Board of Governors

Members

More information about the members

Prof. Dr. Hedwig Gasteiger has been Professor of Mathematics Didactics at Osnabrück University since 2016. After completing her teacher training at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, she taught for 8 years in primary and secondary school classes. She then headed the mathematics department at the State Institute for School Quality and Educational Research in Munich for 5 years. Her tasks included national comparative tests, final examinations and SINUS at elementary school, a program that encouraged teachers throughout Germany to improve the quality of their mathematics teaching. She completed her doctorate at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 2010 with a thesis on early mathematical education.

After completing her Doctorate, Hedwig Gasteiger became Professor of Mathematics Didactics at Primary Schools at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München before moving to Osnabrück University. She has been Director of the CEDER - Center of Early Childhood Development and Education Research at Osnabrück University since 2016. She is a network partner at the German Center for Teacher Education in Mathematics and is involved in the qualification of teachers and early childhood education specialists throughout Germany. This enables her to transfer scientific findings into practice with a broad impact.

For many years, she has been involved in the preparation of national comparative assessments and works together with the Institute for Quality Development in Education (IQB), which supports the federal states of Germany in quality development and Quality Assurance in the general education school system. She supervised the revision of the new national KMK educational standards for mathematics at primary level published in 2022 from a mathematics didactics perspective and was and is active in an advisory capacity in various commissions for curriculum and syllabus development. From 2019 to 2022, she was managing editor of the Journal of Mathematics Didactics.

In recent years, Hedwig Gasteiger has supported the work of education policy as a member of various expert commissions on the scientifically oriented further development of mathematics teaching, including in Hamburg and Hesse. She has been actively involved in university committees and commissions for many years and at various locations. In both Munich and Osnabrück, she has received awards for her excellent teaching of mathematics didactics.

Prof. Dr. Reinhold Kliegl was born on 11.12.1953 in Sinzing. He studied psychology at the University of Regensburg and the University of Colorado in Boulder (Doctorate: 1982). From 1983 to 1993 he was a research associate at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where he worked on questions of cognitive ageing, in particular plasticity and the limits of psychometric intelligence and memory performance.

In 1992, Reinhold Kliegl habilitated at the Free University of Berlin and in 1994 he accepted an appointment at the University of Potsdam, where he worked in the Department of Psychology until 2019; he turned down appointments at the University of Salzburg (1993) and Mannheim (1997). At the University of Potsdam, he was involved in setting up the Department of Psychology and, together with linguist Gisbert Fanselow, was responsible for establishing cognitive science as an area of excellence and research focus at the University of Potsdam, which he headed from 1993 to 2000 and from 2007 to 2014.
Language, perception, oculomotor function and their interplay with attention were the subject of research carried out by Reinhold Kliegl in cooperation with colleagues from the fields of linguistics, physics, computer science and mathematics in various coordinated DFG projects. In particular, gaze control during reading (including in Chinese), in which all these processes are orchestrated, was the subject of experiments and computational modeling. Particular attention was also paid to the development of new multivariate methods for the joint consideration of experimental effects and the associated individual differences.
Following his retirement in 2019 and the invitation to take up a senior professorship in the Department of Sport and Health Sciences, Reinhold Kliegl has shifted his research from primarily basic to primarily applied research. He is currently investigating and modeling cohort- and Covid-19-related changes and effects of social structure on children's physical fitness.
Reinhold Kliegl's research has received several awards. In 2002, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize from the DFG. He has been a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) since 2003 and a member of the Leopoldina since 2009. In 2011, he was elected a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science. In 2008, he was awarded the Wilhelm Wundt Medal and honorary membership of the German Psychological Society, which also honored him in 2020 for his scientific life's work.
Reinhold Kliegl's experience in science administration includes membership of the DFG Review Board for Psychology (2001-2007; spokesperson from 2005) and the DFG Senate (2007-2013). He was a member of the Academic Council of the BBAW (2008-2022) and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the MPI for Psychological Research (2001-2005), the Max Wertheimer Minerva Center for Cognitive Processes and Performance (University of Haifa, Israel; 2006-2013), the Brandenburg Medical School (2016-2021) and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (Bielefeld; 2014-2026).
As a member of the University Council, Reinhold Kliegl would also like to be available as a contact person for questions regarding the further development of Osnabrück University's interdisciplinary potential.

