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The Crime, Punishment and Rights Research Cluster is delighted to welcome two Adjunct Professors, Professor Marie-Claire Van Hout, VPRI at SETU and Professor Zhiyuan Guo, CUPL.

Both appointments were approved on 9 December 2025, by the President of the University of Galway, Professor David Burn, on the recommendation of the Academic Promotion Committee. Their terms will run from 1^st February 2026 until 31^st January 2029.

Professor Van Hout

Marie Claire Van Hout is Professor of International Health and Human Rights, and currently Vice President for Research, Innovation and Impact at the South East Technological University in Ireland. She has two doctorates (PhD Public Health and Addictions; PhD Law) and been research active for over 20 years in the field of penal policy and human rights law, criminal legal and prison system functioning, health inequalities, addictions and health in detention.

She has held visiting Professorships at University College Dublin, Ireland; Virginia Commonwealth University, US and University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal (2016-date), and was adjunct staff at the South African Medical Research Council- Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs Research Unit from 2010 to 2024. Since 2015, she is a Vice Chair of the Life Sciences Marie Sklodowska Curie SCA Evaluation Panel at the European Commission Research Executive Agency, Brussels.

Her esteem indicators include €14 million in research and industry funding, 331 peer reviewed journal publications and 84 funder reports, including for various UN and European agencies (H index 44). Since 2021, she has been consistently on the Stanford/Elsevier Top 2% Scientist (public health) listing.

She consults regularly as independent evaluation consultant or substantive human rights and criminal justice expert for the Council of Europe Pompidou Group, Stop TB and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, UNAIDS and World Health Organization regional offices at the global level and regional officers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She is an experienced conference chair, keynote speaker and facilitator of global consultations, and has conducted UN evaluations at the global level (cluster) and regionally in North Africa and the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa.

She is a member of the Worldwide Prison Health Research & Engagement Network (WEPHREN); the International Prisons and Corrections Association (ICPA) Healthcare Network; the Global Prisons Infectious Diseases Network; the Informal CSO Group on Health in Prison at Penal Reform International, the Office of the Inspector of Prisons (IOP) Expert Panel in Ireland, and the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT), and is an active volunteer for Health through Walls (HtW).

Professor Zhiyuan Guo

Professor Zhiyuan Guo is a Professor of Law at China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL) in Beijing, where she specializes in Criminal Procedure, Evidence, International Human Rights Law, and Law and Society Studies. She is the Vice Dean of the College of Criminal Justice, CUPL, Adjunct Professor at Buffalo State College, US and Chinese University of Hong Kong, she is also a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at US-Asia Law Institute, New York University School of Law. Prof. Guo was appointed as Guanghua Visiting Scholar at NYU School of Law from 2008-2009 and as Sohmen Visiting Scholar at Faculty of Law, Hong Kong University in 2011. She was appointed as a Fulbright Research Scholar and visited Stanford Law School for the 2015-2016 academic year. She was appointed as Academic Writing Fellow of Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in February 2019. She was also appointed as Asian Law Institute (ASLI) Visiting Fellow for spring 2025.

Prof. Guo has published extensively on academic journals in both Chinese and English languages. Her research interests include Exclusionary Rules of Evidence, Plea Bargaining, Lay Participation, Effective Counsel, Criminal Mental Health Law and Anti-Corruption Policies in China. Prof. Guo lectured across the world, including but not limited to New York University (U.S.), University of California at Davis (U.S.), University of Vienna (Austria), University of Zagreb (Croatia), University of Pompeu Fabra (Spain), G D Goenka University (India), FGV Direito SP (Brazil) and University of Bucharest (Romania).