Pieter Cannoot
Professor Pieter Cannoot is an assistant professor of Law and Diversity at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University (since September 2022). His research focuses on the relationship between law and gender, and in particular gender diversity and the rights of LGBTIQ+ people. Pieter's work often draws on the perspectives of anti-discrimination law, human rights law, or feminist and queer legal theory.
Pieter studied law at Ghent University (2014), where he also prepared his doctoral dissertation on the autonomy rights of LGBTIQ+ people under the supervision of Professor Toon Moonen and Professor Eva Brems. He successfully defended his dissertation in September 2019. He subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University, receiving a grant from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). He further enriched his academic experience with a postdoctoral fellowship at Cambridge University (2020) and a visiting professorship at the University of Antwerp (2020-2022). In the latter role, he was responsible for the course ‘Genders, Sexualities and the Law’.
At Ghent University, Pieter teaches courses on anti-discrimination law, law and diversity, and Street Law. He also coordinates the legal clinic on discrimination law, together with Dr. Sarah Lambrecht.
Since September 2025, Pieter is the national anti-discrimination expert for Belgium in the European Commission's European Equality Law Network. He is editor-in-chief of the Flemish Journal of Human Rights, a member of the editorial board of EHRC Updates, and a member of Unia's advisory committees on Disability and Racism. Pieter is a former law clerk at the Constitutional Court of Belgium.
Together with Professor Gerd Verschelden, Pieter leads the Centre for Law, Families and Diversity on a daily basis.
Keywords:
Diversity, Gender, LGBTIQ+, Anti-Discrimination Law, Human Rights