Professor Stefan Vogenauer, MJur (Oxford), FBA
Main Focus
Stefan Vogenauer works mostly in the areas of European legal history, comparative law and transnational private law. He has a particular interest in legal transfers in the common law world, the history of EU law and the comparative history of legal method.
Projects
Curriculum Vitae
Stefan Vogenauer is Director of the Institute and Head of its Department: European and Comparative Legal History. He also chairs Max Planck Law, the network of eleven Max Planck Institutes pursuing legal studies.
Prior to his current positions he held the Chair of Comparative Law at the University of Oxford (2003-15), where he also served as Director of the Oxford Institute of European and Comparative Law and Fellow of Brasenose College.
Professor Vogenauer read law at the Universities of Kiel, Paris and Oxford (MJur 1995) and did his practical training in Regensburg where he also was a research assistant at the university. He went on to be a Senior Research Fellow at the Hamburg Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law.
In 2012 a Humboldt Award was conferred upon him 'in recognition of his lifetime achievements in research'. For his comparative and historical analysis of the interpretation of statutes in English, French, German and EU law, 'Die Auslegung von Gesetzen in England und auf dem Kontinent', he was awarded the Max Weber Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society in 2002, as well as the 2008 Prize of the German Legal History Conference.
Professor Vogenauer has held visiting positions at the Universities of Auckland, Melbourne, Paris 2 – Panthéon Assas and Stellenbosch, and also at Bucerius Law School, Louisiana State University (LSU), National Law University Delhi, National Taiwan University (NTU), New York University (NYU) and the University of Texas at Austin.
Research Communication
Yearbook 2022 Between Think Tank and Law Faculty: Legal Scholarship within the Max Planck Society
Yearbook 2020 Mapping out the contract laws of Asia
Yearbook 2016 The aftermath of Westminster: Decolonisation and state-building in Asia at the end of the British Empire