New fellows in April / Welcome Day

The Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Legal Unity and Pluralism” at the University of Münster is starting the summer semester with fresh impetus. In April, we warmly welcome a new group of fellows. Seven scholars from the fields of history, law, anthropology and sociology will be researching the topic of legal unity and legal pluralism and enriching the Kolleg with their different perspectives.

On 29 April, from 11.30 to 15.30, everyone interested will have the opportunity to get to know our fellows better. On "Welcome Day", the Kolleg’s official opening of the semester, all new fellows will present their research projects in 15-minute talks. There will also be plenty of opportunity for academic discussions as well as informal chats during the breaks. If you would like to attend, please register by email to info.evir@uni-muenster.de by 12 April.

The new fellows in profile:

Prof. Dr. Ulrich Falk (fellowship: April 2024 – March 2025)
Ulrich Falk is a legal scholar and held the Chair of Civil Law, Rhetoric and European Legal History at the University of Mannheim until 2024. His research focuses on legal history, particularly in the field of German private law in the 19th and 20th centuries. At the Kolleg, he will be working intensively on the history of German and European bankruptcy and insolvency law. The title of his research project is "Compulsory Composition in the German Bankruptcy Act for the German Empire."

Dr. Raquel Gil Montero (fellowship: April 2024 – June 2024)
Raquel Gil Montero is a historian and senior researcher at the Institute of Human, Social and Environmental Sciences of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research in Mendoza, Argentina. Her research focuses on the history of labour relations, Indigenous population and mining, as well as the social history of the Andes from the 16th to the 19th century. Her research project at the Kolleg is entitled "Working Under Colonial Rule. Legal Unity and Pluralism in Seventeenth-Century Bolivia".

Prof. Dr. Sebastian Lohsse (fellowship: April 2024 – September 2024)
Sebastian Lohsse is a legal scholar and holds the Chair of Roman Law and Comparative Legal History, Civil Law and European Private Law at the University of Münster. His research focuses on the law of obligations and property law from a comparative and historical perspective, Roman law in antiquity and the Middle Ages, the standardisation of private law in Europe and the reception of continental European civil law in East Asia. In the summer semester, he takes up a Münster Fellowship at the Kolleg.

Dr. Giacomo Mariani (fellowship: April 2024 – September 2024)
Giacomo Mariani is a historian and literary scholar. Most recently, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Modena. His studies focus on the religious, social and intellectual history of Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries, with a particular interest in popular preaching, the Holy Office, religious dissent, juridical sources and early modern juridical archives. The title of his research project at the Kolleg is "Legal Plurality in Sixteenth-Century Papal State. A Case-Study on the Inquisition Trial Against the Portuguese Jews of Ancona (1555-1556)."

Dr. Ido Shahar (fellowship: April 2024 – September 2024)
Ido Shahar is a historian and anthropologist and currently a senior lecturer at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Haifa. His main research areas are law and legal pluralism in Muslim societies with a particular focus on religious courts as institutions, including shari’a courts, ecclesiastical courts and Druze courts. At the Kolleg, he will devote himself to his book project "Ecclesiastical Courts in the Holy Land: Church and State, Autonomy and Anarchy in a Pluri-Legal Environment."

Dr. Daniel Witte (fellowship: April 2024 – March 2025)
Daniel Witte is a sociologist and currently senior research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies "Multiple Secularities" at Leipzig University. His research focuses on sociological theory, globalisation and transnationalisation as well as intersections and interactions between religion, law and politics. His research project at the Kolleg investigates legal criticism, justification strategies and struggles for legitimacy using the example of the Reichsbürger scene and the climate movement.

Prof. Dr. Olaf Zenker (fellowship: April 2024 – September 2024)
Olaf Zenker is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Focusing on Southern Africa, Northern Ireland and Germany, his research has dealt with political and legal issues such as statehood, bureaucracy, the rule of law, normative pluralities, modernity, inequality, justice, conflict and identity formations. His research project at the Kolleg is entitled "Land Restitution and the Moral Modernity of the New South African State".

We wish all fellows a good start in Münster and look forward to a stimulating collaboration.