Biography

Nour Benghellab completed a PhD dissertation at the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris (École des hautes études en sciences sociales) in Law, Political Studies, and Philosophy. Her dissertation focuses on the literary aesthetics of Carl Schmitt’s literary writings to understand the mythopoetic procedures at the heart of his political-legal project. She is also a lecturer of International Public Law and Legal Theory at the University of Quebec in Montreal for undergraduate and master’s degrees. Her main research fields are Legal History, Theory and Philosophy of Law, Public International Law, and Constitutional Law.

During her stay as a Max Weber Fellow, Nour Benghellab intends to approach Nazi legal thought as a genuine part of European legal thought. Racism, colonialism, anti-Semitism, social Darwinism, eugenics and extractivism do not belong solely to Nazi ideology, but were (and still are) widely spread in Western (European) societies and academia. In this perspective, she intends to focus on the genealogy of Nazi legal concepts in modern legal thought, as it relates to both the conquest of human lifeworld and the extractive relation to the environment.

Research projects, clusters and working groups

• Transnational Democracy in the 21st century

Mentor

• Martijn Hesselink