Maria Diory F. Rabajante

Maria Diory F. Rabajante (“Diory”) is a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, where she researches out-of-court dispute resolution mechanisms in online content governance. She exam­ines how these mechanisms contribute to the development of transnational legal norms and interrogates how they may obscure normative biases, platform architectures and business models, and underlying power asymmetries.

Before joining the Institute in 2024, she was a research associate at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt within the Research Training Group (Graduiertenkolleg) "Standards of Governance," funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; German Research Foundation). Prior to these roles, Diory spent nearly a decade in legal practice as a litigator and dis­pute resolution lawyer, gaining experience from law firms in Manila and Berlin. A Philippine-qualified lawyer since 2014, she has extensive experience in complex civil and criminal litigation, alternative dispute resolution, intellectual property, and industry-specific disputes across sectors like healthcare, retail, construction, and energy. She represented various types of clients, including public officials and multinational corporations, before all court levels in the Philippines. Along­side her legal practice, she conducted bar review lectures on Philippine procedural law. Her experience as a litigator in­forms her critical perspective on the procedural and institutional design of out-of-court dispute resolution mechanisms in online content governance.

Diory earned a bachelor's degree in Philosophy from the University of the Philippines–Los Baños, graduating cum laude and first in her class; a Bachelor of Laws / Juris Doctor from San Beda University–Manila; and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in International Dispute Resolution from Humboldt–Universität zu Berlin, receiving a Best Student Award for outstanding academic performance. She also attended the 2023 Winter Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law on a merit-based scholarship.