Max Planck Masterclass 2026

The upcoming Masterclass with Dr. Ana Bobić will take place on the 26 – 29 May 2026 at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany.

The four days of this Masterclass are dedicated to the question: What does it mean to do EU law in a Hegelian way? Hegel is one of the most influential, and yet one of the most misunderstood philosophers of German idealism. A critic of bourgeois individualism and Kant’s philosophy, his system of philosophy is at the heart of the work of such diverse thinkers as Karl Marx, Simone de Beauvoir, and Frantz Fanon, but also Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde and even the notorious Carl Schmitt.

Hegel is also one of the philosophers of the Enlightenment who devoted significant energy to his political philosophy and the question of right, his influence relevant also in contemporary legal and constitutional theory. In EU legal studies, however, Hegel has only sporadically made his appearance. We have not yet asked ourselves the broader question of how his system would be applied to the study of the European Union on a more general level or what might the benefits of such an approach be. My aim is to spend these four days in exploring his system through questions related to European integration and our work as EU scholars. To do so, each day we will read an excerpt from Hegel alongside an interpretation, in order to address a specific question concerning the European Union.

To begin with, we will explore Hegel’s methodology, primarily his novel connection of history and theory in determining the authoritative forms of knowledge. In doing so, we will be revisiting some foundational cases of the Court of Justice in order to question the dominant forms of knowledge in EU legal scholarship. On the second day we will dig deeper into Hegel’s work on freedom and mutual recognition, most famously expressed in his Phenomenology of Spirit, to question whether EU law assures the freedom it proclaims. On the third and fourth days, we will turn to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. First, in engaging with his social integration theory of the state and civil society, we will explore the relationship between the market and the social in the EU. Second, by relying on Marx’s critique of Hegel’s bureaucracy, we will see whether it can be of use in the scholarly critique of the Eurocracy.

Session 1: What is a Hegelian methodology? On forms of knowledge

Session 2: Mutual recognition and the question of freedom

Session 3: Hegel’s civil society and the state

Session 4: Hegel’s bureaucracy (the universal estate)

All interested persons are welcome to submit a completed online application (CV, letter of motivation) by the 22nd of March 2026.

There is the additional possibility for participants to present and discuss their related research projects with Dr. Ana Bobić as well as the other participants during a young scholars’ workshop ‘Looking for Hegel in EU law research’. Please add an abstract of max. 500 words to your application in case you are interested in this opportunity. Those selected will be asked to submit a short outline of 5-10 (no more!) pages beforehand and as well as to prepare a comment on the work of one other presenting participant.

Abstract of the workshop:
The European Union challenged the previously existing ideas about the role of international relations, the state, the individual, and the law. In researching EU law, we are continually invited to rethink concepts such as sovereignty, citizenship, national identity, or integration. There is an inherent tension between rupture and continuity in studying these topics: can European integration be studied on its own merits or must our research always consider the historical context of disintegrating empires and external pressures of globalisation? Hegelian insights are particularly conducive to research that focuses on the EU’s history, market orientation, the relationship between the economic and the social, the increasingly diminishing role of the state as the provider of public goods, and the EU’s commitment to liberal democratic values. This workshop invites projects concerned with the study of EU law in context: historical, politico-economic, social, cultural – the list is open. What are the benefits and challenges associated with doing EU law research in context, both substantively and methodologically? What are the disciplinary boundaries of legal research and what sort of cross-disciplinary conversations might such research invite?

Ana Bobić is the principal investigator of the DFG Eigene Stelle project ‘Judicial conflict and the reconfiguration of control in the EU constitutional order’ at the Hertie School in Berlin. She was référendaire at the Court of Justice of the European Union in the cabinet of Advocate General Ćapeta between 2021 and 2024. Until 2021, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the ERC-funded LEVIATHAN Project at the Hertie School, working on questions of legal accountability in EU economic governance. She studied at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, where she obtained the MJur as the OSI/University of Oxford scholar in 2012, and the DPhil as a Law Faculty Graduate Assistance Fund scholar in 2018. At Oxford, she was lecturer in Constitutional, Administrative, and EU Law at Keble College and Worcester College. Ana is the author of two books, The Jurisprudence of Constitutional Conflict in the European Union (Oxford University Press 2022) and The Individual in the Economic and Monetary Union. A Study of Legal Accountability (Cambridge University Press 2024).