Dr. Heiner Bielefeldt

Biography

Heiner Bielefeldt is a Senior Professor for Human Rights. He explores questions of human rights across a wide thematic breadth, with particular interest in the philosophical and historical foundations of human rights. His areas of expertise include freedom of religion and belief, for which he served as a UN Special Rapporteur for six years. Bielefeldt was born in 1958 near Aachen, Germany, and after completing his secondary education, he studied philosophy, theology, and history at the universities of Bonn and Tübingen. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Tübingen in 1989 in philosophy with a dissertation on social contract theories. In 2000, he gained habilitation from the University of Bremen with a work on the philosophy of human rights. Bielefeldt has lectured at various universities including Mannheim, Heidelberg, Toronto, Bielefeld, Bremen, Oslo, and Erlangen-Nürnberg. He is also actively involved in civil society organizations advocating for human rights. Between 2003 and 2009, he was Director of the German Institute for Human Rights. Bielefeldt's research interests are broad, encompassing interdisciplinary questions of human rights theory and practice as well as the political history of ideas and normative issues at the intersection of human rights and medical ethics. He is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences since 2020.

Research Interests

Experience