Department of Criminal Law
Open Applications
If there are currently no vacant positions posted on the Institute’s website but you meet the requirements set out below, you are welcome to inquire about future options at any time. To do so, please contact our Recruitment Officer Dr. Annika Hampel (a.hampel@csl.mpg.de). Please attach supporting documents to your email:
- cover letter including your research interests and relevant work experiences;
- description of your research interest or research proposal (max. three pages);
- copy of your best term or final paper or copy of the doctoral dissertation;
- detailed CV;
- transcripts of your academic achievements at university and, where applicable, work certificates;
- list of publications, if applicable;
- additional publications (max. 2), if relevant to the application. We only take applications into account if they include longer scientific papers (such as a master / PhD thesis or published articles or term / final papers) written by the applicant in either English or German. We have to ask for your understanding that this is a mandatory requirement.
Please see the German version of this page if you have graduated from a German-speaking university.
Interested in writing a doctoral thesis at the Department of Criminal Law?
Professor Hörnle, Director of the Department of Criminal Law, is Honorary Professor at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Doctoral candidates who finish their dissertation thesis under her supervision will defend their thesis at the Law Faculty at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and receive their doctoral degree there. The dissertation thesis can be written in English.
We would be happy to hear from you if you meet the following criteria:
- You earned a law degree (J.D. or LL.M.) at a renowned English-speaking university.
- You graduated with distinction, in the top 10% of your class, or other equivalent.
- You possess excellent academic research and scientific writing abilities, as demonstrated by the exceptional evaluation of your university research work and assignments.
- You are interested in the fundamentals of criminal law and would like to write a doctoral dissertation that does not focus on how certain laws are applied, but instead critically analyzes and questions their premises, identifying problems and discussing solutions (preferably with an interdisciplinary research approach).
Interested in a post-doc position in the Department of Criminal Law?
We give excellent postdocs the opportunity to work on their own research projects and publications for a flexible period (generally one to three years). During this time, it is expected that you will contribute to the Institute’s research output by publishing innovative, high-quality articles and by participating in relevant academic meetings. Speaking German is an asset but not a requisite.
We would be happy to hear from you if you meet the following criteria:
- You have published a doctoral dissertation that received the highest score as defined by your university’s grading system.
- You have published widely in peer-reviewed journals.
- Your current research interests correlate with the topics of research studied at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law. For detailed information on our research programs please visit following websites: