CV

Franziska Bächler studied law at the Universities of Fribourg and Stockholm. After being admitted to the bar in the Canton of Bern, she worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Private and Business Law held by Prof. Dr. Hans Caspar von der Crone at the University of Zurich, where she earned her doctorate with a thesis on the remuneration of directors and executives at banks.

She then practised as an attorney at Schellenberg Wittmer in Zurich before joining F. Hoffmann-La Roche, where she served as Senior Legal Counsel from 2014 to 2022. In this role, she advised on research and development projects and drafted agreements at the intersection of contract, intellectual property and competition law. She negotiated these agreements with predominantly international counterparties and oversaw their implementation. She also advised on regulatory matters in life sciences and competition law. Alongside her work, she completed a postgraduate degree in European Competition Law at King's College London.

Since 2022, she has been Academic Coordinator of the Center for Life Sciences Law and a post­doctoral researcher at the University of Basel. From October 2022 to December 2025, she contributed to research and teaching at the Chair of Private Law, Company Law and Business Law held by Prof. Dr. Corinne Zellweger-Gutknecht. In the spring semester of 2026, she held a Postdoc Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt am Main. During her stay, she developed the theoretical foundations of her habilitation project and discussed her research with other scholars.

Her research focuses on private law and the regulation of new technologies, in particular where contract, intellectual property and data law meet. It is embedded in interdisciplinary collaborative projects, notably on data governance and genome editing.

Since June 2026, she has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Chair of Private Law, Civil Procedure Law, and Debt Enforcement and Insolvency Law held by Prof. Dr. Christoph Bauer at the University of Lucerne. She teaches private law and company law at the Universities of Basel and Lucerne.

Publications

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Achievements