She studied at the University of Ljubljana, where she graduated and gained her doctorate in law and was the president of the first Student Council at the Law Faculty, and also at the University of Cambridge (UK), where she gained a master’s in law and a master’s in social and developmental psychology. From 2011 until recently she was a professor of law and criminology at the Law Faculty of the University of Ghent (Belgium), she was a visiting professor at UC Berkeley and in Cambridge, and before that she spent several years researching and teaching in Slovenia. She is a senior scientific associate at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Central European University in Budapest (IAS CEU), the scientific and professional head of the Institute for Criminal Law Ethics and Criminology in Ljubljana and an independent expert for the European Commission in Brussels, where her duties include assessing proposals for EU research projects in terms of their professional and ethical dimensions, and she advises the Commission as a member of its Expert Group for Criminal Law Policy.

Dr Peršak is one of the editors of the International Review of Penal Law, a member of the editorial committee of the new collection European Criminal Justice (from acclaimed publisher Brill) and the advisory board of the journal for victimisation and human rights – TEMIDA. She is the author of numerous monographs, chapters and articles in the field of criminal law, criminology, human rights, philosophy and sociology of law accessible in many university libraries around the world.