Dr. Anne Heinisch (formerly Anne-K. Speck) is a Senior Visiting Researcher of the Rule of Law Clinic at the Central European University’s Democracy Institute, and a Teaching Assistant at the Faculty of Law and Criminology at Ghent University.
They hold a B.A. in International Relations from Technische Universität Dresden (Germany), an LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from Essex University (UK), and a PhD in Law from Ghent University, where they successfully defended their doctoral dissertation, ‘The Evidentiary Practice of the European Court of Human Rights: Critical Reflections on its Historical, Institutional, and Political Underpinnings’, in September 2025.
Anne’s research and professional activities have centred on questions of human rights law implementation, evidence in international human rights adjudication, the role of parliaments in promoting human rights, and rule of law backsliding. They are a ‘pracademic’, having moved between the worlds of academia, civil society leadership, and work in international organisations. Following their postgraduate studies, Anne worked served within the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). Between 2015 and 2018, they were a Research Associate at Middlesex University London within the ESRC-funded Human Rights Law Implementation Project (HRLIP). Before joining the Human Rights Centre in June 2020, Anne acted as Co-Director of the European Implementation Network (EIN), an NGO based in Strasbourg that works with civil society actors from across the Council of Europe region to promote the implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights.
Anne is co-author of several peer-reviewed articles on international human rights law, and an editor of the Strasbourg Observers blog. They are regularly commissioned as expert consultant for the Council of Europe. Anne is also a member of the Board of the European Implementation Network.
University Degrees
Additional (inter)national (human rights) courses taken
