Kyriaki Topidi
Dr. habil. Kyriaki Topidi is head of the research cluster on "Culture & Diversity" and joined ECMI in 2019. She holds a degree in law from the Robert Schuman Faculty of Law in Strasbourg, an MA in International Studies from the University of Birmingham, a PhD in European Studies from Queen's University Belfast and a habilitation in Constitutional Law from the University of Fribourg. She has lectured extensively and researched in the areas of Public International Law, European Law, Human Rights and Comparative Law.
In the past, she has occupied research positions in various institutions and was a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Luzern in Switzerland. She has also worked as managing director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Law and Religion at the same institution. She has been a guest scholar at Fordham University (US), the IDC (Israel) and the Max Planck Institute in Halle (Germany), the Institute of Law and Religion of the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) as well as the National Law School Delhi (India) among others.
Her research interests focus on diversity management, minority protection rights and mechanisms (with a special interest in religion) and human rights law. She is the author and editor of a number of volumes, including EU law, Minorities and Enlargement (Intersentia, 2010), Constitutional Evolution in Central and Eastern Europe: Expansion and Integration in the EU (Ashgate, 2011), Transnational Legal Process and Human Rights (Ashgate, 2013) and Religion as Empowerment: Global Legal Perspectives (Routledge, 2016). More recently, she has edited a collection on Normative Pluralism and Human Rights (Routledge, 2018). Her latest monograph focuses on The Right to Difference and Comparative Religious Diversity in Education (Routledge, 2020). At the ECMI, in addition to her expertise on minority rights in education, she is researching on minority identity and digital governance as well as on the intersection of minorities with social movements. She is also the editor of JEMIE.
- Minority Recognition and the Diversity Deficit: Comparative Perspectives, Hart [together with Jessika Eichler], 2022
- Minority Rights and Social Change, Routledge [together with Eugenia Relano – Pastor], forthcoming
- ‘Socio-political Articulations of Minority Recognition in a Global Legal Context’, [together with Jessika Eichler], in J. Eichler and K. Topidi (eds.), Minority Recognition and the Diversity Deficit: Comparative Perspectives, Hart, 1-17
- ‘Religious Minorities’ Agency and State Recognition in a European Context’, in J. Eichler and K. Topidi (eds.) Minority Recognition and the Diversity Deficit: Comparative Perspectives, Hart, 2022, 115-134.
- ‘Minority Identity in Digital Governance and the Challenges of Online Hate Speech Regulation in Europe’, in A-M. Biro and D. Newman (eds.), Minority Rights and Unstable Orders, Routledge, 2022, 135-155.
- ‘Fundamental Rights and Racial and Cultural Minorities in the EU: Carving out a Mandate to Protect ‘Others’’, in Tove Malloy and Balazs Vizi (eds.) Elgar Research Handbook on Minority Politics in the EU, Elgar, 38-61
- ‘Digital Religious Identity and Muslim Women: An Intersectional Analysis of Online Hate Speech in the UK’, Journal of Religion in Europe, Special Issue on Digital Religious Minority Identity [forthcoming]
- ‘Cultural Autonomy, Islamic Minority Schools and the Prospects as forms of Non-Territorial Autonomy in Western Europe’, ENTAN Policy Paper No.6,
1-2 December 2022: Conference on the 20th Anniversary of the Croatian Constitutional Law on National Minorities/ University of Zagreb (Croatia)
Title of paper: The future of minority cultural autonomy arrangements18-22 September 2022: ICLARS Conference/ Cordoba
Title of paper: Regulation of Muslim Minority Religious Groups in the European State: The unique case of legal pluralism in Greece13-16 July 2022: LSA Conference, University of Lisbon
Title of paper: The Role of Gender in Ethno-Religious Minority Leadership22-24 June 2022: BCCE Annual Conference, University of Hong Kong /online
Title of paper: The Governance and Regulation of Online Hate Speech in the Post-Truth Era: European Comparative Perspectives20—22 June 2022: European Academy of Religion, Bologna/online
Title of paper: Digital Religion and Minority Women: An Intersectional Analysis of online Hate Speech25 May 2022: St Andrews Online Minority Seminar (CMS)
Title of paper: Unlearning Scarcity in Ethno-Cultural Terms: The goal of sustainable inclusion of minority groups17 May 2022: 1St BCCE Digital Equality Workshop (online)
Title of paper: Digital Religion and Muslim Women: An Intersectional Analysis of Online Hate Speech12-15 May 2022: 3rd ENTAN Conference, University of Constanta
Title of paper: State Recognition and Religious Minority Agency: Towards a new form of Non-Territorial Autonomy?- 28 January 2022: Colloque sur la Loi Confortant le Respect des Principes de la République, Université Paris II – Panthéon Assas
Title of paper: The Limits of Religious Education: Faith Schools in the UK as an alternative option to religious diversity management
- 10 November 2021: EURAC Webinar Series on Federalism and the Law of Diversity: Islands or Archipelago?
