Prof. Dr. Thomas Duve
Research Interests
Thomas Duve researches legal history from a global perspective. He explores how knowledge of normativity was produced in the early modern period taking into account the entanglements between the secular and religious normative spheres, especially in the Iberian worlds. His work also focuses on the use of the past in law, on colonial law, and on the methods of legal history and of comparative law.
Project Management
Research Projects
Completed Projects
Curriculum Vitae
Thomas Duve was born in Hamburg in 1967. After compulsory military service and an apprenticeship in a bank, he studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Buenos Aires and Munich. He passed the two German State Examinations in Law at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Universität Hamburg, respectively, receiving his practical training in Hamburg. He then worked at the Faculty of Law in Munich, first as a faculty assistant, then as an assistant professor, and 2004–2005 as the leader of a subproject in the Collaborative Research Centre Pluralization and Authority in the Early Modern Age funded by the DFG (CRC 573). He was awarded his doctorate in 1997 and in 2005 gained his professorial qualification (Habilitation) for civil law, German legal history, historical comparative law, canon law and philosophy of law. Between 2005 and 2009, he was Professor of Legal History with a so-called dedicación especial en investigación at the Faculty of Law and Professor of the History of Canon Law at the Faculty of Canon Law of the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA), as well as a member of the board of directors of the Instituto de Investigaciones de Historia del Derecho, Buenos Aires. He became a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society in 2009, and since 2010 has been a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory (formerly Max Planck Institute for European Legal History) as well as Professor for Comparative Legal History at the Faculty of Law of the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt.
Thomas Duve is the (co-)editor of numerous academic journals and publications series, and a member of many scholarly associations, scientific academies and research cooperations (for details, see his full CV).
Publications (Selection, 2018-2024)
Research Communication
Video: Guest presentation | Städel Museum
Video: How Is Normative Knowledge Globalized and Localized?
Article: Die Eroberer sind wieder da
Yearbook 2019 Glocalising Normativities
Yearbook 2015 Regulated self-regulation from a legal historical perspective