Dr. Esra Demir-Gürsel is a legal scholar specializing in international human rights law. Her research draws on international legal theory, political theory, and history to examine the limitations of human rights law in protecting those most vulnerable to marginalization. She has published extensively on a wide range of human rights issues.

Dr. Demir-Gürsel is currently an adjunct lecturer at the Hertie School and a research fellow at its Centre for Fundamental Rights. Prior to this, she was a Georg Forster Fellow at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a visiting scholar at Freie Universität Berlin. She holds a PhD in Public Law from Marmara University, an LL.M. from Istanbul University, and an M.A. in Human Rights from the University of Essex.