Staff

Julia Kapelańska-Pręgowska - Academic Profile

Assistant Professor at the Department of Human Rights, Faculty of Law and Administration, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. She holds a PhD in public international law from Nicolaus Copernicus University. She is an alumna of specialised human rights programmes at Europa-Universität Viadrina and the Institut des Droits de l’Homme in Strasbourg, as well as anti-discrimination training at the Academy of European Law (ERA).

She was a visiting researcher at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge, under the Bohdan Winiarski Scholarship in International Law (2017), and at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (July 2025). She serves as Vice-Editor-in-Chief of the Scopus-indexed journal Comparative Law Review. She is a member of the International Law Association (Polish Group), the European Association of Health Law (National Contact Point for Poland), the Open Council of Europe Academic Networks (OCEAN), and represents the Department of Human Rights within the Association of Human Rights Institutes.

Research
Her research focuses on international human rights law and comparative law, with particular emphasis on biomedical standards, anti-discrimination law, pluralism and cultural diversity in IHRL,  and the protection of vulnerable groups. Her PhD dissertation, Legal and Bioethical Aspects of Genetic Testing, received first prize in a nationwide competition for the best doctoral thesis defended in Poland in 2010.

She has led and participated in several research projects, including serving as Principal Investigator on a Polish National Science Centre MINIATURA grant (2017) and as a co-investigator on the IDUB-funded project Freedom or Security? Legal and Ethical Dilemmas of New Digital Technologies – the Perspective of International Human Rights Law and Security Policies (2022–2024). She is a recipient of the START scholarship from the Foundation for Polish Science (2014).

She has authored two monographs, numerous scholarly articles, and co-edited five collective volumes. Her work has appeared in leading journals, including European Journal of Health Law, European Yearbook on Human Rights, Health and Human Rights Journal, and International Community Law Review. She has presented her research at conferences organised by the Council of Europe, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, and academic institutions in Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and across Europe.

Teaching Experience
At Nicolaus Copernicus University, she teaches a core course on human rights protection systems and several electives, including Law and Biomedicine: International and Comparative Perspectives, Human Rights, Pluralism, and Cultural Diversity in Europe, International Protection of Women, Children, and Persons with Disabilities, and Introduction to Anti-Discrimination Law. She has also taught as a visiting lecturer within Erasmus+ mobility programmes at Masaryk University in Brno and the University of Rijeka.

From 2021 to 2026, she served as project supervisor of the Toruń Economic and Legal Summer Program (TELSP). Since 2022, she has collaborated as a guest lecturer with several Ukrainian universities, including Odessa State University of Internal Affairs, the National University of Ostroh Academy, Khmelnytskyi University of Management and Law, and Odessa I. I. Mechnikov National University. She is a certified tutor within the Council of Europe HELP Programme and acts as an NCU team coach and judge in international human rights moot court competitions.

Additional Activities
She is actively involved in initiatives promoting human rights education among diverse audiences, including children, youth, and adults. For ten years, she served as Secretary of the Central Committee of the Nationwide Human Rights Knowledge Competition for secondary school students. She also contributed to the development and implementation of the interdisciplinary project POINT OF VIEW, funded by the National Centre for Culture under the SYNERGIES programme, part of the national cultural programme accompanying Poland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2025. The project included, among other activities, a series of legal-artistic workshops on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the development and publication of an educational book about the European Union for children.