Beat Schönenberger, Associate Professor of Private Law, Art Law and Comparative Law
Beat Schönenberger (1969) graduated from the University of Basel, Faculty of Law, in 1994; between 1995 and 1997 he worked as a research and teaching assistant for Professor Ingeborg Schwenzer (Basel University); in 1997 he was a visiting scholar to Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley (USA) before receiving his PhD summa cum laude from Basel University one year later. Between 1999 and 2003 he served as a clerk at the Basel Civil Court (Zivilgericht Basel-Stadt) and was admitted to the Bar of Basel-Stadt in 2001. Since 2002 he has been Lecturer in Private Law at the Universities of Basel and St. Gallen, Switzerland. In 2009 the Faculty of Law at the University of Basel awarded him the venia legendi for Private Law, Art Law and Comparative Law based on his comparative study ‘The Restitution of Cultural Assets’, which was published in German by Stämpfli Publishers Berne in spring 2009; the English edition was published in September 2009 by the same publisher in cooperation with Eleven International Publishing (Utrecht, the Netherlands). Beat Schönenberger is a member of the Committee of Cultural Heritage Law of the International Law Association. Since November 2009 he has been working as a lawyer for the Swiss Federal Office of Justice, Department of Private International Law.