Univ.-Prof. Dr. Christiane Wendehorst, LL.M. (Cantab.)

Professor of Law
Co-Head of the Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law
Scientific Director of the European Law Institute

 

 

Schottenbastei 10-16 (Juridicum)
1010 Vienna

T: +43-1-4277-34820
E: christiane.wendehorst@univie.ac.at

 

Consultation hour

To make an appointment please contact wendehorst.sekretariat@univie.ac.at.

Christiane Wendehorst has been Professor of Civil Law at the University of Vienna since 2008. Amongst other functions, she is founding member, Immediate Past President (2017-2021) and since 2022 Scientific Director of the European Law Institute (ELI) as well as Co-Head of the Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law. She is a member of the Bioethics Commission at the Austrian Federal Chancellery and Vice-President of the Austrian Jurists' Association (ÖJT). She is President of the division of humanities and the social sciences of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) for the term 2022-2027. From 2017-2022, she was chair of the Academy Council of the ÖAW. She is also an elected member of Academia Europea (AE), the International Academy for Comparative Law (IACL), and the American Law Institute (ALI).

At the moment, her research focuses on legal aspects of digitalisation and she has been working as an expert on topics such as digital content, the Internet of Things, AI and data economy, i.e. for the European Commission, the European Parliament, the German Federal Government, the ELI and the ALI. From 2018-2019 she co-chaired the Data Ethics Commission of the German Federal Government. Recently, she was European leader of the transatlantic project "Principles for a Data Economy" and led various other projects in the area of digitalisation, on topics such as safety- and liability-related aspects of software and biometric techniques. She is also involved in a number of projects on algorithmic fairness.

Prior to moving to Vienna, she was a professor in Göttingen (1999-2008) and Greifswald (1998-99) and was Managing Director of the Sino-German Institute of Legal Studies (2000-2008).