Prof Sandra Liebenberg is Professor and HF Oppenheimer Chair in Human Rights Law in the Faculty of Law, University of Stellenbosch where she teaches and supervises students in human rights law at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Her research focuses on socio-economic rights as fundamental human rights within South African constitutional law, comparative constitutional law and international human rights law. Her research draws on theoretical perspectives from the diverse fields of politics, philosophy, economics and social development.

Over the course of her career, her research has had considerable national and international impact, and she has won several awards for research excellence. In 2022 she received an A1 rating from South Africa’s National Research Foundation, recognising her as a leading scholar in her field of socio-economic rights internationally for the exceptional quality and wide-ranging impact of her research. Her research has been cited on several occasions by the Constitutional Court of South Africa as well as by other national and international human rights bodies. She also regularly gives advice to national and international governmental bodies and civil society organisations on human rights issues, particularly in her field of socio-economic rights.

She has also played a leading role in national and international human rights committees and policy initiatives. Highlights include being appointed as Chair of the Legal Technical Committee advising South Africa’s Constitutional Assembly on the drafting of the Bill of Rights in the post-apartheid 1996 Constitution. In 2010 the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights appointed her as one of the two lead drafters of the Principles and Guidelines of the Implementation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In 2016 she was nominated by the South African government and elected by the UN Economic and Social Council to serve a four-year term as an independent expert on the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (2017 – 2020). This is the body that supervises compliance by State Parties with their obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. During the last two years of her term, she served as Vice-Chair of this body.

From 2021 - 2025 she chaired the International Drafting Group of the Maastricht IV project to develop Legal Principles and a comprehensive Commentary on the Human Rights of Future Generations. These were published in 2025 by the leading international law journal, Human Rights Quarterly.

Her Chair regularly organises seminars and conferences on human rights related themes, as well as an annual human rights lecture series consisting of lectures delivered by leading jurists, practitioners and scholars in the field of human rights law. In 2026 the Chair celebrated the 20th anniversary of this lecture series.