About.

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​​​​I am a socio-legal scholar and a lawyer by training, specialising in human rights and rule of law. I work on how to improve people's access to justice, and study the relationship between politics, courts and civic space. I have worked - globally and across sectors - with governments, leading research groups, prominent NGOs, commercial law firms and international aid agencies such as the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Oxford's Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, the US law firm Shearman & Sterling LLP, and the United Nations in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Western Europe and Southeast Asia.  

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I trained as a civil judge, a public prosecutor and a human rights lawyer litigating high-profile cases before the International Criminal Court and UN human rights treaty bodies, and completed a PhD on legal empowerment at Oxford, London and Cologne Universities after studying law in Germany, France and Spain. I started working in academia in 2006​​ and founded the RULE OF LAW INITIATIVE, an international human rights platform promoting people-centred justice, in 2016. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​

​​A recognised expert in my areas of research, I regularly act as an adviser and trainer to international organisations. In 2021, I was commissioned to draft Europe's first guidelines on legal aid, which were adopted by the Council of Europe's 46 member states. Currently, I lead a team for UNDP to strengthen the rights of displaced communities, act as the European Commission's national expert for Germany, advise the Council of Europe's Office in Ukraine on judicial integrity, and am appointed to several EU expert committees promoting civic space, gender equality and digitalisation. I am also a secondary proposer for a EU funded project on cultural rights hosted at the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, an associate fellow at Leeds University's Legal Profession Research Group, and member of the board of Lodz University's Eastern Block Censorship Research Group.

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My work has led to more than 60 invited talks such as by Harvard University, and the publication of over 70 papers, columns and books with major publishing houses.