Hannah Birkenkötter is an assistant professor at ITAM’s Law Department. She earned her doctorate in law at Humboldt University Berlin and holds two legal state exams (Germany) and a double master’s degree (LL.M./Maîtrise) from the Universities of Cologne and Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne. She was a post-doctoral Emile Noël Fellow at NYU School of Law, and a research fellow at the law faculty of Humboldt University Berlin, where she remains an Associate Researcher. She is an Associate Editor of Verfassungsblog – On Matters Constitutional, and a member of the German United Nations Association’s Research Council, where she was formerly a board member and an executive board member.

Hannah specializes in international law, focusing on international institutional law and the United Nations system. Her research interests include international legal theory and international human rights law. In her current book project, she investigates how the rule of law was conceptually shaped in the UN system and highlights the role the UN Secretariat has played to operationalize it. She has also conducted research on how international courts manage overlapping legal regimes as part of a multi-year interdisciplinary research group on Overlapping Spheres of Authority and Interface Conflicts, and on the UN’s 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development. Her work has been published in international venues including Global Constitutionalism, the International Journal of Constitutional Law, and the German Yearbook of International Law. Her doctorate was awarded the 2021 Dissertation Award of the Academic Council on the UN System and the 2020 Christian Fiammengo Dissertation Award.