Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Prof. Dr. Philipp Dann

Law and Transformation: Opening Conversations between India and Germany

Project funded by the DAAD

The law equally controls social change and must adapt to it. The challenges of the 21st century, from globalization, digitalization and technological progress to climate change, migration movements, civil protest and global pandemics, also call for changes in the law. The project ‘Law and Transformation: Opening Conversations between India and Germany’ – a collaboration between the Chair of Public Law and Comparative Law (Professor Dr. Philipp Dann) at Humboldt-University’s law faculty and the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) in Bangalore which began in July 2020 – aims to address the many questions concerning the transformation of the law and through the law. The project is funded by the DAAD and the Indian University Grants Commission until 2024 and coordinated by Dr. Tanja Herklotz and Valentin Weigel. They are being supported by the student assistants Dillon Davis and Danae Zolotas

In its interdisciplinary and comparative examination of the law in India, Germany and Europe, the project allows for a focus on very different areas of law - from business law, competition and regulatory law, environmental law to questions of democracy, federalism and human rights.

The project aims to encourage legal scholars to leave the traditional academic paths by looking at legal systems beyond the usual suspects. For German researchers this means leaving Eurocentricism behind and turning their attention to India and more broadly to the Global South. Indian academics are encouraged to consider not only the USA and other Commonwealth countries as objects of legal comparison and as places for potential research and study visits, but to see German and European law as an interesting field of research. The project further seeks to produce innovative research through its interdisciplinary approach and a transnational dialogue. We encourage German and Indian researchers to not only deal with the respective foreign legal system but to also reflect critically on their own legal system. 

To achieve these goals, the project is based on three central pillars. On the one hand, exchange projects for students, doctoral candidates, postdocs and teachers between Berlin and Bangalore are organised on a regular basis. Secondly, the project plans to expand the range of courses on Indian law at Humboldt-University. Thirdly, ‘young scholars workshops’ offer doctoral and post-doctoral researchers an opportunity to present and discuss their comparative research projects among an interdisciplinary German-Indian audience.

 


News & Events

 

More about the planned and previous events in this research project can be found here.