Janne Mende

Janne Mende is a distinguished political scientist specializing in global governance and international human rights. Since 2020, she has served as a W2 Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, where she leads the MAGGI research group ("The Multiplication of Authorities in Global Governance Institutions"). She also holds leadership positions in several academic organizations, including serving as deputy chair of the German Political Science Association (DVPW) since November 2024. In summer semester 2025, she will serve as interim professor for Governance in Multi-Level Systems at the University of Freiburg.

• Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (2020-present)
• German Political Science Association (DVPW) - Deputy Chair (since Nov 2024)
• University of Freiburg - Interim Professor (Summer 2025)
• Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva - Research Associate (2022-2023)

Dr. Mende earned her Habilitation in Political Science from the University of Kassel in 2018, her doctorate from Justus Liebig University Giessen in 2014, and her Magistra Artium in Political Science, Social Anthropology, and Psychology from the Free University of Berlin in 2010. Her academic journey includes research stays at numerous prestigious institutions including the European University Institute in Florence, the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, and the New School for Social Research in New York.

Her research spans global governance, non-state actors, international organizations, norm research, and human rights. She has developed an innovative model of contextually mediated human rights universalism and has extensively examined the tension between public human rights protection and private responsibility actors. Her work critically engages with questions of power, authority, and legitimacy in global governance structures, particularly in the business and human rights regime. She employs qualitative research methods and has contributed significantly to understanding norm contestation, decolonizing IR theory, and the governance authority of non-state actors.

Her recent publications reveal a consistent focus on the intersection of business and human rights, with particular attention to how norms are contested, diffused, and implemented across different institutional contexts. Her work demonstrates increasing sophistication in analyzing the complex relationships between public and private authority in global governance, with recent publications exploring how complexity affects legitimacy, how publics operate in global politics, and how human rights norms are mediated across different institutional settings.

• Franz Xaver Kaufmann Prize (2022)
• Recipient of DFG funding for multiple research projects
• Leadership roles in numerous academic associations and research groups

Dr. Mende has supervised multiple doctoral students through completion, with dissertations examining governance authority of non-state actors in various institutional contexts. She has secured significant research funding, particularly through the German Research Foundation (DFG), for projects on business and human rights. Her leadership extends to coordinating major research groups, serving on review committees for Horizon Europe and other funding bodies, and organizing influential academic conferences on topics ranging from mediation in international politics to norm contestation in global governance.

She leads the MAGGI research group at the Max Planck Institute, which investigates governance authority across state, intergovernmental, and non-state actors. Her team includes several postdoctoral researchers working on related topics. She also co-leads the Max Planck Group on Business and Human Rights and chairs the Human Rights Discussion Group at the Institute. Her research network extends across numerous institutions through her participation in various collaborative research groups and consortia focused on human rights and global governance.