Political Philosophy and Theory

I am a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, and Incoming Wainwright Fellow and Assistant Professor at McGill University's Faculty of Law.

My current research and writing focus on the law of property. I study the role and normative significance of property law’s fundamental ideas and building blocks such as ‘ownership’ and ‘property rights’, as well as the relation between private ownership and the ‘public’ through theoretical, comparative, and historical lenses.

My doctoral research project puts forth an understanding of lesser and limited property rights (for example, easements, leaseholds, or mortgages) as ways by which owners can establish legal relations with one another qua owners. I demonstrate how the common law’s conception of ownership and its commitment to non-subordination structures how owners can be connected through property rights. This perspective illuminates the emergence of different types of non-ownership property rights and the operation of what is known as the numerus clausus-principle of property law. It also furnishes insights on property law’s inbuilt capacity for increasing access and control over owned subject matter for non-owners, and the ways in which property law promotes owner collaboration.

I hold an LL.B. from Bucerius Law School, Hamburg (Germany) with a specialization in International Commercial Law, Conflict of Laws, and Cross-Border Civil Procedure and have passed the first and second German “state examinations in law” with high distinction. As part of my training, I have clerked at the Higher Regional Court of Appeal of Hamburg. I also hold an LL.M.-degree from the University of Toronto with a focus on Private Law Theory. Prior to commencing my graduate research, I practiced law at the German firm CMS Hasche Sigle in the areas of Intellectual Property and Litigation. 

I will be a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in the fall of 2022. In 2021-22, I was the Private Law Fellow at Yale Law School’s Center for Private Law.