Lisa Harms is assistant professor of Law & Society at the Van Vollenhoven Institute for law, governance and society. Her research has focused on dynamics of transnational legal mobilisation and human rights. In particular, Lisa’s PhD research compared litigation and legal mobilisation strategies of minority and majority religious groups at the European Court of Human Rights. The resulting monograph Faith in Courts has been published with Hart Publishing in 2022. Currently, Lisa expands on her previous research by developing a project that studies the contestation of liberal human rights at the United Nations, focusing in particular on the impact of conservative mobilisation. Furthermore, she is interested in dynamics of knowledge creation and diffusion in the human rights field, both at the transnational and the local level.

Lisa’s background is in Political Science and Sociology. Before joining the VVI, she held postdoctoral research positions at the Institute of Sociology, University of Münster and the Chair of Comparative Constitutionalism, University of Göttingen. While pursuing her PhD, she was a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. She acquired her PhD in Political Science and Sociology (2019) in cotutelle at the University of Göttingen and Sciences Po Paris.