Berlin, 8 September 2025: Professor Surabhi Ranganathan of International Law at the University of Cambridge is the winner of the Max Planck Humboldt Research Award 2025, endowed with 1.5 million euros. The expert in international and environmental law intends to use the prize money to implement a project with the Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin (HU) and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. The research project will be based at the HU's Faculty of Law.
Surabhi Ranganathan's research focuses on the political challenges of international maritime law. The lawyer has been working on the legal regulation of deep sea mining for many years. Her research focuses not only on the legal framework, but also on global visions of competition, fair international cooperation and the analysis of libertarian utopias of modern economic systems.
In her future research project "Ways of Worldmaking: The Global South and the (Re)Imagination of Global Ocean Governance", she wants to investigate how ideas about international maritime law from the Global South are rethought and reassessed in the light of decolonisation. At Humboldt-Universit?t, her research group will be closely linked to the joint research group "Reflexive Globalisation and the Law: The Colonial Legacy and its Global Effects in the 21st Century" led by Prof. Philipp Dann and Prof. Florian Je?berger.
Their interdisciplinary approach, which combines the law of the sea with historical and political science perspectives, is considered to be particularly innovative and forward-looking. With its high social relevance, it makes an important contribution to the debate on the sustainable use of maritime resources in the 21st century.
The Max Planck Humboldt Research Prize
Every year, the Max Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation jointly award the Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award. It is endowed with 1.5 million euros and has been awarded to a researcher from abroad since 2018. It is intended to enable German universities and scientific organisations to attract excellent researchers from abroad aged up to 15 years after their doctorate to implement innovative and creative research projects in Germany. The focus is on personalities who are characterised by outstanding future potential and an innovative research project.