Svenja Behrendt has held the Junior Professorship for Public Law since February 2024. She is also a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (MPI-CSL), in the Department of Public Law. Prior to her position at the MPI-CSL, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Excellence Initiative for Human Data Society at the University of Konstanz. She received her doctorate from HHU Düsseldorf in 2021 and her thesis was published by Mohr Siebeck in 2023 under the title “Demystifying the Right to Informational Self-Determination: An Examination of the Foundations of Fundamental Rights”.
Her research focuses on fundamental and human rights, constitutional and general administrative law, security law and (modern) legal theory and philosophy, taking into account their interdisciplinary references. Thematically, she is particularly concerned with democracy, autonomy and self-determination as well as the fundamental questions of law raised by digitalisation, datafication, artificial intelligence and climate change.