Postdoctoral researcher

Tel.: +49 89 - 907793 - 300
sarah.rachut@tum.de

TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology
Department Governance
Richard-Wagner-Straße 1
80333 München

Room H.219

Office Hours: By appointment

Dr. jur. Sarah Rachut is a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Law and Security in Digital Transformation (Prof. Dr. Dirk Heckmann) and managing director of the affiliated research institute TUM Center for Digital Public Services.

From 2017 till 2019, she had already been working as a research assistant to Prof. Dr. Dirk Heckmann at the Chair of Public Law, Security Law and Internet Law at the University of Passau, and from 2019 till 2024, Dr. Sarah Rachut continued in this role at Professor Heckmann's new chair at the Technical University of Munich.

She studied law with a European and international focus at the University of Passau and completed her legal clerkship at the Higher Regional Court of Munich.

Sarah Rachut is a member of The German Association of Law and Informatics (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Recht und Informatik – DGRI) and an associate member of the eSports Law Research Unit at the University of Augsburg. In 2020, she was accepted as a talent in the BayFiD program (Bavaria's Women in Digital Professions) of the Bavarian State Ministry for Digital Affairs and has also a scholarship at the Graduate School of the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt) since 2022. She was awarded the Young Leader in Gov Tech Award by Handelsblatt and Possible in 2024. Furthermore, Sarah Rachut is the spokesperson for the working group “E-Government Law” of the National Competence Center for E-Government (NEGZ).

In her research, she focuses on fundamental constitutional issues in digital contexts in particular in the areas of e-government, e-health and e-education.

Her PhD thesis, "Realisation of Fundamental Rights in Digital Contexts", awarded the 2024 Science Prize by the German Society for Data Protection and Data Security in November 2024, was published by Duncker & Humblot in Berlin (774 pages).

For her extensive scientific and social engagement, Dr. Sarah Rachut was honoured in January 2025 as an outstanding early-career researcher by academics – the career network of the German Association of University Professors and Lecturers. She achieved the second place in the "Early-Career Researcher of the Year" award.

Since October 2024, Dr. Sarah Rachut has been a co-editor of the academic journal Ordnung der Wissenschaft [Order of Science], which focuses on legal and policy issues in academia, including higher education law, research funding, and the ethical standards of science

The complete list of publications and talks can be found here.