Namibian-born Klaus D. Beiter holds B.Iur. LL.B. degrees (both obtained with distinction) from the University of South Africa, Pretoria, and a doctorate in international human rights law (obtained summa cum laude) from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, where he wrote his thesis on the right to education in international law under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Bruno Simma (formerly a Judge at the International Court of Justice). Since 1998, he is admitted as a Legal Practitioner of the High Court of Namibia.

He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich for seven years (2006-2013), before undertaking a two-year Marie Curie fellowship at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom, carrying out research on academic freedom as a human right (2013-2015). He was an Affiliated Research Fellow of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition for ten years (2013-2022). From 2006 until 2013, he served as the Legal Manager of the International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law, issued by the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition.

In 2016, Prof. Beiter joined the Faculty of Law of North-West University in Potchefstroom as an Associate Professor. Since 2023, he is a (full) Professor. He teaches LL.B. and LL.M. modules in Intellectual Property Law, Socio-Economic Rights, and International Social Justice.

His research focuses on the right to education, to higher education, and education law, the right to science, science law, academic/scientific freedom, intellectual property rights, especially copyright law, international human rights law, the extraterritorial application of human rights, law and development, the right to development, and law and language.

He wrote the first English-language monograph on the right to education in international law (Martinus Nijhoff, 2006). Some of his articles have appeared in prestigious academic journals, such as the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, the Georgetown Journal of International Law, or the International Journal of Human Rights. He is currently co-editing a Research Handbook on the Right to Education (Edward Elgar). He has started drafting a monograph on the right to science and copyright and another on the right to (free) higher education.

He is a member of the Consortium for Human Rights Beyond Borders in Heidelberg, an adviser to the global Right to Education Initiative in London, one of sixteen ambassadors to the Observatory Magna Charta Universitatum in Bologna, and, occasionally, a consultant to UNESCO.

He is a member of the International Society of Public Law (ICON-S), the European Society of International Law (ESIL), the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property (ATRIP), and the South African Association of Intellectual Property Law and Information Technology Law Teachers and Researchers (AIPLITL).

He is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal for Education Law and Policy, issued by the European Association for Education Law and Policy, and a corresponding editor of GRUR International, the Journal of European and International IP Law, issued by the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition.