Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Dr. h.c. Angelika Nußberger

Angelika Nußberger received her doctorate in 1993 in Würzburg and habilitated in 2002 with a thesis on social standards in international law. In addition, she was appointed professor at the University of Cologne in the same year, where she has headed the Institute for Eastern European Law and Comparative Law since 1 October 2002. In 2010, Angelika Nußberger was elected as a judge at the European Court of Human Rights by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. On 1 February 2017, she was elected Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights. She held this office until January 2020 and was the first German Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights. After her return to the University of Cologne in 2020, she became Director of the newly founded Academy for European Human Rights Protection.

Research Project

"Alienation" in Human Rights Protection - a New Split between East and West?

Angelika Nußberger conceptualizes the "alienation" between the way protections for human rights have evolved in Western Europe and contrasting developments in Central and Eastern Europe. Despite the—legally binding—acceptance of a uniform canon of norms, the understanding of what should be included in human rights in Europe cannot be reduced to a common denominator. While the rights of individual groups (especially prisoners, migrants, and sexual minorities) are becoming increasingly salient in the states of Western Europe, societies in the states of the former Eastern bloc are still (or are once again) trying to gain the fundamental rights of democratic participation. The governments in these states (in particular, in Russia, Poland, and Hungary) are trying to develop a new—particularistic—understanding of human rights in which the need to protect “newly discovered” minorities is rejected and human rights are instrumentalized as a vehicle for a cultural heritage anchored in tradition.