Dr. iur. Nina Kerstensteiner
German Lawyer and Postdoctoral Researcher
Nina Kerstensteiner is a German lawyer, a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School, and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Regensburg. Her work focuses on comparative constitutional law, public law, animal law and access to justice. She is particularly interested in animal law at the local, national, and international level. She also examines strategic litigation in animal and environmental law, assessing how national and international court decisions contribute to the development of legal frameworks.
She studied law at the University of Regensburg and completed her legal clerkship in Munich. She was admitted to the bar in 2020. After authoring a scholarly monograph on animal rights and welfare, she earned her doctorate in law (Dr. iur.) from the University of Regensburg in 2024 with a thesis on strategic litigation in animal law. Her book received several awards, including the Winter Foundation Prize for the Rights of Nature and the Felix Wankel Junior Prize, and was a finalist for the German Thesis Award.
She is currently working on a project titled “Weak Interests in Law.”
She is a member of the Deutsche Juristische Gesellschaft für Tierschutzrecht (German Association for Animal Protection Law) and collaborates with legal experts and organizations to advance the field of animal law.
E-Mail: nina.kerstensteiner@ur.de
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ninakerstensteiner