Stella Burch Elias
Overview
Stella Burch Elias is Professor of Law and Bouma Family Fellow in Law at the University of Iowa College of Law. She specializes in public international and comparative law, with a focus on United States and foreign immigration and nationality laws.
Professor Elias earned her B.A. and M.A. from Oxford University, her J.D. from Yale Law School, and completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School.
Since joining the Iowa Law faculty in 2012, Professor Elias has been consistently recognized for her classroom teaching, receiving the University of Iowa’s highest teaching honor, the President and Provost’s Award for Teaching Excellence, as well as the Hubbard-Walder Award for Excellence in Teaching, the James N. Murray Faculty Award, and the Collegiate Teaching Award (for the College of Law’s “Teacher of the Year”).
Research areas
- Immigration Law and Policty
- Refugee Law and Policy
- Nationality and Citizenship Law
- Comparative Law
- Public International Law
Teaching areas
- Civil Procedure
- Immigration Law and Policy
- International Law
- Comparative Law
- Law and Literature
Professional affiliations and memberships
- Iowa Bar
- Iowa State Bar Association
- American Society of International Law
- American Immigration Lawyers Association
Awards and honors
- University of Iowa Hubbard-Walder Award for Excellence in Teaching (2026)
- University of Iowa President and Provost’s Award for Teaching Excellence (2021)
- University of Iowa College of Law Collegiate Teaching Award (2019)
- City of Iowa City Rick Graf Human Rights Award (2017)
- University of Iowa James N. Murray Faculty Award (2015)
