Kinanya is Assistant Professor in Private Law at the Amsterdam Law School. She specialises in sustainable finance and the role of law in the transition towards a more sustainable economy. She holds a Ph.D. degree from the European University Institute in Florence. In her dissertation, she explores the role of banks in the transition towards a more socially and environmentally responsible economy. For her research, Kinanya has conducted extensive qualitative empirical research in the Netherlands, Germany and England to understand banks, central banks and civil society organisations from within. In her dissertation, Kinanya develops a counter-narrative for a more sustainable approach to sustainable banking in Europe.

The upcoming years, Kinanya will continue her work on sustainable finance, including on: (1) the relationship between banks and society; (2) legal tools that serve a more sustainable economy; and (3) de facto regulation and regulators in our global economy. Moreover, Kinanya is part of Prof. Marija Bartl’s team that will conduct a 5-year study into how private law can nurture socially and environmentally non-extractive economic practices. This ERC funded project is titled ‘Law as a Vehicle of Social Change: Mainstreaming Non-Extractive Economic Practices’. In addition, Kinanya supervises bachelor and master theses and teaches courses in the domains of financial law, company law and contract law. Kinanya is part of both the Amsterdam Centre for Transformative Private Law (ACT) and the interdisciplinary UvA Sustainable Global Economic Law (SGEL) research project.

Kinanya aims to use her use her academic insights in the context of organisational ethics and responsible business conduct to help transform the way companies do business in practice. To this end, she acts as a consultant to help organisations resolve their most challenging ethical problems. Kinanya holds an LLM in Comparative, European and International Laws from the European University Institute; an LLM in Legal Research (cum laude) from Utrecht University; and an LLB in Law from Utrecht University.