Dr. Angela Hefti is a Visiting Researcher with the Human Rights Program. She was previously a Visiting Researcher at the Graduate Program of Harvard Law School (2022-2023). Before coming to Harvard, Angela served as a judicial clerk in the asylum division of the Federal Administrative Court in Switzerland (2021-2022). She was a Yale Robina Fellow at the European Court of Human Rights (2019-2020), where she clerked for Judge Helen Keller, worked for the Court’s Research and the Swiss Divisions.
Angela obtained her PhD in Law in 2020 from the University of Lucerne in Switzerland. Her doctoral dissertation was awarded the “Professor Walther Hug Prize” for the best doctoral dissertations nationwide. Her book titled “Conceptualizing Femicide as a Human Rights Violation. State Responsibility under International Law”, based on her doctoral dissertation, was published with Edward Elgar and is available open access. During her doctoral studies, she conducted research stays at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Germany (2016) and the Schell Center for International Human Rights (2018-2019).
Angela completed her LL.M. at Yale Law School as a Fulbright fellow in 2018. At Yale, she was a member of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic as well as an editor of the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, the Yale Journal of International Law, and a Co-Founder of the YLS European Law Student Association.
From 2016 to 2017, Angela was the Associate Director of the Lucerne Academy of Human Rights Implementation in Switzerland. In this role, she oversaw the program, recruited faculty and students from across the globe and devised a fundraising strategy to ensure diverse student participation. Angela also served as the coach and coordinator of the program’s moot court competition.
Throughout her legal studies in Switzerland and Spain, Angela interned at the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the Netherlands, as well the Spanish Refugee Commission in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. She was also a Visiting Professional at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica.
Angela’s research interests include climate change litigation and human rights, feminist and critical theory as well as femicide. Her research at the Human Rights Program aims to address some of the human rights challenges associated with climate change.
Related Work
Journal Articles
Angela Hefti, Hannah van Kolfschooten and Aminta Ossom, A Health-Centric Intersectional Approach to Climate Litigation at the European Court of Human Rights 37 (2024) Harvard Human Rights Journal 351-378
Angela Hefti, Intersectional Victims as Agents of Change in International Human Rights-Based Climate Litigation (2024), Transnational Environmental Law, 1-26 (first view, peer-reviewed).
Léa Hemmi/Angela Hefti, Le statut de protection S en Suisse des personnes fuyant la guerre en Ukraine [Temporary Protection Status S in Switzerland of People Fleeing the War in Ukraine], 4 (2022) Revue de l’Avocat, 155-160.
Helen Keller/Angela Hefti, Bringing the Right to Water into the Spotlight: A Civil Right before the European Court of Human Rights? (2022) Review of European, Comparative, and International Environmental Law, 50-59 (peer-reviewed).
Angela Hefti/Laura Ausserladscheider, From Hate Speech to Incitement to Genocide: The Role of the Media in the Rwandan Genocide 38(1) (2020) Boston Journal of International Law, 1-38.
Helen Keller/Angela Hefti, ILO und EMRK: Der Einfluss des Arbeitsvölkerrechts auf die Rechtsprechung des Europäischen Gerichtshofs für Menschenrechte (EGMR) [The International Labor Organization and the European Convention on Human Rights: The Impact of International Labor Law on the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights] (2020) Aktuelle Juristische Praxis, 593-602.
Book
Angela Hefti Conceptualizing Femicide as a Human Rights Violation: State Responsibility under International Law Edward Elgar 2022 (peer-reviewed, open access).
Book Chapters and Academic Commentaries
Angela Hefti, Zulassung von Grenzgängern und Grenzgängerinnen [‘Cross-Border Commuters’], in Migration Law, Martina Caroni et al., (eds), Schulthess 2024 (forthcoming).
Angela Hefti, Grenzüberschreitende Dienstleistungen [‘Cross-Border Services’], in Migration Law, Martina Caroni et al., (eds), Schulthess 2024 (forthcoming).
Elena Brodeala/Angela Hefti, Egalité de genre devant la Cour Européenne des droits de l’homme, Code commenté – Droits des femmes [Gender equality before the European Court of Human Rights], Diane Bernard, Chloé Harmel (eds), Bruxelles, Larcier 2020 (peer-reviewed).
Martina Caroni/Angela Hefti, Article 18 Swiss Constitution (Freedom to use any Language), Commentary to the Swiss Constitution, in: Bernhard Waldmann et al. (eds), 393-407, Basel 2015.
Blog Posts
Angela Hefti, The European Court of Human Rights’ Gendered Climate Docket: KlimaSeniorinnen and Duarte Agostinho (Oxford Human Rights Blog, April 2024).
Hannah van Kolfschooten/Angela Hefti, Women’s Health Rights can Guide International Climate Litigation: KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland before the European Court of Human Rights (Harvard Health and Human Rights Journal, 15 May 2023).
Angela Hefti, What’s next in Climate Litigation before the European Court of Human Rights? Duarte Agostinho and Others v Portugal and 32 other States (Oxford Human Rights Blog, May 2023).
Angela Hefti, López Soto v Venezuela: The Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ Answer to Violence Against Women (Oxford Human Rights Blog, June 2019).
