Otto Hahn Medal awarded to Anselm Küsters and Bruno Lima

Two mpilhlt researchers received the prestigious Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society this year. Anselm Küsters is being honored for his dissertation "The Making and Unmaking of Ordoliberal Language. A Digital Conceptual History of European Competition Law". Bruno Rodrigues de Lima receives the medal for his dissertation "'We have laws and I know what I want': Luiz Gama and the normative production of freedom in 19th century Brazil." With the medal, which is endowed with 7,500 euros, the Max Planck Society annually honors its best doctoral students.

Anselm Küsters investigates the influence of different schools of economic thought on European competition law, as these are still controversially discussed today. His work aims to fill this research gap by using a new perspective and a digital method to investigate the actual impact of these schools on competition law. This approach allows us to capture the conceptual impact of these schools of thought on an empirical basis for the first time.

Bruno Lima's work explores the normative production of freedom in 19th century Brazilian slave society. To better understand this phenomenon, he conducted an extensive analysis of hundreds of legal cases handled by jurist Luiz Gama. Gama, a black abolitionist and the first former slave to practice law in the Americas, had significant social impact through his lawsuits. Thanks to his efforts, some 500 slaves gained their freedom. He attempts to explain this remarkable achievement.