Kirsten Schmalenbach has been Professor of International and European Law at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg since 2010. Previously, she was Professor of Public International and European Law at the University of Graz (2003-2010), held a deputy professorship at the University of Bayreuth (2002), and was a Post-Doc at the University of Cologne (1996-2002). Since 2020, she has led the FWF-funded project “United Nations Tort Law”. In 2021, she was a Senior Research Fellow in the research group “The International Rule of Law – Rise or Decline?” (DFG). At the time of writing (2023/24 academic year), she is a member of “The Institutional Architecture for a 1.5 °C World” research group at the Center of Advanced Studies (CAS) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Kirsten Schmalenbach’s research focuses on international law, in particular the law of international organizations, international liability and responsibility law, as well as the law of international environmental and climate protection. In addition, she regularly deals with questions on international sanctions law, the law of armed conflict, and international sources of law. In the field of European law, her research focuses on the external relations of the European Union. 

As part of her HIAS research project “Beyond anthropocentrism: Can the legal status of natural entities and ecosystems effectively mollify global environmental degradation?”, Kirsten Schmalenbach plans to explore the question of what the legal personality of natural elements means for international, regional and national environmental protection. In this regard, assigning personhood is usually embedded in historical, social, political, and cultural contexts before it develops into a legal phenomenon. However, modern legislators often pre-empt social norms in the hope that the authority of the law will, over time, lead to social acceptance of the law’s premises. This notwithstanding, the legislative attribution of personhood to natural elements is subject to particular challenges, ranging from but not limited to, the definition and delimitation of the natural subject to the allocation and balancing of the interests of all actors and subjects involved. The research project is not limited to international perspectives and legal issues as Kirsten Schmalenbach’s time at HIAS will be used to establish an interdisciplinary research team that will also approach the topic from philosophical, anthropological, political and economic perspectives.

Her tandem partner is Markus Kotzur, Professor of Public Law, European and International Public Law at Universität Hamburg. 

Kirsten Schmalenbach’s HIAS Fellowship is funded by the Joachim Herz Foundation.