Eric Hilgendorf

Professor Hilgendorf has also been a spokesman for Würzburg's Center for Foundational Legal-Academic Research. He heads the University of Würzburg’s project "Global Systems and Intercultural Competence" (GSIK), which focuses on teaching students of all faculties how to recognize, analyze, and solve intercultural conflicts. Under this program are a number of projects focusing on international comparative law. He was one of the organizers of an international team of researchers at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZIF) in Bielefeld, Germany.

Among other distinctions, Hilgendorf is a member of the Association of Criminal Law Teachers and the European Society for Analytic Philosophy, a correspondent of the Hans Kelsen Society in Vienna, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Giordano Bruno Foundation. He has been called upon several times to give counsel to the German Parliament and Federal government on matters of criminal law, medical law, and Internet crime. Since 2014, Hilgendorf has been serving as co-editor of the renowned JuristenZeitung.

In 2013, Hilgendorf was appointed visiting professor at the Law Faculty of the Peking University. He was given the title of honorary professor. Since 2018, he is member of the "Global Faculty" of Peking University Law School. In the same year. he received an honorary professorship from Renmin University Law School. In 2014, he was a guest professor at Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

He is involved in the field of legal development through his partnerships with universities in Turkey, the Caucasus (mainly Azerbaijan), and East Asia (China, Korea and Japan), for example forming cooperative relations with Peking University Law School. In 2010, he and Professor Genlin Liang of the Peking University of China founded the Chinese-German Federation of Criminal Law Professors (CDSV), whose goal it is to promote the academic exchange between the two countries. Meanwhile, the CDSV is considered to be one of the most important academic platforms for academic cooperation in criminal law between Germany and China.

In 2010, Hilgendorf founded the "Forschungsstelle Robotrecht", a well-known research centre addressing legal issues related to autonomous systems in industrial processes, transport and private life. Regarding autonomous automobiles, this involves questions of civil and criminal liability, protection of privacy and matters of registration for road traffic. Since 2013, he is head of the pan-European legal research group of AdaptIVe, an EU-funded research project on the development of autonomous vehicles. In 2016, he was appointed by Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure Alexander Dobrindt to serve on the German government's Ethics Commission on Autonomous Driving.. Since 2019, Hilgendorf is Co-Director of the newly founded Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (BIDT) situated in Munich. Moreover, he is member of the European High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence.

Hilgendorf's main areas of concentration are medical law, computer- and Internet criminal law, law and technology and comparative law. He is also active in foundational legal research including work in the subfields of legal philosophy, legal theory, bioethics, history of legal thought, the history of criminal law, and human dignity. He belongs to the Pioneers of E-Learning in Jurisprudence and from 2005 to 2009 was a member of the Commission on Virtual Higher Education in Bavaria.

Following his habilitation, Hilgendorf worked as a professor of criminal law at the University of Konstanz from 1997 to 2001 and served there as Dean from 1999–2001. Since 2001 he has taught at the Julius-Maximilian University of Würzburg and was given the Chair of the Department of Criminal Law, Criminal Justice, Legal Theory, Information and Computer Science Law. He served as Dean of the Law Faculty from October 2010 to September 2012.

After graduating from high school in Ansbach in 1980, Hilgendorf entered the University of Tübingen where he studied several subjects including philosophy, modern history, religious studies, and law. He finished his BA/MA degree with concentrations in philosophy and history with the submission of his master's thesis on the "History of the Parliamentary Freedom of Speech in Germany." After that, he finished his PhD thesis in Philosophy in 1990 with a study on "Argumentation in Jurisprudence," and was awarded his second PhD in the field of Law with his thesis entitled "Criminal Production Liability in the Society of Risk." In 1997 he finished his habilitation dissertation with the focuses of criminal law, criminal process, and legal philosophy with his book "On the Distinction of Factual Statements and Value Judgments in Criminal Law."

Eric Andreas Hilgendorf (born 3 December 1960 in Stuttgart) is a German professor of law and legal philosopher. He currently works at the University of Würzburg, serving as the Chair of the Department of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Legal Theory, and Information and Computer Science Law. Hilgendorf is one of Germany's most influential scholars in the field of criminal law, with a special focus on IT law and artificial intelligence and law.