Felix STEFFEK

Education

Professor Steffek studied law and economics at the University of Heidelberg between 1997 and 2002, where he completed the First State Examination in Law and earned a Certificate in French Law. In 1999–2000, he participated in the Erasmus programme at the University of Ferrara. He completed an LLM at the University of Cambridge in 2002–2003, where he was awarded the Whytehead Scholarship at St John’s College. From 2004 to 2007, Professor Steffek pursued a PhD in Law at the University of Heidelberg. Between 2006 and 2008, he undertook a legal clerkship at the High Court of Hamburg, completing the Second State Examination in Law. From 2009 to 2015, he worked on his Habilitation at the University of Hamburg.

Professional Appointments

Since 2015, Professor Steffek has served as Professor of Law at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Law, and as a Senior Member of Newnham College. From 2007 to 2015, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, following a year as a Research Fellow at the same institution. Between 2005 and 2006, he held a Research Fellowship at the Centre for European Economic Law at the University of Bonn. From 1998 to 2004, he worked as a Research Assistant and later as a Research Fellow at the Institute for German and European Corporate and Commercial Law at the University of Heidelberg.

Professor Steffek has held numerous visiting professorships and guest lectureships, including at the University of Notre Dame (since 2022), Singapore Management University (2024), the University of Vienna (2023 and 2018), Hitotsubashi University (2021), Jindal Global Law School (2021), Lomonosov Moscow State University (2020–2021), Judge Business School (since 2016), Mykolas Romeris University (2017–2018), the University of Warsaw (2006–2018), the University of Hamburg (2009–2014), the Australian National University (2012), and the China-EU School of Law (2009–2010). He has also served as the Bucerius-Cambridge Exchange Coordinator since 2015.

Research Areas

Professor Steffek’s research focuses on corporate finance law, insolvency law, commercial law, dispute resolution, and the legal implications of artificial intelligence. His methodological approaches include doctrinal analysis, comparative law, economic analysis, justice theory, and empirical research. He is affiliated with the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law (3CL) and the Centre for European Legal Studies (CELS) at the University of Cambridge.

Other Information

Professor Steffek has received numerous research grants, including support from AHRC Curiosity (2024–2025), the Nuffield Foundation (2023–2025), Accelerate-C2D3 (2024), the ESRC (2020–2023), the Cambridge Humanities Research Grant (2022), the DAAD Cambridge Research Hub (2018–2019), the Thyssen Foundation (2008 and 2011–2013), the German-British Jurists’ Association (2009), and the Study Group Law and Economy (2007).

His scholarly work has been recognised with several awards. He received the Corporate Governance Publication of the Year award in 2013, the Otto Hahn Medal in 2009, and the Hachenburg Prize in 2008. In 2012, he was awarded third prize by the Gravenbrucher Kreis. Between 1998 and 2006, he was a scholarship holder of the Cusanuswerk.