piwik-script

Deutsch Intern
    Forschungsstelle RobotRecht

    Staff of the Forschungsstelle

    Head of the Forschungsstelle Robotrecht

    Prof. Dr. Dr. Eric Hilgendorf

    Telephone: +49 (0)931 31 82303
    Telefax: +49 931 31-82797
    E-Mail: hilgendorf(at)jura.uni-wuerzburg.de  

    Brief profile:

    Abitur in Ansbach, then military service near Würzburg. Studied philosophy, modern history and law in Tübingen. After completing his coursework in philosophy and history, he obtained his master’s degree. The title of his master's thesis was the Development of parliamentary freedom of speech in Germany. He then completed a PhD in philosophy with the thesis entitled Argumentation in jurisprudence, as well as a PhD in law in which his dissertation had the title Criminal producer liability in the risk society. He received the Reinhold and Maria Teufel Foundation Prize for his dissertation in law. He then completed his second PhD in law (Habilitation) on the subjects criminal law, criminal procedural law and philosophy of law. The title of his dissertation (Habilitationsschrift) was On the delimitation of statements of fact and value judgements in Criminal Law. In the summer semester of 1997, he was appointed Professor of Criminal Law and related areas at the University of Constance. In the winter semester 1998/99, he was elected Vice Dean and Dean of Studies, and in the winter semester 1999/2000, he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Constance. Since the summer semester 2001, he has held the Chair for criminal law, criminal justice, legal theory, information law and legal informatics at the University of Würzburg. He established the Forschungsstelle RobotRecht in 2010. In the same year, he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Law (for two years) in Würzburg.

    Memberships and Activities:

    • Member of Advisory Board of the Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung für Humanismus und Aufklärung
    • Director, Bayerisches Forschungsinstitut für Digitale Transformation
    • Establishment of the Chinese-German Federation of Criminal Law Professors together with Prof. Dr. Genlin Liang (Peking University)
    • Establishment of the project “Global Systems and Intercultural Competence” (GSiK)
    • Head of the Working Group AI, Ethics and Law of the Plattform Lernende Systeme (2018-2019)
    • Member of the German-American Lawyers Association (DAJV)
    • Member of the Ethics Commission on Automated and Connected Driving (2016-2017)
    • Member of the German Society for Analytic Philosophy
    • Member of the High Level Expert Group on Artificial intelligence of the EU
    • Member of the lnternational Association for Legal and Social Philosophy
    • Member of the Programming Commission of the Virtual University of Bavaria (vhb) 2005-2009. Ongoing commitment with various online courses in criminal law and criminal procedure
    • Member of German Criminal Law Professors' Association (Strafrechtslehrervereinigung)
    • Member of Working Group Contemporary Legal History (Arbeitskreis Juristische Zeitgeschichte)
    • Member of Round Table on Automated and Connected Driving
    • Co-editor of the Juristenzeitung (JZ)
    • (Co-)editor of the series "Robotics and Law" published by Nomos-Verlag
    • Liaison Professor of Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung (2006-2009)
    • Liaison Professor of Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (2002-2006)
    • Chairman of Law Alumni Association Würzburg

    Main areas of interest:

    • Legal framework for autonomous systems and artificial intelligence
    • Media criminal law, especially computer and Internet criminal law
    • Media didactics
    • Medical criminal law and bio-criminal law, bioethics
    • Criminal protection of (human) life
    • Criminal law protection of personal honour
    • Fundamental problems in criminal law
    • History of law and philosophy of law
    • Comparative law

    A selection of Professor Hilgendorf’s  publications is available here.

    Members of Staff

    Roger Fabry

    E-Mail: roger.fabry(at)jura.uni-wuerzburg.de

    Mr Fabry studied law at Middlesex University, the University of Northumbria, and Queen Mary College. During his studies, he specialized in international commercial law and international commercial arbitration. He has coached teams for international mooting competitions. His current interest lies in the areas of AI and data protection, particularly at the interface with public and criminal law. Since joining the Hilgendorf Chair, he has worked on various projects related to technology. He is a member of the English Bar Association.

