Matthias Weller, Vice Dean of the EBS Law School, holds the Chair of Civil Law, Civil Procedure and Private International Law at EBS Law School, EBS University for Business and Law (www.ebs.edu), Wiesbaden, Germany.

He is the Director of the EBS Law School Research Center on Transnational Commercial Dispute Resolution and the Academic Director of the “EBS Law Term”, the English semester programme for incoming foreign students from the 90 partner faculties of the EBS Law School.

In addition, Matthias Weller is a Member of the European Law Institute and its Spe-cial Interest Group on Dispute Resolution whose first constituting meeting took place at the EBS Law School in February 2016. He regularly speaks at conferences on in-ternational dispute resolution, private international law and the unification of law in-cluding recently the 10th Anniversary Conference of the Journal of Private Interna-tional Law at the University of Cambridge and the RIW Conference on Private En-forcement of Cartel Damages Claims in Frankfurt. He acted as the National Reporter for Germany to the XIV. Congress of the Academy of Comparative Law in Vienna in 2014 on the effects of corruption on commercial contracts, and he will act again as a National Reporter for Germany to the XVI. Congress of the Academy of Comparative Law in Fukuoka in 2018 on optional choice of court agreements. He was invited to teach a special course at the Hague Academy for International Law in 2019 on “‘Mu-tual Trust’: A suitable Foundation for Private International Law in Regional Integration Communities and Beyond?” In preparation of this course he stayed at the Harvard Law School for research in July and August 2016.

In 2011, he completed his post-doc senior fellowship at the Institute for Foreign and Private International and Commercial Law at the University of Heidelberg (Habilita-tion) and received the venia legendi for civil law including European private law, pri-vate international law, comparative law, civil procedure and copyright law. During this time, he was involved in projects on European procedural law, for example the “Hei-delberg Report” of 2008 on the Brussels I Regulation. In 2005, he completed his doc-toral thesis at the University of Heidelberg, supported by a PhD stipend by the Ger-man National Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) on the public policy control of international choice of court agreements. In 1998/1999 he held the Joseph Story Fellowship in Private Internatioal Law at the Harvard Law School. 1994/1995 he was a scholar of the exchange programme between the Uni-versities of Heidelberg and Cambridge and studied law at St. John’s College. In 1992 he was awarded a scholarship by the German National Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes).

His research includes all aspects of international and European civil procedure and private international law, in particular the judicial cooperation in regional integration communities. A special focus is on choice of forum agreements. During his stay at the Max Planck Institute he will further explore the principle of mutual trust as a leit-motif of judicial cooperation in the EU and beyond.