Title of paper: Legal Pluralism as Federalism?
- 27-28 October 2021: Symposium on Family and Vulnerability of the International Academy for the Study of the Jurisprudence of the Family, College of Law and Business, Ramat-Gan (Israel)
Title of paper: ‘Regulation of Muslim Religious Minority Groups and the European State: The Unique Case of Legal Pluralism in Greece’
- 24-25 September 2021: 2nd ENTAN Conference, Budapest
Title of paper: ‘Faith Education in Britain: A normative pluralist scenario in the making’
- 2-3 September 2021: Traditional Governance and Women Network – 1st Workshop (North West University, Potchefstroom)
Title of paper: Women, minorities and traditional governance
- 30 August 2021-2 September 2021: 18th Annual Conference of the EASR on Resilient Religion, Pisa (Italy)
Title of paper: ‘Regulation of Muslim Religious Minority Groups and the European State: The Unique Case of Legal Pluralism in Greece’
- 23 August 2021: ECMI Summer School 2022 (Flensburg) -Keynote Lecture
Title of paper: Minorities and the Digital Paradigm
- 6-9 July 2021: ICON Mundo Conference: The Future of Public Law, online
Title of papers: ’Accountability in the globalized digital age: online content moderation & hate speech in the EU’; ‘Hate Speech and Religious Minorities in the Digital Age’
- 9-11 June 2021: JURIS DIVERSITAS 7th General Congress: The Dark Side of the Law
Title of paper: Deconstructing State-Centric Legal Spaces in Europe: The Legacy and Implications of the ECtHR’s Molla Sali Case
- 15 April 2021: Expert Workshop for the European Youth Parliament (Regional Selection Conference for Germany)
Title of workshop: Online Forms of Racism
- Editor of the book series Routledge Advances in Minority Studies (RAMS)
- Visiting Research Fellow – Institute of Comparative Law – University Paris 2 – Assas (France)
- Research Project on ‘Cultural Autonomy, Islamic minority schools and their prospects as forms of NTA in Western Europe’, Short Term Scientific Mission funded by ENTAN COST Action (June 2022)
- Expert on religious minorities for the Advisory Committee of the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities (Council of Europe) 4th report on Switzerland /5th cycle report on Germany
- Assessor for the Global Pluralism Index at the Global Centre for Pluralism (Ottawa/Canada)
- Associate Editor for the Berkeley Comparative Equality & Anti-discrimination Law E-journal (2018-2019)
- Scientific Collaborator at the Institute of Law and Religion at the Faculty of Law of the University of Fribourg/Switzerland
- Member of the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Studies of the University of Flensburg/Germany
- Member of the International Association of Comparative Law Younger Scholars Forum of the American Society for Comparative Law (outreach committee) (2018-2019)
- Member of the Berkeley Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law Study Group
- Member of Juris Diversitas
- Scientific Expert for the International Association for the Defence of Religious Liberty
- Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Law and Religion (published by Cambridge University Press)
- Scientific Reviewer for Ashgate/Routledge, the online journals Religions, Erasmus Law Review and South Asia Research, Law and Social Inquiry, Laws, Social Sciences
- Editor of the Journal for Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues (JEMIE)
- Member of the Assessing Accession Collaborative Research Network
- Board Member of the Research Committee on European Unification (RC-3) of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) (July 2006- July 2009)
- Member of the European Academy of Religion
- Member of the European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network (COST)
- (Co)-supervisor of the postgraduate theses at the University of Flensburg (Germany)
