ELSA-VU Lunch meeting: Using artificial intelligence to extract modus operandi elements from Dutch court rulings

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Practical information

During this lunch talk, Anne Nagtegaal will share findings from a side project within her PhD research that explored whether artificial intelligence (AI) can support the extraction of modus operandi elements from Dutch court rulings related to synthetic drug production. Two computer science interns joined the project to test rule-based extraction, named entity recognition, and large language models. Drawing from nearly 1,000 Dutch court rulings between 2015 and 2025, they tested how these AI techniques could help identify and extract crime characteristics, such as activities, the roles of the suspect, and materials that were used. Although the results show some potential, they also reveal significant limitations, which Anne will discuss. If you’re interested in interdisciplinary collaboration and using AI for research purposes: join her ELS lunch talk! After the presentation there’s time for a Q&A and discussion.

LEVEL: Basic

METHOD: Quantitative

PREREQUISITES: No prior knowledge is required.

ABOUT THE LECTURER: Anne Nagtegaal is a PhD candidate at the Department of Criminology, VU. Her research is part of the FIDBID-project (Forensic Illicit Drug intelligence through Big and Intelligent analysis of chemical and criminological Data) where chemical insights, data science and crime scripts are used to discover criminal networks behind the production, transport and trade of illicit drugs. Her research focuses on converting chemical information into valuable intelligence by using case-related forensic information and knowledge about the criminal networks involved in illicit drug-related activities in the Netherlands.

REGISTRATION: If you would like to attend this meeting, please send an email to Anniek van der Schuijt, E: j.m.vander.schuijt@vu.nl, on 1 October at the latest. She will send you the Teams link to join the online meeting. If you are interested but not available, please let Anniek know and a recording of the lecture can be sent to you afterwards.

ELS Academy’s No-Show Policy:
Please note that the workshops are given by experts in the field who do this on a voluntary basis. Places are often limited and we have people on the waiting list. For this reason, the ELS Academy has a strict no-show policy. In case you are prevented from attending the workshop, kindly send an email to contact@elsacademy.nl at least 48 hours before the workshop to make space for people on the waiting list.

If you do not attend the workshop without prior cancellation, your supervisor will be informed about your no-show and you will not be able to register for another ELS Academy event for the next two months. This is also very unfortunate for us, however, it can be prevented if we receive a simple cancellation via e-mail.

Thank you for understanding and see you there!