Doctoral award for Felix Aiwanger
Institute research fellow Felix Aiwanger has been awarded the Lieselotte Pongratz Doctoral Prize by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. The award honours his dissertation “Beyond Liability – Analysis and Critique of Self-settled Asset Protection”, which will be published shortly by Mohr Siebeck.
In his dissertation “Jenseits der Haftung – Analyse und Kritik selbstgesetzten Vermögensschutzes”, Felix Aiwanger examines asset protection strategies that shield private assets from liability, as accomplished particularly under the law of offshore jurisdictions. On the basis of his analysis and critique of such strategies, he formulates approaches that can effectively counter an evasion of liability, a topic of significant contemporary relevance. The prize jury made special note of the outstanding methodology used by Felix Aiwanger to compare a large number of different legal systems, embedding them in their social contexts and thereby revealing and portraying economic, historical, and sociological aspects. The jury also recognized his novel stylistic approach in the presentation of his academic findings, a style that makes his work appealing and interesting even for those unfamiliar with the subject.
With its three doctoral prizes, awarded in the fields of the humanities, the social sciences, and mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering, the German Academic Scholarship Foundation annually honours exceptional academic work performed in various disciplines and highlights the quality of research that is made possible with the doctoral grants it disburses. The award winners were selected from a total of 82 applications submitted by former recipients of a Foundation doctoral grant. The award ceremony will take place on 3 June 2024 in Berlin.
Dr. Felix Aiwanger studied law at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and conducted research there as an assistant under Prof. Anatol Dutta at the Chair of Private Law, Private International Law, and Comparative Law. His academic efforts have led him to, amongst other locations, the British Virgin Islands, where he worked for one of the world's leading law firms in the field of asset recovery. He has been employed at the Institute since January 2024 as a research fellow under Prof. Anne Röthel.
Image: © Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law / Johanna Detering