The IFHV's Executive Director, Prof. Dr. Pierre Thielbörger, has been recognized by the Unicum Foundation as among the three best professors of 2021 in the economics and law category.

This year, the award goes to professors who, despite the pandemic-related restrictions in teaching, continued to provide their students with advice and assistance and who prepared them in a special way for their future careers. Several thousand university lecturers from all over Germany were nominated.
The Unicum Foundation announced the winners of the competition on December 1, 2021.

"I am grateful that many students supported my nomination." 

In addition to the IFHV, Thielbörger heads the Chair of Public Law and International Law at the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB). Prof. Dr. Thielbörger is very happy about the award, “I am particularly grateful that apparently many students supported my nomination. Since I still don't know who originally nominated me, I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you for that. "

Staying in Contact Despite Online Teaching
In teaching, it is and was important for Prof. Dr. Thielbörger to always stay in contact with his students - especially during the phases in which there was only online teaching. “It was important to me not only to exhaust the technical possibilities of Zoom in order to make the lessons interactive and varied, but also to keep an open ear for the students during this time. In terms of motivation and self-discipline, many students have suffered a lot from the fact that they no longer had everyday university life, ”says Thielbörger.

Thielbörger enables students to gain an insight into their future careers while they are still studying. For example, he organizes events in which students come together with people from professional practice. He has also campaigned for a practical semester to be introduced in the Humanitarian Aid course and leads an English foreign language program at the International Center of the Faculty of Law.

It is important to him for the future that different disciplines and faculties work together more and that RUB builds even more networks with international partners. "In these areas I would like to do even more for the law faculty and RUB as a whole," says Thielbörger.

About the Unicum competition
The winner in the economics and law category is Prof. Dr. Michael Gutiérrez. Second place goes to Prof. Dr. Mana Mojadadr from the Saarland University of Applied Sciences. The winners were selected by an independent jury with Prof. Dr. Ulrich Radtke, Rector of the University of Duisburg-Essen, as the chairman.

About Prof. Dr. Thielbörger
Prof. Dr. Pierre Thielbörger has held the RUB Chair in Public Law and International Law and Executive Director of the Institute for the International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (IFHV) since 2014. He received his PhD in Florence in 2010 from the European University Institute. In addition to law, he also studied journalism at Harvard, at McGill University as well as at the University of Hamburg and the Humboldt University of Berlin. Among other things, he is co-speaker for human rights of the European Society of International Law and President of the General Assembly of the European Network on Humanitarian Action.

Learn more about Prof. Dr. Thielbörger on his IFHV team profile here.