Dr. Rens is a scholar of the complex interactions of law, knowledge, and innovation. He earned a Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) from Duke University Law School for research on using open copyright licences in education. While at Duke he taught in courses on Access to Medicines and Global Health Innovation. He was the first person to be awarded a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellowship for his work on access to knowledge, IP law reform and open education. Andrew Rens has been a fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, a research associate at the LINK Center at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and at the University of Cape Town Intellectual Property Law Research Unit. He is admitted as an attorney in South Africa.

He was the founding Legal Lead of Creative Commons South Africa, and co-founded two non-profit organisations, The African Commons Project and Freedom to Innovate South Africa.

He earned a Master of Laws from the Law School at the University of the Witwatersrand where he later taught Master’s courses in Intellectual Property, Telecommunications, Broadcasting, Space and Satellite, and Media and Information Technology Law. He has also taught Master’s courses in Telecommunications Law and Electronic Intellectual Property Law at the University of Cape Town Law School.