Dr. Felix Aiwanger

Main Fields of Research

Family law and law of the person from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives; animal rights law; private international law; foundation and trust law, especially regarding offshore jurisdictions; didactics of legal education

Vita

Felix Aiwanger studied law at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, where, following his period of legal internship (Rechtsreferendariat) he was a research assistant under Professor Anatol Dutta at the Chair of Private Law, Private International Law, and Comparative Law. Prior to that point, his research interests took him to the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) in Rome and to the law firm of Martin Kenney & Co. Solicitors in the British Virgin Islands. For both his initial course of legal study as well as his doctoral project, he received a scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.

In his dissertation, Felix Aiwanger addressed asset protection strategies, as pursued particularly in offshore legal regimes. The work was awarded the German Academic Scholarship Foundation’s Lieselotte Pongratz Doctoral Prize and also the Law Faculty Prize of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

A particular focal point of Felix Aiwanger’s research is the legal status and representation of animals. He is a member of the Deutsche Juristische Gesellschaft für Tierschutzrecht (German Association for Animal Protection Law) and serves on the editorial board of the Journal for Animal Law, Ethics and One Health. In 2023 he was a legal advisor for the State Animal Protection Commissioner at the Berlin Senate Department for Justice and Consumer Protection. In his post-doctoral habilitation project, Felix Aiwanger is examining legal subjectivity from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Felix Aiwanger has been employed as a research fellow at the Institute since January 2024.