Amazon of rights

The project investigates how ecocentric normativity interacts with social realities in an important ecosystem of planetary relevance, the Amazon river system, using comparative law and visual ethnographic practice, especially documentary film, as methods of interdisciplinary research. The project is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation from 2023 to 2025 and will be realised with partners in Potsdam, Melbourne, Kent and the Amazon region.

Varieties of Constitutionalism

This German-Brazilian project analyses challenges of and alternatives to liberalism in comparative constitutional law with a focus on German, Brazilian and their regional contexts. It is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and its Brazilian counterpart CAPES from 2020 to 2024.

Global Justice Clinic

The Global Justice Clinic Erfurt combines legal teaching and activism. In this interactive format, students work on real cases with practice partners and acquire legal skills through research-based learning. The Clinic is being funded by the Foundation for Innovation in Lecturer with €400,000 from 2024-2026.

International law blog and WCL/VRÜ

Michael Riegner is co-editor of the DFG-funded international law blog, which he co-founded in 2014 and supports with his team in Erfurt. Find out more here.

WCL/VRÜ is the only legal journal published in Germany that has focussed exclusively on legal developments in the Global South since 1968. The journal is co-edited by Michael Riegner and has been based in Erfurt since 2023. Find out more here.

Economics, Law and Social Sciences Forum

The Economics, Law and Social Sciences Forum e.V. (SWF) is dedicated to the exchange between academia, business, legal practice, the state and society. Michael Riegner is chairman of the SWF. Further information can be found on the Forum's website.

Postcolonial hierarchies in Peace and Conflict

The BMBF-funded network investigates how historically shaped postcolonial hierarchies manifest themselves in today's conflict dynamics and what implications this has for sustainable conflict transformation in the future. To this end, the network brings together historical perspectives on the contexts of conflict emergence (especially those characterised by colonialism) with postcolonial research perspectives as well as methods and theories of peace and conflict research.

Security Capitalism Research Group

The research group examines the increasing overlap between security and economics and combines research on security policy (Professor Hoffmann), political economy (Professor Kessler), law (Professor Riegner) and public policy (Professor Goldthau) with the interdisciplinary bridging concept of geoeconomics.

Graduate centres

Michael Riegner is a professorial member of the graduate centres Center for Political Practices and Orders and Effective and Innovative Policymaking in Contested Contexts, which promote structured doctoral training and interdisciplinary legal research.