Ms. Claudia Mahler is an Austrian academic and the second UN Independent Expert on the human rights of older persons at the United Nations Human Rights Council, a role she assumed in May 2020. She has been a senior researcher at the German Institute for Human Rights since 2010, focusing on economic, social, and cultural rights. She was also a visiting professor at Alice Salomon Hochschule in 2020-2021.
From 2001 to 2009, Ms. Mahler conducted research at the Human Rights Centre of the University of Potsdam, specializing in human rights education, minority rights, and asylum law. In 2000, she was appointed Vice President of the Human Rights Commission for Tyrol and Vorarlberg. Ms. Mahler has lectured on human rights law and consulted for OHCHR in Geneva. From 1997 to 2001, she worked as an assistant in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedures at Leopold-Franzens-University Innsbruck. She received her doctoral degree in 2000.