Brief Bio

Eva Maria Belser teaches Swiss and comparative constitutional law, human rights law, federalism and international economic and development law at the University of Fribourg. She is one of directors of the Institute of Federalism and the head of international projects (Summer University, Practitioner’s Course, guest researcher programs). She is involved in a number of international cooperation projects in the fields of federalism, decentralisation, democratisation and human rights in the Horn of Africa, China, Palestine and a number of other regions (financed by the Swiss Development Cooperation Agency). She is a member of the governing body of the Swiss Center of Expertise in Human Rights where she co-directs the cluster “institutional aspects” dealing with tensions between human rights implementation, direct democracy, federalism, minority protection and state-religion-relations. Belser is also a member of the governing body of the Interdisciplinary Institute of Ethics and Human Rights, a member of the Swiss Foundation of Scientific Research Commission and the Commission on International Relations of the Faculty of law.

Habilitation Fribourg, 2006 (The White Man’s Burden – Labour and Human Rights in a Globalised World); doctor utriusque iuris (summa cum laude) Fribourg, 2000 (Freedom and Justice in Contract Law), Licentiate (summa cum laude, bilingual German-French) Fribourg 1996; research stays at McGill University, Montreal (2010), the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town
(2002-2003) and at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales, Paris (2000-2003).

Courses taught at CTLS

• Comparative Constitutional Law (Fall 2013)
• Human Rights (Fall 2013)