The Multiplication of Authorities in Global Governance Institutions (MAGGI)

Research Group Leader Mende, Janne

Janne Mende is a political scientist with a specialization in International Relations. The awardee of the Franz-Xaver-Kaufmann-Prize 2022 heads the Research Group MAGGI since 2020. She also leads DFG-funded projects in the issue area of business and human rights. Prior to her time at the MPIL, she has held positions as deputy professor for Transnational Governance at the Technical University of Darmstadt, project leader at the Institute for Political Sciences at the University of Giessen, and visiting positions at the WZB – Berlin Social Science Center, Research Unit Global Governance and the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research at the University Duisburg-Essen, among others.

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mende@mpil.de

Auethavornpipat, Ruji

Ruji Auethavornpipat is a Senior Research Fellow in the reserach group. He is researching the constitution of international organizations’ authority in the migration regime complex. His research also examines the contestation of global migrant protection norms at sites of implementation, especially in Southeast Asia. Prior to joining MAGGI in January 2022, he was a Research Fellow at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, the Australian National University.

Friedrichs, Gordon

Gordon Friedrichs is a Senior Research Fellow in the research group. He specializes in International Relations and Comparative Foreign Policy Analysis. His research focuses on (1) the impact of polarization and populism on democracies' foreign policymaking, with particular emphasis on the United States; (2) resilience and transformation of Global Governance; and (3) international relations of East Asia and the Asia-Pacific. Prior to joining MAGGI in August 2023, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Freiburg as well as a Fulbright Schuman Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame.

friedrichs@mpil.de

Lohrum, Marie

Marie Lohrum is a PhD student in the research group since 2021. Her dissertation examines the possibility of interest group influence on the European legislative process. After her B.A. in Integrative Social Studies at Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, she graduated from the M.Sc. Research Master European Studies at Maastricht University in fall 2019. In her master thesis she researched who gets access to officials in the European Commission and what determines this access. Her research interests are European Union politics, democracy theory, extremism and the influence of non-state governance actors.

lohrum@mpil.de

McLarren, Katharina

Katharina McLarren joined the research group in April 2022 as  Research Fellow. Before, she was a lecturer in International Relations at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. In her doctoral thesis she examined the role of religion in shaping international society. Her main areas of research include religion in Foreign Policy Analysis and International Relations theories as well as developments in the MENA region since the Arab Spring. She completed her MA in Governance and Public Policy at the University of Passau and her BSc in International Relations (International Programme) at the LSE.

Nakamura, Fumie

Fumie Nakamura is a PhD student in the research group since January 2021 and researches cities and authority. Fumie received her M.A. in Social Sciences (Democracy and Governance) from the University of Tartu. In her Master’s thesis, Fumie investigated the emergence and functions of informal accountability in transnational contexts and illustrated this underlying concept in the realm of a municipal network in the European Union. She also holds an M.A. in Literature (Cultural Sciences German Studies) from Waseda University and a B.A. with a major in Communication Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ramrath, Ronya

Ronya Ramrath joined the project as a research assistant in October 2021. Currently a DPhil (PhD) student in Philosophy at the University of Oxford, her research is focussed on investigating areas at the intersection of political philosophy and epistemology, including the social and cultural contingency of concepts and conceptual frameworks. After her Bachelor’s in Philosophy and Mathematics at Heidelberg University in 2022, she completed a Master’s in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge with a thesis on epistemic injustice and Indigenous knowledge systems.

Akaslan, Imge

Imge Akaslan is a Senior Research Fellow in the Shaping Human Rights Due Diligence project at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. Her research focuses on the labor standards in global supply chains, actors in the business and human rights regime, and social compliance mechanisms. Imge holds a BS in Global and International Affairs from Middle East Technical University, an MA in Political Science from State University of New York at Binghamton, and a PhD from University of Connecticut.

Aue, Luis

Luis Aue is a Research Fellow at the research unit Global Humanitarian Medicine at WZB Berlin Social Science Center and at the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Script (SCRIPTS)” at Free University Berlin. His research focuses on global health politics, the political sociology of expertise, and international relations theory. Currently, he works on a project on the policy history of diarrheal diseases. Here, he explores how authority performances and the design of expertise interact. He studied history, economics, and political science in Göttingen, Essen and Southampton. He is a graduate student in political science at Free University Berlin.

