Portrait of the lecturer
Christine Kaufmann was born in Zurich. After completing her Matura (Type A), she studied law at the University of Zurich, graduating with a licentiate in 1987. She then worked as an assistant to Professor Daniel Thürer at the Chair of International and European Law, as well as Constitutional and Administrative Law, from 1987 to 1991. In 1990, she was awarded a doctorate (summa cum laude) based on her dissertation on the topic ‘Hunger as a legal problem – aspects of the right to food under international law’.
From 1991 to 2000, Christine Kaufmann worked for the Swiss National Bank (Schweizerische Nationalbank). Initially, she served as a research assistant in the Legal Department. As a member of the EFTA expert groups on Financial Services and the Free Movement of Capital and Services, she represented the National Bank in negotiations on the European Economic Area. Later, she headed the Human Resources Department as Director.
From autumn 2000 to the end of 2001, Christine Kaufmann was a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan Law School, USA, where she prepared her postdoctoral thesis on the relationship between international labour law and international financial and economic organisations. Upon her return, she took up a new position as Director of Legal Research at the World Trade Institute (WTI) at the University of Bern. Here she focused on WTO law, with a particular emphasis on issues relating to trade and finance as well as trade and human rights.
On 1 October 2002, she was appointed Assistant Professor and, on 1 September 2003, Full Professor of Constitutional, Administrative and International Law at the University of Zurich.
From 1993, Christine Kaufmann worked on the editorial team of the journal “Aktuelle Juristische Praxis”. She serves as President of the Swiss Ankylosing Spondylitis Association. Since 1999, she has been a member of the Advisory Board of the Zurich section of the European Law Students’ Association (ELSA). In September 2002, she was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the World Trade Institute and is also a member of the WTI Board.
In 2009, she initiated the establishment of the Centre of Excellence for Human Rights at the University of Zurich and has since served as Chair of the Steering Committee (www.menschenrechte.uzh.ch). The Centre was a member of the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Human Rights (SKMR), which was established by the Swiss government from 2011 to 2022 as a pilot project for a future national human rights institution. There, Christine Kaufmann headed the thematic area ‘Human Rights and Business’ together with Prof. Dr Hans Peter Wehrli and Prof. Francis Cheneval.
From 2012 to 2014, Christine Kaufmann served as Vice-Dean for Teaching, and from 2014 to 2016 as Dean of the Faculty of Law.
Throughout her professional career, Christine Kaufmann has been involved in projects that promote dialogue between various stakeholder groups. From 2013 to 2019, she served as Co-Chair of the Advisory Board for Switzerland’s National Contact Point on the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, alongside State Secretary Marie-Gabrielle Ineichen. She has provided legal advice to companies, public authorities and civil society organisations and has been invited as an expert to hearings of parliamentary committees, the UN and the OECD. She has acted as a mediator on several occasions in cases concerning the implementation of the OECD Guidelines by companies.
From 2019 to 2025, she chaired the OECD Working Party on Responsible Business Conduct.
In 2019, she was appointed a member of the Permanent Court of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
Her research focuses on issues of responsible business conduct, the interplay between business and human rights, and the relationship between the international trade and financial systems.