Prof. Dr. Katharina de la Durantaye has held the Chair in Civil Law and Digital Law at Humboldt University of Berlin since 2024. Prior to this, she held chairs in Civil Law, Commercial Law, Competition Law and Intellectual Property Law at the Free University of Berlin, as well as in Civil Law and Private Media Law at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder).
Her main areas of research include intellectual property law and the law of digitalisation. Among other things, she focuses on the regulation of digital platforms and copyright law relating to artificial intelligence.
Katharina de la Durantaye studied art history, law and modern German literature, combined with economics and cultural studies, at the Università di Bologna, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and Humboldt University of Berlin. In 2003, she was awarded a PhD for a thesis on the protection of literary authorship in ancient Rome. This was followed by an LL.M. at Yale Law School. She has taught at Boston University School of Law, Columbia Law School and St John’s University School of Law. From 2010 to 2018, she was an assistant professor of civil law, specialising in private international law and comparative law, at Humboldt University of Berlin. There, she completed her habilitation in 2019 on the topic of “Declaration and Intent”.
Since 2025, she has been leading the project “Normative Framework and Legal Options for the Digitisation and Provision of Objects (Still) Protected by Copyright – a scholarly assessment of Work Area 1 of the DFG pilot phase”. The research project examines the legal hurdles and scope for action facing archives, libraries and museums when they wish to digitise more recent, legally protected cultural assets and make them available to researchers via open access. She is also co-editor of the open-access journal Recht und Zugang and the open-access series digital | recht.
Her list of publications can be found at https://www.rewi.hu-berlin.de/de/lf/ls/dld/team/prof-dr-katharina-de-la-durantaye/publikationen.