Curriculum Vitae
Hans Vorländer, born 1954 in Wuppertal, Germany, studied Law, Political Science and Philosophy at the Universities of Bonn and Geneva. He got his Ph. D. degree from the University of Bonn in 1980. Vorländer was a Research Associate and Kennedy Memorial Fellow at Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.) in 1984/85 and in 1986/87. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Frankfurt/Main and at the University of Essen. From 1993 to 2020 he held the Chair for Political Theory and the History of Political Ideas at the Institute of Political Science at TU Dresden. Since then he is Senior Professor of Political Science.
From 1997 to 2000 he served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and as a Senator of his University. He was a Coordinator of his University for the German Federal Excellence Initiative and a member of the Board of DRESDEN-concept, an alliance of leading research institutions in the Dresden area. He was founding member (and from 2000 to 2008 Deputy Speaker) of the Collaborative Research Center 537 “Institutionalität und Geschichtlichkeit/Institutionality and Historicity” and Founder and Speaker of the Collaborative Research Center 804 “Transzendenz und Gemeinsinn/Transcendence and Common Sense” (2009-2014), both funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Since 2007 he has been Director of the Center for the Study of Constitutionalism and Democracy, which he founded, and since 2017 Director of the Dresden based Research Center “Mercator Forum on Migration and Democracy”. And he is the head of the Henry Arnhold Dresden Summer School.
Hans Vorländer was Visiting Professor and Directeur d'études at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris and Visiting Professor at the Inter-University Center Dubrovnik, the Universities of Torino, Bologna and Mexico City (UNAM and ITAM).
From 2001 to 2005, Hans Vorländer was Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Federal Agency for Civic Education; from 2003 to 2005, he was President of the German Political Science Association; and since 2010, he has been co-editor of the *Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft*. In addition to many other roles on (inter)national advisory boards and commissions, he was a member of the ‘Civil Security Research’ Scientific Advisory Group of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2016 to 2021. From 2018 to 2024, he was a member of the Federal Government’s Expert Council on Migration and Integration, which he chaired from 2023 to 2024. He was a member of the Federal Government’s Expert Commission on the Framework Conditions for Integration. He is Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board on ‘Social Cohesion’ of the Saxon State Government’s Ministry of Social Affairs. Since 2024, Hans Vorländer has been Chair of the Programme Advisory Board for “Strengthening Democracy Research in Hesse” and Co-Spokesperson for the Advisory Board on “Cultures of Remembrance” of the State Capital of Dresden. He is also a regular contributor, providing analyses, interviews and articles for television, radio and the print media.
Among his publications are: Verfassung und Konsens, Berlin 1981; Sozialer Liberalismus (co-ed.), Göttingen 1986; Verfall oder Renaissance des Liberalismus? (ed.), München 1987; Liberale Demokratie in Europa und den USA (co-ed.), Frankfurt am Main / New York 1990; Hegemonialer Liberalismus. Politisches Denken und politische Kultur in den USA 1776–1920, Frankfurt am Main / New York 1997; Nationale Identität und Staatsbürgerschaft in den USA, Opladen 2001; Integration durch Verfassung (ed.), Wiesbaden 2002; Geltungsgeschichten. Über die Stabilisierung und Legitimierung institutioneller Ordnungen (ed.), Köln / Wien / Weimar 2002; Zur Ästhetik der Demokratie (ed.), Stuttgart 2003; Gewalt und die Suche nach weltpolitischer Ordnung (ed.). Baden-Baden 2004; Politische Reform in der Demokratie (ed.), Baden-Baden 2005; Die Deutungsmacht der Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit (ed.), Wiesbaden 2006; Die Verfassung. Idee und Geschichte, München, 3rd ed. 2009; Demokratie. Geschichte, Formen, Theorien. München, 4th ed. 2021; Transzendenz und die Konstitution von Ordnungen (ed.), Berlin/Boston 2013; Demokratie und Transzendenz. Die Begründung politischer Ordnungen (ed.). Bielefeld 2013; Pegida. Entwicklung, Zusammensetzung und Deutung einer Empörungsbewegung. Wiesbaden 2016 (co-author); Pegida and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism in Germany. Cham 2018 (co-author); Migration und Populismus (ed., co-author), 2018; Migration und Europa (ed., co-author), 2019; Emigration in Europe (ed., co-author), 2020; Lehrplanstudie Migration und Integration (ed., co-author), 2021; Covid-19 in Sachsen. Sozialräumliche und politisch-kulturelle Rahmenbedingungen des Pandemiegeschehens (co-author), 2021; Corona und Rechtspopulismus (co-author), 2021; Das Ende der Demokratie, wie wir sie kannten, München 2026 (i.E.).