions across Europe as well as Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States.
Members of the SENTRIX project team and researchers from the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana—Prof. Dr Mojca M. Plesničar, Dr Miha Marčenko, Helena Smrekar, Marko Balažic, and Lovrena Jeromelj—actively participated in the conference.
Their contributions focused on three areas of research: understanding sentencing environments through the perspectives of legal and criminal justice experts; examining the emotional labour of legal professionals within the criminal justice system; and providing empirical insights into the prosecution of human trafficking in Slovenia.
