Faculty/Staff Profile Title

Professor Carstens writes and speaks widely on legal issues at the intersections of cultural heritage, public international law, and property law. Prior to joining the University of Baltimore School of Law, she taught Property and IP courses as a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center and taught Property, Civil Procedure, and lawyering courses as a full-time professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. She also taught property and IP courses for several years in London-based international law programs for Georgetown Law-University College London and for the University of Tulsa Law School, and she co-chaired Art & Cultural Heritage certificate program offered through Georgetown Law Executive Education.

In 2024, she was selected by the American Society of International Law (ASIL) for the Vagts Roundtable, which annually recognizes an emerging scholar in international or transnational law. She also was appointed to an international expert committee of the International Law Association (ILA) for a committee drafting a report on protecting cultural heritage during armed conflict and previously served as an expert advisor on cultural property issues at the U.S. Department of State. She has presented widely on issues concerning the legal protection of cultural sites and artifacts, including at U.S. federal government institutions, the Acropolis Museum, Chatham House (Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs, London), and leading universities worldwide. Her books include Intersections in International Cultural Heritage Law (as co-editor and contributor) and Safeguarding Cultural Property During Armed Conflict (forthcoming). In addition, she has authored book chapters, law review articles, and other works on a range of topics covering international criminal law and the law of armed conflict, takings, copyright law, treaty interpretation, special masters in the Supreme Court, and cultural heritage law, including in the Minnesota Law Review, the University of Colorado Law Review, the Washington Law Review, the Maryland Law Review, the Harvard International Law Journal, the Stanford Journal of International Law, the American Journal of International Law, the British Year Book of International Law, and the American Journal of Legal History. She also serves as a deputy editor and reviewer for peer-reviewed publications.

After law school, Carstens clerked for Judge Diana Gribbon Motz on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and practiced litigation in Washington and in London at WilmerHale. She received her J.D. cum laude from Georgetown Law, where she served as Executive Articles Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. While completing her DPhil in Law (research doctorate in Public International Law), she was competitively selected by the Oxford Law Faculty for a research residency at Yale Law School and awarded a grant for summer study at the Hague Academy of International Law.