Corcaci, Andreas, Dr.

Andreas Corcaci is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Antwerp engaged in research on environmental conflict resolution, in particular the national implementation of judgements from courts and managerial agreements from non-compliance mechanisms. Before, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. His research interests lie in the areas of multilevel (judicial) governance and administration in environmental, energy and climate policy, as well as concept structures and set-theoretic multimethod research. He has a Dr. phil. from Technische Universität Darmstadt with a dissertation on compliance in the European Union using Qualitative Comparative Analysis.

Drubel, Julia

Julia Drubel is Postdoc at the DFG Research Training Group “Standards of Governance” at the Technical University of Darmstadt. She researches bioeconomic transformations and decent work in the European Union’s Forest Governance. She was a Senior Research Fellow in the research group since June 2021. In her Doctoral Thesis at the Justus-Liebig-University Gießen she analysed the effectiveness of the ILO’s prohibition of forced labour under the conditions of a globalized economy. Her research areas are global normativity, Global Political Economy, Global Social Governance, Social Human Rights and Sustainability.

Angelo da Silva Junior, Valter

Valter Angelo da Silva Junior joined the project as an associate researcher in 2021. He researches non-state actors’ authority as it relates to European Union policy and decision making in transnational trade agreements. He holds a research position at the Federation of German Industries as a German Chancellor Fellow granted by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. He holds an M.A in International Politics from Universidade Estadual da Paraiba (Brazil) in which he investigated Chinese quantitative methods to measure state power. His research interests are European Union trade policies, interest groups’ influence and transnational governance.

Frentzel, Marcel

Marcel Frentzel has been a student assistant in the DFG project "Human Rights Due Diligence: Norm Contestation in the Business and Human Rights Regime" since March 2023. He was already a student assistant in the previous DFG project "Business Actors beyond Public and Private: Authority, Legitimacy and Responsibility in the United Nations Human Rights Regime" from 2018-2021. Since 2019, he is studying "Democracy and Governance" in the Master's program at the Justus Liebig University Giessen.. He completed his bachelor's degree in political science and philosophy at the University of Kassel in 2019. His research interests lie in the field of democratic theory, international political theory, and postcolonial theory.

Georgi, Richard, Former staff member

After leaving his position as Senior Research Fellow in the MAGGI research group, where Richard had investigated norm contestation in the business and human rights field at EU and UN levels, he joined the School of Global Studies (SGS) at the University of Gothenburg as a researcher in the field of security, peace/conflict, and human rights. In his new project, Richard studies how social, economic, and political transformations engendered by peace agreements trigger new contestations and (violent) conflicts. Also, he is dedicated to a book project based on his PhD dissertation in the field of Peace & Development at SGS. The focus is on the political activism of human rights defenders amidst a deferred promise of peace and violent political. Richrds overall research interests concern human rights, business regulations and transformations of capitalism, political violence, peace & conflict research, activism, post-structuralist philosophy, ethnography of discourses, and feminist methodologies. He has teaching experiences in the areas of gender and postcolonial studies, political theory, global governance, human rights, and securitization and migration in/through political spaces.

richard.georgi@gu.se

Isakova, Alina

Alina Isakova is a doctoral researcher with the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (Bielefeld University). Her dissertation focuses on inter-organizational cooperation in conflict early warning and response from 1990s till 2022. Fieldwork has brought her to Addis Ababa, Bishkek, Brussels, and Prague. Alina’s research interests include peace and security issues, inter- and non-governmental organizations, as well as construction of global governance. She co-edited a volume on Constructing Global Challenges in World Politics (Routledge, forthcoming). Alina holds master’s degree in International Economic and Political Studies from Charles University in Prague. She previously was an International Relations lecturer at Kyrgyz National University and research associate with the Research Training Group “World Politics” at Bielefeld University. Outside of academia, she worked in donor-funded (USAID, World Bank) projects in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Khan, Umer Bilal

Umer Bilal Khan has been a PhD candidate in the field of Global Governance at the University of Rostock since 2019, funded by the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung. His PhD focuses on the multiple and different forms of authorities at play in Global Governance, which go beyond the solid, contractual, and traditional command and obedience framework of understanding. Before starting his Ph.D., he worked as a Policy Research & Development Officer at the Planning & Development Department of the province Balochistan in Pakistan with focus on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). He is a DAAD alumnus with a Master’s in Public Policy & Good Governance from the University of Passau.

