Prof. Dr. Dieter Lenzen, born in 1947 in Münster, studied education,
philosophy and German, English and Dutch Languages and Literatures at
the Westphalian Wilhelms University Münster.
He completed his doctorate
in 1973 and worked in the area of educational research for the State
Ministry of Culture in North-Rhine Westphalia from 1973 to 1975. Between
1975 and 1977 Lenzen taught at the Westphalian Wilhelms University as
Professor of Education.
From 1978 onwards he was Professor of the
Philosophy of Education at the Free University in Berlin. Since 1990
Lenzen has been on the board of the German Association for Educational
Studies (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaften), of which
he was President from 1994 to 1998. Lenzen founded the Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft
(Journal of Educational Studies) and is Editor of the twelve-volume
encyclopedia of educational studies. Between 1986 and 1994 Lenzen took
up guest professorships at Stanford, Columbia, Tokyo, Hiroshima and
Nagoya Universities.
He headed up numerous projects in educational
research and authored over 900 publications in his own research areas.
Lenzen
has headed up the education think-tank Aktionsrat Bildung since 2005.
From 1999 to February 2010 he was a member of the University Management
at the Free University in Berlin, initially as Executive Vice President
and from 2003 as President. In November 2009 Lenzen was elected as
President of the Universität Hamburg and took up office in March 2010.
Lenzen has also been Vice President of the German Rectors' Conference
(Hochschulrektorenkonferenz) since May 2007 and Council Member in the
European Universities Association.