Professor Dubravka Hrabar was born on 31 July 1956 in Trogir. She finished the Classical gymnasium in Zagreb and, in 1979, graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb. She obtained her master’s degree from the Faculty of Law in Zagreb after completing the Postgraduate study of International Public and Private Law and International Relations and writing the thesis entitled ‘The Form of Will in International Private Law’.

She was a judicial trainee from January to September 1980, and from November 1980, she was employed as an associate expert at the Institute for International Law and International Relations of the Faculty of Law in Zagreb. In 1987, she was elected as an assistant in the course Family Law. She defended her doctoral dissertation on the rights of children in family relationship at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb on 3 October 1991. In 1992, she was elected as a research associate and assistant professor in the Family Law course, and in 1997, as an associate professor. She was elected to the position of full professor and scientific advisor in 2001, an as a full professor with tenure in 2007.

She was the head of the Institute for Civil Legal Sciences and Family Law from 2001, and from 1998 to 2021 the head of the Department of Family Law., From 2005. to 2009.  she was the president and from 2009 to 2013,  a member of the Scientific Field Committee for Social Sciences – the field of law of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports.  From 2009 to 2012, she was the president of the National Committee for Medica Fertilization of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. She was the dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb in the academic years 2015/16 and 2016/17.

She has participated in and has been the leader of several projects of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports, the Faculty of Law, UNICEF, the University of Zagreb, the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare.

She teaches at the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.

She has been a member and/or head of working groups of various ministries for drafting of several legislative proposals and provisions, a member of the Council for Children at the State Institute for the Protection of Motherhood of Children and Youth, on three occasions a member of the delegation of the Republic of Croatia for the defence of reports on children’s rights (and the main expert in the drafting of the first report on the state of children’s rights in the Republic of Croatia) at the Committee for Children’s Rights in Geneva, a member of the Committee for Ethics and Deontology of the Croatian Medical Association and several government working groups. During her scientific career, she has spent study stays at the London School of Economics, Asser Institute The Hague, Netherlands, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany.

In 2000, she was elected as a permanent external scientific advisor to the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia. She is an external associate of the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography for legal publications and the editor of the field of family law.

In 2005, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award for the Promotion of Children’s Rights from the Government of the Republic of Croatia (Ministry of Family, Veterans and Intergenerational Solidarity).

She has published more than 160 papers – scientific and professional, in both domestic and foreign publications. She has authored three books, co-authored 22 books, and edited five books. She has participated in more than 70 international and domestic scientific and professional conferences presenting her own papers.

From 2004 to 2012, she was the editor-in-chief of the Collected Papers of the Faculty of Law in Zagreb and a member of the editorial boards of several journals.

She is a member of various domestic and foreign professional organizations. Since 2000, she has been a founding member of the Croatian Academy of Legal Sciences. She was also a member of the Ethics Commission in the election of the representatives to the Croatian Parliament (2020) and a member of Iustitia et Pax (2019).

At the postgraduate level, she was the head of the Postgraduate study of Civil Law Sciences at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb (2020-2012), and the lecturer for the course entitled ‘Selected Institutes of Family Law’ within the same program. She teaches at the Postgraduate study of Theory and Methodology of Social Work at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb. She was a lecturer at the Postgraduate study of Ultrasound in Clinical Medicine – Gynecology and Obstetrics at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Zagreb, at the Postgraduate study of Pedagogical Sciences at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, for the Postgraduate study of Civil Sciences and Commercial Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana (2005) and the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo (1998). She has been a lecturer of a family law course at Pocherstroom University, South Africa. She was the head of the University interdisciplinary postgraduate study of Children’s Rights at the University of Zagreb (2011).

She teaches undergraduate courses at the Study of Law and at the Social Work Study Centre of the Faculty of Law in Zagreb as well as at the Study Centre for Public Administration.

She has supervised seven master’s theses and seven doctoral dissertations.

She speaks and writes German, English, French and Italian, and knows ancient Greek and Latin.