König, Magdalena

Magdalena König is a PhD researcher at the Centre for International Relations Research at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Her research interests include EU enlargement, counter-terrorism politics, and the politics of prevention of radicalization. In her PhD research, she examines the role of preventive approaches to counter-terrorism within the ongoing EU enlargement towards South East Europe. Magdalena has a BA in European Studies from Maastricht University and a MA in Peace Research from the University of Tübingen.

Manoli, Maria

Maria Manoli is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Air and Space Law (IASL) of the Faculty of Law at McGill University, where she has also been an Erin JC Arsenault Fellow in Global Space Governance. Her doctoral research focuses on the use and exploration of space natural resources from an interdisciplinary and critical theoretical perspective. She holds an LLM in Civil Law and an LLM in International Studies from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where she also completed her undergraduate studies in law, as well as an LLM in Air and Space Law from the IASL at McGill. She has published several academic articles and edited two books in the field of space law, and is often involved in international research projects, such as the Global Space Governance study and the MILAMOS project at McGill. Her areas of interest include public international law, space law, law and technology, critical legal studies, and postcolonial approaches to international law.

McVey, Marisa

Marisa McVey is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews, School of Management, working on issues of human rights due diligence and accountability. Her doctoral thesis focused on critically analysing companies’ implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Alongside her work at St Andrews, she is a Research Fellow at Aston Law School, focusing on digital rights and privacy. She holds an MRes (Management) from St Andrews, an LLM (Business and Human Rights) and LLB (Law with Politics), both from Queen’s University, Belfast.

Oidtmann, Raphael

Raphael Oidtmann currently serves as a parliamentary and legal advisor to the State Parliament of Hesse and holds further appointments as adjunct lecturer at Mannheim Law School, as associate researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, and as associate postgraduate (‘doctorant associé’) at the Centre Marc Bloch Berlin. Previously, he was the scientific advisor to the executive director at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) and held positions as a research fellow and lecturer at the universities of Mannheim and Mainz. Raphael holds master’s degrees in political science (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz), international and comparative law (University of Mannheim & University of Adelaide) and international relations (University of Cambridge). He is an alumnus of the Hague Academy of International Law and currently an external PhD candidate at the Institute of Political Science at Goethe University Frankfurt (supervised by Professor Nicole Deitelhoff). Raphael’s principal teaching and research interests pertain to (general) international law, international criminal law, the history of international law, human rights and the law of armed conflict as well as international relations theory and history, geopolitics, international security studies and European Union integration. Recently, his research has focussed on (1) the actorness qualities of international institutions, in particular international (criminal) courts and tribunals, (2) the notion of global health in the context of international law as well as (3) questions of implementing and maintaining (international criminal) jurisdiction in areas of limited statehood (such as the High Seas, the Arctic, or Antarctica).

Rother, Stefan, PD Dr.

PD Dr. Stefan Rother is a senior researcher at the Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute for socio-cultural research, University of Freiburg, Germany. From 2021 to 2023 he acted as Professor pro tempore for migration, flight and social mobility at the Bundeswehr University Munich. His research focus is on international migration, global governance, social movements, regional integration and non-/post-Western theories of international relations. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Southeast Asia as well as participant observation at global governance fora and civil society parallel and counter-events at the UN, ILO, ASEAN and WTO-level as well as the GFMD and its Mayors Mechanism. He is speaker of the working group on migration in the German Political Science Association (DVPW).

Vinken, Moritz

Moritz Vinken is research fellow and PhD candidate at the MPIL under the supervision of Armin von Bogdandy (working title: A cartography of international environmental law through the lens of international public authority). His fields of research lie in International Environmental Law, Transnational Law, the International Public Authority Approach as well as other Legal Approaches to Globalization. He studied law at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (first state exam), at the Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II; Licence et Maîtrise en droit international) as well at the King’s College London (LL.M. Transnational Law).