About.

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Dr. Stefanie Lemke is both a socio-legal scholar and a lawyer by training. In a career spanning almost two decades across the public and private sector, she has worked with governments, leading research groups, prominent NGOs, commercial law firms and international aid agencies such as the German Ministry for international development, Oxford University, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, the US law firm Shearman & Sterling LLP and the United Nations in the Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Western Europe and Southeast Asia. She completed a PhD on Access to Justice at Oxford, London and Cologne Universities and was trained as a judge, a public prosecutor and a criminal defence lawyer in Germany, litigating high-profile cases before UN human rights treaty bodies and the International Criminal Court. Her work has led to a number of invited talks such as at Harvard University and the publication of more than 70 papers, columns and books with major publishers. More details about Stefanie's CV, you can find here    .

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Stefanie is the Director & Founder of The Rule of Law Initiative, a platform promoting people-centred justice and creating community and networking opportunities for young female professionals through 'EnRoL! - The Human Rights & Rule of Law Speaker Series', the global webinar series celebrating female role models. She holds various research and supervisory roles such as with the European Cooperation in Science and Technology in London, Leeds University's 'Legal Professions Research Group' and the 'Eastern Block Censorship Research Group' at Lodz University overseeing the group's platform on media freedom in post-communist countries. She is Elected Board Member & Secretary-Elect of the Research Committee on Sociology of Law (RCSL) and serves on the Governing Board of the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law (IISL), the world's hub for everyone working on law and society.

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A recognized expert in her field, Stefanie often collaborates with international organizations such as the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe and the EU. Currently, she is the European Commission's National Expert for Germany, advises the Council of Europe's Office in Ukraine on criminal justice reform and is appointed to various EU expert committees promoting access to justice, civic space and digitalisation, among others. She was commissioned to draft Europe's first guidelines on legal aid, which were adopted by the Council of Europe's 46 member states in 2021. More about Stefanie's projects and her work in Albania, Laos, Tajikistan, Turkey and many other countries, you can find here.​​​​​​