Head of the new Max Planck Partner Group will be Mor Bakhoum, who was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute from 2009 to 2018 and is still associated with the Institute as an Affiliated Research Fellow. In addition, Mor Bakhoum continues to teach at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (MIPLC) the course “Competition Law in Emerging Markets” and supervises master theses of MIPLC students. He also currently heads the doctoral school of the Université virtuelle du Sénégal (UVS).
The Partner Group, which is based at the UVS, will comprise, apart from Mor Bakhoum, seven postdoctoral researchers, two doctoral students and a research assistant. In collaboration with the team at the Institute in Munich, they will undertake research activities on the issue of regulation of the digital economy and data access in relation to sustainable development. The Group will publish position papers and articles as well as support doctoral students at the UVS doctoral school working on the topic of data and the digital economy. The research within the Partner Group is closely linked to the Institute’s Research Project “Regulation of the data economy in emerging economies”.
The Max Planck Partner Groups are an instrument of the Max Planck Society in the joint promotion of researchers with countries interested in strengthening their research through international cooperation. A Partner Group can be set up on condition that outstanding young researchers, following their tenure at a Max Planck Institute, return to their home country and carry out further research on a subject that is also of interest to their previous host Institute. More than 70 Partner Groups exist worldwide at the moment.