C.V. | Current Project
Research interests:
Private law; tenancy law; socio-legal studies; right to the city; law and diversity; history of private law
Research areas:
Germany, Berlin and North-Rhine Westphalia
Profile
Lisa Simonis is a PhD Candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, affiliated with the research group ‘Transformations in Private Law: Culture, Climate, and Technology’, led by Dr Mareike Schmidt. She completed her law studies at the University of Münster and the University of Helsinki and passed the first state examination in law. Her current research focuses on the influence of perceptions of normality in German residential tenancy law. To this end, qualitative methods from anthropology will be used to investigate how these perceptions become visible in tenancy law processes and how this influences the application of the law in individual cases.
Why Law and Anthropology?
In light of the profound social, political, and integrative character of housing as a fundamental aspect of human life, I want to utilize the methods of anthropology to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of (often implicit) perceptions of normality held by the parties of a rental contract, particularly those making legal claims and asserting their rights under tenant law in court, and how this affects how the conflicts play out in tenancy law proceedings. My approach builds on the research of Dr Mareike Schmidt and is based on the assumption that judges and lawyers, as well as the parties to a tenancy dispute, interpret the relevant norms of tenancy law and the facts of the case through the lens of their own socio-cultural contexts. To reveal, document, and analyse these perceptions of normality, it will first be necessary to observe and examine how different cultural, social, age, and gender-specific perspectives become evident in tenancy law proceedings and how the parties involved deal with these differences.