Photo: Mat Stefanic
Ass.-Prof.
Dr. Lena Hornkohl, LL.M.
Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) for European Law
Schottenbastei 10-16 (Juridicum)
1010 Wien
Stiege 1, 5. Stock, Raum 516
T: +43-1-4277-35904
E-Mail: lena.hornkohl (at) univie.ac.at
Curriculum Vitae and Research Interests
Lena Hornkohl’s work focuses on European and German private law, economic law, and civil procedure, with particular attention to their respective doctrinal foundations, developments, and interrelations. A central concern of her research is the systematic interconnection of different fields and levels of law, especially the interplay between national law, EU law, and international law.
In the field of private law, her research focuses in particular on liability law and on the development and effects of European regulatory instruments. She examines their integration into national private law as well as the interfaces between substantive law, private international law, and civil procedure. In economic law, her research concentrates on national, European, and international competition and platform regulation, State aid law, the law on third-country subsidies, foreign trade law, and digital and data protection law. At the heart of her work are the systematic and doctrinal interactions between these fields of law, as well as the interweaving of EU and national regulatory levels. In civil procedure, Prof. Hornkohl examines national, European, and international procedural regimes in their various forms. One focus lies on the individual and collective judicial and extrajudicial enforcement of economic law claims, particularly against the backdrop of digital developments.
Lena Hornkohl studied law in Heidelberg and Uppsala. After passing the First State Examination in Law in 2014, she completed her legal traineeship at the Higher Regional Court of Karlsruhe, including a placement at the European Commission, and passed the Second State Examination in Law in 2016. In 2019, she obtained an LL.M. in European Law and Economic Analysis from the College of Europe in Bruges. In 2020, she received her doctorate from Heidelberg University with a dissertation on “Protection of Trade Secrets in Cartel Damages Litigation”. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge (2017), the University of Graz (2022), and the University of Chile (2023).
From 2014 to 2019, she was a research assistant at the Chair of Civil Law, Commercial, Corporate and Economic Law, European Law and Comparative Law of Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Peter-Christian Müller-Graff at Heidelberg University. In 2019, she joined an international law firm in Brussels as an attorney in European competition law. In 2020, she became Senior Research Fellow in the Department of European and Comparative Procedural Law at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law. Since 2022, she has been Tenure-Track Professor of European Law at the University of Vienna. At the same time, she is pursuing her habilitation project on a topic in civil law at Heidelberg University, supervised by Prof. Dr. Dres. h. c. Burkhard Hess, Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Thomas Pfeiffer, and Prof. Dr. Christian Heinze.
Lena Hornkohl was awarded the Young Scholars’ Prize of the German Society of Comparative Law in 2017; her publications have been nominated several times for the Antitrust Writing Award, which she won in 2026 in the “Private Enforcement” category. Her study and research stays have been supported by scholarships and grants, among others, from the German Academic Exchange Service, the European Commission, and the Province of Styria.
She is Co-Principal Investigator of the externally funded research project “Empowering Growth: State Aid and Industrial Policy in the European Union” and a member of the project team conducting the study for the European Commission on the review and simplification of the Foreign Subsidies Regulation.
She is President of IUS Omnibus, Advisor to CELIS, and a member of the Steering Group of the Women in Competition Law Network Austria (WCNA). Lena Hornkohl organizes numerous academic events, some of them externally funded, and has long been particularly committed to networking and supporting early-career scholars, including as a founding member of the early-career networks “Early Career Competition Law Scholars Conferences” and “Max Planck European Law Group”, as well as co-initiator of the “Ruben Perea Award for Early Career Competition Lawyers and Economists”.
Lena Hornkohl has taught at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the University of Trier, Heidelberg University, the European University Institute, Ghent University, the Sommerhochschule of the University of Vienna, the University of Applied Sciences for the Administration of Justice of North Rhine-Westphalia, and the Judicial Academy of North Rhine-Westphalia. She is actively involved in both the European Law Moot Court and the Austrian Competition Law Moot Court. In 2025, she obtained the Teaching Competence Plus Certificate of the University of Vienna; in 2026, she was awarded the Student Teaching Award in the category “Best Exam Preparation” by the Law Students’ Representation of the University of Vienna.
Lena Hornkohl is co-editor of the Journal of European Competition Law & Practice (JECLAP), Multimedia und Recht – Zeitschrift für IT-Recht und Recht der Digitalisierung (MMR), EU Law Live Competition Corner, and Kluwer Competition Law Blog.
She is a member of Amnesty International Germany, Arbeitskreis Europäische Integration e. V., Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA) e. V., Competition Litigation Forum e. V., Deutsch-Französische Juristenvereinigung e. V., Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationales Recht e. V., Gesellschaft für Rechtsvergleichung e. V., Gesellschaft Junge Zivilrechtswissenschaft (GJZ) e. V., and Österreichische Gesellschaft für Europarecht (ÖGER) e. V.
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