Reconsidering Legal Subjectivity In and Through the Anthropocene

International Conference organized by the Research Network Law in the Anthropocene (“Recht im Anthropozan”)

Location 27th Nov. → Normative Orders Building | Room EG.01
Location 28th Nov. → Guesthouse Frauenlobstraße 1 | Villa Cahn

Conference Website: Click here…

Program (PDF): Click here…

The event is open to the public, with advance registration requested: homuth@em.uni-frankfurt.de.

Program

Thursday, 27th November 2025 (→ Normative Orders Building)

11.00-11.30
Welcome & Introduction

11.30-13.00
Panel I. Trans/Local Knowledge Production: Indigenous Ecologies and Traveling Legal Theories

11.30-12.15
Rights of Nature – Traveling Theories and Critical (Legal) Knowledge Production in Catastrophic Times
Anette Mehlhorn, MPI for Social Anthropology

12.15-13.00
At the Crossroads of the Anthropocene and Abya Yala: Extractivism, Energy Transitions, and Indigenous Ecologies
Verónica Zuccarelli Freire, MPI of Geoanthropology

13.00-14.00
Lunch Break

14.00-15.30
Panel II. Challenging Legal Subjectivity? Waves and Fungi

14.00-14.45
Do Waves Have Rights? On Energetic Processes and the Law
Andrea Mühlebach, University of Bremen

14.45-15.30
Beyond Trees and Rivers: Fungi and the Future of Rights of Nature
Anna-Julia Saiger, University of Freiburg

15.30-16.00
Coffee Break

16.00-17.30
Panel III. Stretching Legal Subjectivity: Extended Relationality and Distributed Subjectivity

16.00-16.45
Distributed Subjectivity? How the Law in the Anthropocene Stretches the Concept of Legal Subjectivity
Michael Kalis, IKEM Institute for climate protection, energy and mobility & University of Greifswald

16.45-17.30
From Eco-Colonialists to Cosmic Persons? – Thoughts on (Post-)Human Legal Subjectivity
Berit Völzmann, Humboldt University Berlin

17.30-18.00
Coffee Break

18.00-19.00
Roundtable: Reconsidering Legal Subjectivity In and Through the Anthropocene
with Laura Affolter (University of Hamburg), Christoph Burchard (Normative Orders & Goethe University Frankfurt), Thomas Scheffer(Goethe University Frankfurt), Anna-Lena Wolf (MPI for Social Anthropology).

19.30
Dinner

Friday, 28th November 2025 (→ Guesthouse Frauenlobstraße 1)

9.00-10.30
Panel IV. Rituals, Deity and the Hindu Joint Family: Neglected Perspectives on Legal Subjectivity

09.00-09.45
Deity as Juristic Person and the Hindu Joint Family as Corporate Entity: Legal Subjectivity and Innovations in Post-Colonial India
Anindita Chakrabarti, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

09.45-10.30
Rituals as Rights’ Infrastructure: Legal Subjectivity, Cosmopolitics, and Environmental Protection in Mongolia’s Sacred Mountains
Bayar Dashpurev, MPI for Social Anthropology

10.30-11.00
Coffee Break

11.00-12.30
Panel V. Who is In-/Excluded? Addressees of Legal Subjectivity

11.00-11.45
In the Shadow of the Symbol – How Does the Discourse on the Expansion of Legal Subjectivity Engage with Global Trends of Rights Deprivation?
Katrin Höffler, Jan-Ulrich Dittmer & Felix Butz, Humboldt University Berlin

11.45-12.30
Law Beyond the Living: Future Generations
Ana-Marija Rus, University of Ljubljana

12.30-13.30
Lunch Break

13.30-15.00
Panel VI. Imaginaries and Futures: Between Dystopia and Improbable Utopia

13.30-14.15
Dystopia as Method: On the Legal Objectivation of Subjectivity in the Anthropocene
Ana Oliveira, University of Coimbra

14.15-15.00
Legal Subject Formation in the Anthropocene
Thomas Scheffer, Goethe University Frankfurt

15.00-15.30
Coffee Break

15.30-16.00
Summary & Final Discussion