Paulina Starski

Max Planck Institute for International Law, Kathleen Fitzpatrick Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow 2018

Paulina Starski is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg as well as a postdoctoral fellow at the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. She holds degrees from Bucerius – LL.B. as well as Ph.D. (summa cum laude) ‒ and conducted a part of her law studies at the University of Sydney Law School as a grant recipient of the German National Merit Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes). Her Ph.D. on the “Interfederal Administrative Act” (Mohr Siebeck, 2014) focuses on constitutional and administrative challenges of German federalism viewed from a comparative perspective and was funded inter alia by the Friedrich Naumann and the FAZIT Foundation. She passed her First and Second State Examination in law ‒ both with high distinction ‒ at the Hanseatic Higher Court of Appeals in Hamburg and was admitted to the bar in 2013. During her judicial clerkship (Referendariat) she worked at various courts in Hamburg (Civil and Criminal Court of Appeals, Administrative Court) and – amongst others – the law firm Freshfields in its Hamburg and New York office advising on a wide range of international disputes.

Her research project on the “Unwilling or Unable State as a Challenge to International Law” encompasses her postdoctoral thesis (Habilitation) and is funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. She has also been awarded a postdoctoral scholarship by the Daimler and Benz Foundation for her research activities. Prior to her research stay at the University of Melbourne Law School she will conduct research at the NYU School of Law as a Hauser Post-Doctoral Global Fellow working closely together with Professor Ryan Goodman and Professor Benedict Kingsbury as well as a Visiting Research Scholar at the University of Sydney Law School sponsored by Professor Emily Crawford.

Her academic interests lie in the field of public international law, in particular, the regime on the use of force, international legal theory, the notion of state sovereignty, international human rights law, but also European law as well as German and comparative constitutional law (recently with a particular focus on Polish constitutional law). Paulina has widely published in these fields in various national and international law journals. Being passionate about teaching Paulina has lectured on a wide range of subjects within her research fields in Germany and abroad inter alia at the Bucerius Law School, Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, University of Paderborn, University of Hamburg as well as Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile.

Paulina is a member of the Coordinating Committee of the European Society of International Law’s Interest Group on Peace and Security, of the Editorial Board of the Heidelberg Journal of International Law, the Advisory Board of the voelkerrechtsblog.de as well as the blog juwiss.de.