Historic Achievement for the University of Wrocław: Prof. Karolina Kremens Awarded an ERC Advanced Grant

Professor Karolina Kremens of the University of Wrocław has received a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant. The award marks a historic achievement for the University and a major success for Polish legal scholarship.

ERC Advanced Grants support established researchers with outstanding scientific achievements and ambitious research agendas. The programme provides up to €2.5 million over five years and ranks among the most competitive funding schemes in Europe.

Professor Kremens will lead the project crimPROfem: Reimagining Criminal Procedure in the Digital Era through a Feminist Lens. Through this project, she and her team will explore how criminal justice systems can better respond to the realities of the twenty-first century.

Professor Karolina Kremens, University of Wrocław. Photo: Dominika Hull-Bruska.

Reimagining Criminal Procedure

At the heart of the project lies a simple but powerful question: what would criminal procedure look like if we designed it today?

For centuries, legal systems have developed within social structures that often overlooked the experiences of many groups. Professor Kremens will draw on feminist legal theory and an intersectional approach to examine how criminal procedure could become more inclusive, accessible, and responsive to the needs of all participants.

The project aims to bring new perspectives into discussions about justice and legal institutions. It will also explore how legal procedures can better reflect the diversity of contemporary societies.

Digital Justice in Focus

The research comes at a time of rapid technological change.

Courts increasingly rely on electronic evidence, remote hearings, automated decision-making tools, and artificial intelligence. These technologies create new opportunities, but they also raise important questions about fairness, accountability, and equal access to justice.

The crimPROfem team will investigate how digital tools affect different participants in criminal proceedings and whether they risk reinforcing existing inequalities. The researchers aim to develop a new framework for criminal procedure that responds both to technological transformation and to the need for greater inclusion within justice systems.

The ERC-funded project crimPROfem. Graphic: Łukasz Kubiński.

From NAWA Fellow to ERC Grant Holder

The ERC Advanced Grant represents the latest milestone in Professor Kremens’ distinguished academic career. Her research focuses on comparative and international criminal procedure, digital justice, and feminist legal theory. She currently leads the Digital Justice Centre at the University of Wrocław and has coordinated several nationally and internationally funded research projects.

Professor Kremens is also a former fellow of the NAWA Bekker Programme. The programme supports the international mobility of researchers and fosters cooperation with leading academic centres around the world. Her ERC success highlights the importance of international research experience and long-term investment in scientific excellence.

Over the course of her career, Professor Kremens has conducted research and taught in Canada, the United States, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy. She has also received several prestigious distinctions, including a Fulbright fellowship and the Edward Barry McDougall Memorial Scholarship at the University of Ottawa.

A Milestone for Polish Legal Research

The ERC Advanced Grant awarded to Professor Kremens is the first in the history of the University of Wrocław. It is also the first ERC grant awarded to a Polish university in the field of legal studies.

This achievement strengthens the international visibility of Polish research and demonstrates that Polish scholars can successfully compete for the most prestigious research funding in Europe.

As the crimPROfem project begins, it will contribute to global discussions on the future of justice systems. By examining how technology and law interact, and by bringing new perspectives into legal design, the project aims to help build criminal justice systems that are more inclusive, fair, and resilient.

Sources

• University of Wrocław, Historic Success for the University of Wrocław: Professor Karolina Kremens Awarded an ERC Advanced Grant, 23 June 2026.
• Forum Akademickie, Dr hab. Karolina Kremens z ERC Advanced Grant, June 2026.
• European Research Council (ERC), information on the ERC Advanced Grant programme.