Prof. Dr. Silja Vöneky

Curriculum Vitae

• Professor of Public International Law, Comparative Law and Ethics of Law at the University of Freiburg and Director of the Institute of Public Law of the Law Faculty (since 2010)
• Since July 2024: member of the Verfassungsgerichtshof Baden-Württemberg
• Her research and teaching cover various areas of public and international law. These include questions of democratic legitimacy, international environmental law, human rights, and humanitarian law, as well as AI and Biotech law. In her research she links aspects of ethics and law, in the field of international law and tech regulation, and is a principal investigator of national and international interdisciplinary third-party-funded research projects and initiatives, such as CIBSS and ReScale.
• Before, she was a Fellow at FRIAS (Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies) as member of the research group “Responsible AI“ and co-edited the interdisciplinary Cambridge Handbook of Responsible AI (CUP 2022).
• She is Chair of the dual use research of concern advisory body (Kommission für Verantwortung in der Forschung) of the University of Freiburg.
• Co-Director of the US/German Human Rights Research Consortium (HRRC) that serves as a human rights hub for researchers in Baden-Württemberg and Connecticut.
• She is a member of national and international advisory bodies, including the high level Advisory Council on International Law (Völkerrechtswissenschaftlicher Beirat) of the German Federal Foreign Office and the Ethics Council of the Max Planck Society.
• From 2015 to 2016, she was a Fellow at the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School.
• Until 2016 she was a member of the German Ethics Council, and during this time the head of the working group on biosecurity (see report on “Biosecurity“).
• Besides, she was Head of Independent Max Planck Research Group: Democratic Legitimacy and Ethics of Governance from 2005 to 2011 and Senior Researcher (Internat. Security Law, Environmental Law, Ethics and Law, Biomedical Law) from 2001 to 2005 at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law
• Habilitation “Recht, Moral und Ethik“, University of Heidelberg (2009)
• Disseration, Dr. jur. “The Applicability of Peacetime Environmental Law in International Armed Conflicts“, University of Heidelberg (2000)
• 2. Staatsexamen Rechtswissenschaften (Law) from 1998 to 2000 (Kammergericht Berlin)
• 1. Staatsexamen Rechtswissenschaften (Law) in Heidelberg, after studies in law at the Universities Freiburg, Bonn, Edinburgh (UK) and Heidelberg.