Kristen Stilt

Faculty Director of the Animal Law & Policy Program
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Harvard Law School
Professor of Law
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Harvard Law School
Director of the Islamic Legal Studies Program
,
Harvard Law School
Deputy Dean
,
Harvard Law School

Biography

Kristen Stilt is Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School. Prior to HLS, Stilt was Harry R. Horrow Professor in International Law at Northwestern Law School and Professor of History at Northwestern University.

Stilt’s interest in animal issues escalated while conducting research in Egypt for her PhD in Middle Eastern Studies. While there she became involved with several animal advocacy groups, and still helps fund an Egyptian animal rescue project—in addition to personally rescuing dozens of dogs and cats off the streets of Cairo.

She was named a Carnegie Scholar for her work on constitutional Islam, and in 2013 was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. She has also received awards from Fulbright and Fulbright-Hays.

Publications include Islamic Law in Action (Oxford University Press, 2011); “Constitutional Innovation and Animal Protection in Egypt,” Law & Social Inquiry (2018); and “Law” in Critical Terms for Animal Studies, edited by Lori Gruen (University of Chicago Press, 2018). She is currently working on a new book project entitled Halal Animals, to be published by Oxford University Press.

Her research focuses on animal law, and in particular the intersection of animal law and religious law; Islamic law and society; and comparative constitutional law.