People

Kristen A. Stilt is Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at the Law School. She is also the Director of Harvard Law School’s Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World.

Prior to coming 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 (three of whom now reside here in Cambridge). Egyptian animal issues also became a focus of Professor Stilt’s scholarship and she currently is working on a comparative analysis of the inclusion of an animal welfare provision in the 2014 Egyptian Constitution. Professor Stilt recently discussed the convergence of these issues in a Harvard Law Today feature entitled, The Intersection of Animals, Law, and Religion.

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.

Stilt received a JD from the University of Texas School of Law, where she was an associate editor of the Texas Law Review and co-editor-in-chief of the Texas Journal of Women in the Law. Stilt holds a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University.

Below you can see three publications that are representative of Kristen’s work, a presentation by her, a selection of news related to her work with the Program, and media stories in which she has been mentioned or quoted.

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

• “Constitutional Innovation and Animal Protection in Egypt,” Law & Social Inquiry 43(4) (2018): 1-27.
• “Law,” in Critical Terms for Animal Studies, ed. Lori Gruen (University of Chicago Press, 2018).
• Islamic Law in Action: Authority, Discretion, and Everyday Experiences in Mamluk Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2011).