Birgit Hollaus

Birgit Hollaus is an Assistant Professor (Universitätsassistentin, postdoc) at the Institute for Law and Governance and the Research Institute for Urban Management and Governance at WU Vienna (Vienna University of Economics and Business). Her work lies at the intersection of international, European, and domestic law, with a particular focus on environmental law, environmental human rights, and the role of courts in shaping rights across legal orders. In this area, her work includes a 2023 monograph with Edward Elgar, which develops a more integrated perspective on EU environmental law, international environmental governance, and, in particular, the Aarhus Convention.

Her research examines how legal systems interact in addressing complex global challenges, including climate change, and how access to justice functions as a key mechanism for the protection of environmental rights. Extending these themes into international human rights law, she explores how courts engage in judicial dialogue and how such interactions contribute to the development and resilience of human rights law in times of fragmentation and political contestation. While in residence at the Bonavero Institute, she will pursue these interests through a project on climate litigation before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, further developing her work on the role of courts as actors in the evolution of international human rights law.

This work is embedded in a range of collaborative projects on the role of law in addressing societal challenges, and in ongoing engagement with international scholarly networks, including the European Society of International Law and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Academy of Environmental Law (IUCN AEL).