Prof. Dr. Nicole Deitelhoff

Prof. Dr. Nicole Deitelhoff is a political scientist and university professor. She has served as director of the Leibniz Institute for Peace and Conflict Research (Frankfurt) since 2016. She was awarded the “Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize of the German Research Foundation” (2008) and the “Schader Prize of the Schader Foundation” (2017). In 2023, she was awarded a LOEWE Chair of Excellence from the State of Hesse for Crises in the International Order.

Her research focuses on wars, conflicts, and crises surrounding institutions and norms; the foundations of political rule and its legitimacy; forms of opposition and dissent; and democracy and social cohesion.

She earned a degree in political science, law, and economics from the Technical University of Darmstadt and a master’s degree in political science from the State University of New York at Buffalo, followed by a position in the office of a member of the German Bundestag (Education, Research, Foreign Policy), a fellowship from the Hessian Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research (HSFK), her doctorate (Dr. phil.), and a research position (HSFK, Center for Interdisciplinary Technology Research, ZIT) at the Technical University of Darmstadt.
At the University of Bremen, she held a visiting professorship (Institute for Intercultural and International Studies, InIIS) and a research professorship (Statehood in Transition), followed by her appointment as Professor of “International Relations and Theories of Global Governance” in the Department of Social Sciences at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt. At the same time, she headed the research group “Global Negotiations – Regional Dynamics” (HSFK).

She held a visiting professorship at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and conducted research as a visiting scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University and at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

She served as executive editor of the Journal of International Relations, was a member of the board of directors of the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders” (University of Frankfurt), and is the spokesperson for the “Normative Orders” research network (University of Frankfurt) and co-spokesperson for the Frankfurt branch of the Research Institute for Social Cohesion.

For Prof. Deitelhoff, a crisis is not an anomaly in the natural course of events. For her, crises are moments that are necessary for social renewal. Common beliefs come under pressure, established actors and institutions are challenged, and justifications are demanded.

This is how innovations emerge, and norms are either revised or reinforced. The degree of social freedom is measured by how crises are handled.