    Ass. Jur. Nicolas Kutschera, European Lawyer

    Telephone: +49 931 31-83561
    E-Mail: Nicolas.Kutschera(at)uni-wuerzburg.de

    Nicolas Kutschera studied law along with European law in Würzburg and has been a student assistant at the chair of Prof. Hilgendorf since December 2015. In July 2019, he passed the First State Examination. From October 2019 to November 2021, he has been completing his legal traineeship, amongst others at Rechtsanwälte Loos and datenschutz Süd, and alongside and after passing the second state examination was working as a research assistant, since February 2022 as a graduate assistant, for Professor Hilgendorf. His interests and research focus on data protection law, legal acts associated with the EU Digital Strategy and the European Commission's proposal on the regulation of artificial intelligence.

    Ass. Jur. Max Tauschhuber

    Telephone: 0931 31-87212
    E-Mail: max.tauschhuber(at)uni-wuerzburg.de

    Max Tauschhuber studied law at the University of Würzburg, including the accompanying studies in European law and passed the First State Examination in Law in July 2018. Mr. Tauschhuber had worked as a student assistant since 2012 and he is now after passing the Second State Exam a graduate assistant at the Chair of Prof. Dr. Dr. Eric Hilgendorf.

    Justin Völkel, LL.M. Eur.

    E-Mail: justin.voelkel(at)uni-wuerzburg.de

    Mr Völkel, a commercial lawyer and co-founder of Legal Layman, studied Law in Context - law with its international connections to technology, politics and economics - at the TU Dresden before successfully completing his master's degree in European law, specialising in European commercial law, at the University of Würzburg in 2020. Since February 2021, Mr Völkel has been working as a research assistant at the chair of Prof. Dr Dr Eric Hilgendorf and is doing his doctorate in the field of regulating artificial intelligence, in particular with regard to motor vehicles with autonomous driving functions. Furthermore, Mr Völkel is entrusted with the supervision of the project "TargetJura: Ethics and AI".

     

    External doctoral candidates

    Eftychia Bampasika

    Eftychia Bambasika - born in 1993 - comes from Greece. She studied law in Athens and Münster and obtained her LL.B. at the University of Athens. Since 2017, she has been a trainee lawyer in Athens. After completing an LLM in the fundamentals of German law at LMU Munich, in 2019 she began work on her doctoral dissertation in the field of artificial intelligence and criminal law under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Dr. Hilgendorf.

    Dipl.-Jur. Inci Demir

    E-Mail: inci.demir(at)gmx.de

    lnci Demir began her law studies in 2013 at the Julius Maximilian University in Würzburg and successfully completed the First State Examination in Law 2018. Since then Ms. Demir has been conducting external research as a doctoral candidate on the issue of mHealth, and the opportunities and risks of health apps. In this context, she deals, among other things, with data protection problems and criminal liability issues.

    Dipl.-Jur. Sophie Garling

    E-Mail: sophie.garling(at)stud-mail.uni-wuerzburg.de

    Sophie Garling completed the First State Examination in Law at the University of Würzburg in 2018. Since then she has been employed as a graduate assistant in a law firm specializing in IT law, and at the same time, she is conducting research for her PhD. This work involves using various methods for the development of a system of legal experts.

    Ass. Jur. Tino Haupt

    E-Mail: thaupt(at)outlook.de

    Tino Haupt studied law at the University of Würzburg and the University Panamericana in Mexico City. After completing the First Juridical Examination in 2018, he has been working on his doctorate under Prof. Dr. Dr. Hilgendorf since 2019. He submitted his dissertation to the University of Würzburg for review in 2021. He is working on issues related to access rights to vehicle data. Among other things, access rights under criminal procedure and data protection law are relevant here. In addition, he also focuses on the possibility of contractual arrangements with regard to vehicle data. Besides writing his dissertation, he worked as a research assistant in an international law firm in Frankfurt am Main and Munich and was also a research assistant at the University of Würzburg. From October 2020 to October 2022, he completed his legal clerkship in the district of the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart with stations in Munich and London (United Kingdom), among others. Publications can be found here.

