Seidel, Katrin

Katrin Seidel has been a research fellow in the Law & Anthropology Department of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, a former postdoctoral fellow at Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research (2015/16), and was the Academic Coordinator of the ‘RSF Hub’ [Joint Network Rule of Law support] at Freie Universität Berlin, in collaboration with the German Federal Foreign Office (2017). Based on her interdisciplinary background (Law and African/Asian studies), her research is situated at the intersection of legal pluralism, heterogeneous statehood, and governance. Her studies are concerned with the interdependent relationships between plural normative and judicial orders at different levels of regulation and with the complex intertwinings of the respective social actors involved. Seidel’s doctoral thesis on State-recognised Legal Pluralism in Ethiopia: Interdependent Relationships Between Islamic Law and State Law addresses the challenges of integrating the pluralist legal reality into the state legal system. Her current post-doc research and habilitation project is on Internationalised Constitution-making as Tool for Negotiating Statehood and the Rule of Law. South Sudan’s and Somaliland’s Constitutional Genesis in the Context of Plural Legal (Dis-)Ordering. She has been teaching numerous courses in social science and legal studies departments throughout Europe and Africa.