Sebastian M. Spitra is new research professor
The legal historian Dr Sebastian M. Spitra from the University of Vienna has taken over the research professorship at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Legal Unity and Pluralism’ (EViR) on 1 October 2024. He succeeds Dr Gregor Albers and will help shape the programme of the Kolleg as part of the management team until May 2025.
Spitra completed his studies in law and philosophy at the University of Vienna in 2018 with a PhD in international law and served his legal clerkship (Referendariat) at the Higher Regional Court of Vienna in 2020. After completing his LL.M. studies in Michigan and several months as a Visiting Post-Doc at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, he has been a Post-Doc Researcher at the Institute for Legal and Constitutional History at the University of Vienna since 2020.
Before taking up the research professorship, Spitra was already a fellow at the Kolleg. During this time, he worked intensively on the history of private international law. As conflict of laws, it does not itself contain substantive legal provisions but determines which law should apply to a particular legal relationship. Spitra has analysed how, since the 19th century and thus in a time of emerging nation states, a conflict of laws has developed that regulates legal relationships transnationally in a reasonably friction-free manner. His findings will soon be published as part of the Cambridge History of International Law.
Spitra is also involved in three sub-projects focussing on other dimensions of legal pluralism. Together with EViR staff member Dr João Figueiredo, he is carrying out the project ‘The Legal Pluralism of Heritage’, combining insights from cultural studies and the material turn with a specific application in jurisprudence, namely legal discourses on the restitution of cultural assets of colonial provenance. At the same time, he is currently completing a monograph that provides an overview of the relationship between colonialism and law in the early modern period, the modern era and the era of decolonisation. In his third sub-project ‘Privatrechtsgeschichte als Imperiengeschichte. Neue Wege zur Rechtsgeschichte des Habsburgerreiches’, he focuses on the legal history of Austria-Hungary and addresses the question of what the history of private law can contribute to a better understanding of the Habsburg Empire as an empire.
As part of his research professorship, Spitra would like to focus above all on the exchange with international colleagues and interdisciplinary discourse. “It's a privilege,” says the legal historian in an interview, “to be able to sit alongside anthropologists, sociologists, historians and lawyers in order to enter into a dialog about common questions or research problems with our different professional and geographical backgrounds.” Concrete research projects and collaborations are constantly emerging from the suggestions and ideas gained in this way.