Dr. Lena-Maria Möller

Dr. Lena-Maria Möller is a Research Assistant Professor at the College of Law, Qatar University, where she is affiliated with the Center for Law and Development. She specializes in comparative law, private international law, and contemporary Middle Eastern legal systems. She holds a Ph.D. in Law and an M.A. in Middle East Studies, both from the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her research applies comparative legal methods and theories to explore the interplay between state, religious, and international legal regimes in pluralistic legal contexts, with a particular focus on legislative developments and judicial practices in Muslim family law.

Scholarship from her research projects has been published in Middle East Law and Governance, International Journal of the Legal Profession, The American Journal of Comparative Law, and Journal of Private International Law, among other journals. Her work has received several distinctions, including the Otto Hahn Medal from the Max Planck Society and the Dissertation Award from the Faculty of Law at the University of Hamburg.

Dr. Möller is the Associate Editor of Arab Law Quarterly and an alumna and former Co-President of the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Prior to joining Qatar University, she was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg and held teaching positions at the Universities of Münster, Leipzig, and Augsburg.

Lena-Maria Möller will contribute two smaller case studies on selected aspects of the pre- to post-colonial transition of Qatar's legal and judicial system. The first study will scrutinize the tribal councils, judicial tribunals that existed in the Gulf sheikhdoms prior to the emergence of independent nation states, but that were not institutionalized in the newly established State of Qatar after 1971. The study will examine the reasons behind the tribunals' demise and question the influence of internal and external factors for their abolition in favor of Sharia courts. The second study will be an inquiry into the potentials for establishing an archive that preserves Qatar's legal history, especially from the 20th century onwards. The study will engage with recent attempts to make the country's oral history accessible to the public and investigate the current state of preservation of legal historical documents.

List of Publications (PDF)

• LinkedIn
• Scopus
• ORCID