Max Planck Law is pleased to announce the inaugural Max Planck Law / University of Toronto joint lecture. This annual lecture series launches with a presentation from Seyla Benhabib, a distinguished scholar of global politics and philosophy. Professor Benhabib will speak at 18.00 CEST on 29 June 2022 at Goethe University Frankfurt. Introductory remarks will be delivered by Professor Shachar, former Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Professor of Law and Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, and Honorary Professor, Goethe University Frankfurt.
The lecture will be delivered as part of an international research workshop organized by Seyla Benhabib and Ayelet Shachar (R.F. Harney Chair and Director of the Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy & Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto).
Seyla Benhabib is the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy Emerita at Yale University and a Scholar in Residence and Adjunct Professor of Law at the Columbia University Law School. Benhabib is known for her research and teaching on social and political thought, particularly 20th century German thought and Hannah Arendt. Over the past two decades, she has become recognized for her contributions to migration and citizenship studies as well as her work on gender and multiculturalism. Benhabib has published twenty authored and edited volumes, many of which have won national and international prizes. This impressive bibliography includes Exile, Statelessness and Migration: Playing Chess with History from Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin (Princeton, 2018). Her work has been translated into 15 languages. Benhabib has delivered keynote and honorary lectures at, among others, the British Academy of Humanities and Social Science, University of California—Berkeley, University of Toronto, Cambridge University, Princeton University, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Valencia. Benhabib earned degrees from the American College for Girls in Istanbul (BA 1970), Brandeis University (BA 1972), and Yale University (PhD 1977).
Ayelet Shachar (FRSC) is the R.F. Harney Chair and Director of Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies at the University of Toronto, where she is Professor of Law, Political Science and Global Affairs. Previously, she was Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society. Shachar has published extensively on citizenship theory, immigration law, cultural diversity and women’s rights, shapeshifting border regimes and global inequality, as well as the marketization of citizenship. She is the author of several major books, including Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women’s Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2001)—winner of American Political Science Association Foundations of Political Theory Best First Book Award; The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2009), named International Ethics Notable Book in recognition of its ‘superior scholarship and contribution to the field of international ethics;’ and most recently, The Shifting Border: Legal Cartographies of Migration and Mobility (Critical Powers Series, Manchester University Press, 2020), shortlisted for the 2022 C.B. Macpherson Prize. Shachar is the lead editor of the field-defining Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 2017 & 2020). She has held distinguished visiting professorships at Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, and the School of Religious Studies at McGill, and has provided pro-bono consultation to judges, non-governmental organizations, the European Parliament, and the World Bank. Shachar’s research has influenced law and policymakers, inspired key academic debates, and has been recognized by national and international research excellence awards in four different countries (Canada, Germany, Israel, and the United States). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and recipient the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.
