2023

Two international workshops in February 2024 will explore new approaches in provenance research and examine the tension between unity and plurality in medieval canon law.

The "Münster Glossary on Legal Unity and Pluralism" has been published in a third edition, once again significantly expanded and available in open access. New contributions cover topics like social norms, the concept of citizenship, and privileges in ancient law.

The Käte Hamburger Kolleg welcomes six new fellows for the winter semester. In October, the legal historian Éva Jakab, the legal historian Salvatore Marino, the legal historian Hesi Siimets-Gross and the historian Alexey Tikhomirov took up a fellowship. They were followed in November by the legal historian Ferdinando Mazzarella and the historian Yurii Zazuliak.

In the winter semester 2023/24, the Käte Hamburger Kolleg welcomes Prof. Dr. Nora Markard as Research Professor. The professor of public law at the University of Münster takes over the research professorship for one semester from Dr Gregor Albers, who is currently taking on a substitute professorship at the Chair of Ancient Legal History at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main.

Three international workshops in November will focus on antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the early modern period. An overview of all events in the winter term is now available in the Kolleg’s new programme flyer, which can be downloaded here.
 

As part of the “Conceptual Forum” workshops, the Käte Hamburger Kolleg invites researchers at irregular intervals to interdisciplinary discussions of current methodological and theoretical ideas relevant to work in history and legal history. Fractality and concurrence of norms are on the programme in autumn.

We are pleased to welcome a new cohort of fellows at the Kolleg in autumn. The first fellows in September are the historian and jurist Marie Seong-Hak Kim (St. Cloud State University), the social and economic historian Kaveh Yazdani (University of Connecticut) and the medieval historian Clara Harder (University of Cologne), who already completed a first stay at the Kolleg last year. We wish all fellows a good start in Münster and look forward to a stimulating collaboration.
 

The second annual conference of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg will take place from 25 to 27 September at the LWL Museum für Kunst und Kultur in Münster. This year, the focus will be on modes of legal standardisation – from antiquity to the present. The international conference will bring together researchers from the fields of history, law and anthropology.

Studying historical forms of legal pluralism in different time periods can also provide insights for challenges that society faces today. This is what the directors of the Kolleg, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Ludwig and Prof. Dr. Peter Oestmann, explain in a current interview.

The conference series on legal exception and plurality will continue from 7 to 9 September. After last year’s focus was on Roman law in antiquity, this time the focus is on the Middle Ages and the early modern period.

The Academic Advisory Board of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg „Legal Unity and Pluralism“ has taken on Prof. Dr. Julia Eckert, social anthropologist at the University of Bern, as a new member as of 1 July 2023. The directors of the Kolleg, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Ludwig and Prof. Dr. Peter Oestmann, are delighted that it was possible to recruit such a thematically relevant scholar for the work of the advisory board.

The first EViR Summer School from 24 to 28 July 2023 will deal with the complex relationship between law and social diversity in the early modern period.

At the invitation of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Legal Unity and Pluralism” (EViR) and the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” at the University of Münster, researchers discussed on 22 June the manifold consequences of the Peace of Westphalia 375 years ago and its implications today.

How stable is peace? How can it be maintained after years of war? Next week, researchers invited by the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Legal Unity and Pluralism” (EViR) and the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” at the University of Münster will discuss the long-term consequences of the Peace of Westphalia 375 years ago, and implications that the historical events have for today.

The Conceptual Forum on "Fractality" will take place on 12 and 13 October 2023. Registrations are now open.

A key project of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg is the Münster Glossary on Legal Unity and Pluralism, which has now been published in its second edition. In this interview for the University's dossier "Connected & interdisciplinary", editor-in-chief Dr. Benjamin Seebröker explains the concept and describes the challenges which have to be overcome in interdisciplinary understanding.

The jurist and legal historian Susanne Lepsius was awarded the Brüder Grimm-Preis by the Philipps-Universität Marburg last year. She will receive the prize in Marburg on 5 May 2023.

This workshop calls for original contributions to the restitution debate by framing the expropriation, acquisition, and return of material culture as historical and contemporary epistemic processes that create and erase local, regional, and global (normative) knowledge.

On 25 and 26 May, the workshop „Court Cases in African Archives“ will focus on the African  continent, which is often absent from Global Legal History debates. Working on local archives, with locally produced sources such as court cases, can be a method to overcome this blind spot.

The Käte Hamburger Kolleg welcomes the social anthropologist Prof. Dr. Olaf Zenker as a new fellow in April. Professor Zenker will spend the summer semester at the Kolleg, during which time he will investigate the ongoing process of land restitution in South Africa.

The international workshop "Cultures, Sources and Ideas in the Traditions of Political Advice" on 20 and 21 April 2023, organised by Dr Sophia Mösch, will be devoted to recent developments in the history of political thought.

The conference “Variety of Legal Spaces in Ruthenian Lands of Poland-Lithuania during the Medieval and Early-Modern Times” (21-22 November 2023) is organized by the Humanities Faculty of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv and the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Legal Unity and Pluralism” (EViR) at the University of Münster (WWU).

The next Conceptual Forum on 26 and 27 April 2023, organised by Prof. Dr. Ulrike Ludwig, will tackle the approach of "fractality" (Fraktalität), developed by Christophe Duhamelle and Falk Bretschneider for the history of the Old Empire. The concept relates the spatial structures of the Empire and its elements directly to its political and social order.

The series of EViR Working Papers is expanding: Paper No. 3 is an article by Peter Oestmann, which provides an overview of basic questions of legal pluralism in various epochs of European and German history from a legal-historical perspective. Paper No. 4 by Sebastian M. Spitra documents his key note on the archaeology of European legal pluralism, which he gave during last year’s workshop "Narrating Europe's Pluralities. Unity, Diversity and Exceptionality" at the Kolleg.

The new annual report provides many insights into the year 2022: we were able to organise successful workshops and conferences, including the large annual conference on “Exception and Plurality”, and launched our first publications, especially the steadily expanding “Münster Glossary on Legal Unity and Pluralism”. But above all we were once again able to welcome to Münster many new fellows with exciting research projects.

What is special about the Käte Hamburger Kollegs, what research is conducted here and why is it important for society? This is what our funder, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), asks in a new special on the portal for the humanities and social sciences.

On 23 and 24 February 2023, an international symposium will trace the dynamics between local law and legal coherence. The conference “Ancient Greek Law. Vectors of Local Idiosyncrasy and Unity“, organised by Professor Hans Beck (University of Münster/EViR Fellow) and Professor Kaja Harter-Uibopuu (University of Hamburg), brings together a diverse group of international experts in the fields of Ancient Greek History and the History of Law in Antiquity.

The beginning of the new year also marks the start of two more fellowships at the Kolleg. Historian Radhika Singha (Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi) is an expert on the social history of crime and criminal law. Legal anthropologist Armando Guevara Gil (Universidad para el Desarrollo Andino, Lircay, Peru) is studying legal pluralism in the Andean region.