    Jille Kikonga, LL.B.

    Jille Kikonga studied in Cologne and Paris, commencing in October 2012, first on the German-French Law Course, which he completed in 2016 with the award of the Maȋtrise en Droit and an LL.B. He then passed the First State Examination in Law in Cologne in October 2018. Since April 2017, he has worked as a graduate assistant in international law firms. Since February 2019 his work as a graduate assistant has been in the field of intellectual property and technology. Since March 2019, he has also been employed at the University of Cologne as a graduate student assistant in their State Examination preparatory course, mainly correcting practice exams and writing sample exam question solutions. As an external doctoral student, he has conducted research since August 2019 under the supervision of Professor Dr. Dr. Eric Hilgendorf into criminal law aspects of the dissemination of fake news.

     

    Baran Kizilirmak, LL.M.

    E-Mail: kizilirmak.baran+wue(at)gmail.com

    Baran Kizilirmak studied law at the Ankara University (Turkey) and completed his first master’s degree at the Istanbul University with the master’s thesis “Use of Data in Criminal Procedure Which are Obtained for Preventive Purpose”. Later, he completed a second master’s degree on European and European Legal Studies at the University of Hamburg, where he attended as a Jean Monnet scholarship holder. Successfully completing the degree as second in program and submitting his master’s thesis “Cross-Border Transfer of Personal Data Under GDPR Regime and Turkish Legal Framework” he obtained LL.M. degree. He has been working as a research assistant at the Kadir Has University (Turkey) at the Department of Criminal and Criminal Procedure Law, where he temporarily left to conduct his doctoral research at the Forschungsstelle RobotRecht, under Prof. Dr. Dr. Eric Hilgendorf’s supervision. Being a DAAD scholarship holder, he is writing his doctoral thesis on criminal liability arising from the use of autonomous systems. His main field of work is information technologies, privacy, artificial intelligence and criminal law.

    Christian Kleindopff

    E-Mail: christian.kleindopff(at)gmx.de

    Christian Kleindopff studied law at the Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg and successfully passed the first bar exam in January 2019. Following this, Mr. Kleindopff began his doctoral studies at the chair of Prof. Dr. Dr. Hilgendorf in spring 2019 and is conducting research as an external doctoral candidate on issues of criminal and civil liability of drivers in connection with the use of driver assistance systems in road traffic. In addition to his doctorate, Mr. Kleindopff works as a research assistant in a major international law firm in Düsseldorf and is completing a Master of Laws in corporate law at the University of Cologne.

    Ass. Jur. Jannick Thonemann

    E-Mail: jannick.thonemann(at)stud-mail.uni-wuerzburg.de

    Jannick Thonemann studied at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and at the Uppsala Universitet in Sweden. After passing the First State Examination in Law in 2015, he passed the Second State Examination in Law in 2017, thereby completing his German legal education. Since 2018, he has been conducting research on questions of artificial intelligence as an external doctoral student. His research interests include the [legal] protection of AI software and the legal requirements for its use.



    Prof. Dr. Susanne Beck


    Dr. Lisa Blechschmitt


    Dr. Jochen Feldle


    Dr. Jan-Philipp Günther


    Dr. Christian Haagen

    Dr. Berthold Haustein

    RA Sven Elter (né Hötitzsch)

    Dr. Ulrich Honeker

    Dr. Xiaoyan Huang, LL.M. Eur.

    Prof. Dr. Carsten Kusche
    Severin Löffler - Team FoRoRe Dr. Severin Löffler
    Dr. Jur. Dipl.-Ing. Lennart S. Lutz

    Dr. Anna Lohmann

    Dr. Katharina May
    © Pia Mesenberg, Justus Alain Köhn
    Ass. Jur. Pia Mesenberg

    Dr. Florian Münch

    Ass. Jur. Daniel Nikol
    Annika Schömig
    Dr. Annika Schömig

    Jacqueline Sittig
    Paul Vogel - Team FoRoRe
    Dr. Paul Vogel, LL.M. Eur.

    Dr. Nicolas Woltmann