Dr. Josef Horstmann was born in Recke/Westphalia in 1958. After studying at the Technical University in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, he joined Maschinenfabrik Bernard Krone in Spelle as a design engineer in 1983.

Two years later, he took over as head of the design group in the forage harvesting division.
From 1993 to 1998, he completed his doctorate as a part-time job at the University of Braunschweig, while his responsibilities at Krone steadily increased.
In 1998, he took over as Head of Design for all Krone products.
In 2002, he was appointed Managing Director of Design and Development. Dr. Horstmann held this position until July 2021, when he stepped down from this responsibility.
To this day, he still participates in various steering committees for development projects from pre-development as a senior consultant technician.
Over the past 25 years, networking in associations, societies and various committees has been part of his work. For example, Dr. Horstmann was a founding member and for 5 years the first chairman of the Agrotech Valley Forum, which has already been able to attract many new research projects to Osnabrück by networking the university departments with the agricultural technology industry and various associations around Osnabrück.

Prof. Dr. Luise Schorn-Schütte was born in Osnabrück in 1949. After studying law, history and political science at the universities of Göttingen, Marburg and Münster, she passed her first state examination in 1975. Her Doctorate focused on the historiography of the historian Karl Lamprecht. This was followed in 1992 by her habilitation as well as several research stays in England and the USA and the award of the venia legendi for Medieval and Modern History at the Justus Liebig University Giessen (topic: Protestant clergy in the early modern period. Their contribution to the development of early modern statehood and society).

After turning down a call to the University of Basel in 1993, Schorn-Schütte accepted a simultaneous call to the newly founded University of Potsdam in order to support the development of her subject in the new federal states. From 1998, she was Professor of Modern General History with a special focus on the early modern period at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. Schorn-Schütte has been retired/emeritus since October 1, 2015.

From 1999-2009, Schorn-Schütte was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Volkswagen Foundation, from 1998-2003 a member of the Senate of the German Research Foundation. As Vice-President of the DFG from 2004 to 2010, the recognized expert on the history of modern European history and the theory of historiography worked on historical political research. Schorn-Schütte was the spokesperson for the International Research Training Group "Political Communication from Antiquity to the 20th Century" (funded by the DFG in cooperation with Italy and Austria) from 2004-2014. She has been a member of the Leibniz Association's "Evaluation" committee since 2012 and a member of the "Strategic Projects" committee since 2014.

Schorn-Schütte has received several awards for her academic work, most recently receiving a research leave year for the 2013/14 academic year as part of the VW Foundation's OPUS MAGNUM funding line and completing a monograph on the relationship between religion and politics in early modern Europe (published in Munich in 2015).

"As a member of the University Council of Osnabrück University, I would particularly like to dedicate myself to legitimately strengthening the humanities and social sciences at the location."

Prof. Dr. Bea Verschraegen was a full university professor of comparative law and private international law from 1998-2018. At the same time, she taught at the Pan European University Bratislava from 2004-2014, where she initiated several cooperation agreements as Vice Rector for International Affairs. From 1994-1998 she taught at the University of Bielefeld and from 1992-1994 at the European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/O), after having supported the preparation of the EEA/EU accession as head of the "European Integration" department of the Austrian parliamentary directorate. Among other things, she is Honorary President of the International Civil Status Commission (Commission Internationale de l'Etat Civil [CIEC]), Adjunct Professor at the University of Macau, lecturer at various domestic and foreign universities, registered mediator, arbitrator (including the International Arbitration Court Hangzhou), coach and psychotherapist (SF) as well as author and editor of numerous publications.

She is a member of the Academia Europaea, titular member and head of the Austrian National Committee of the Int'l Academy of Comparative Law / Académie int. de droit comparé, member of the American Law Institute and the European Law Institute, Fellow of the Int'l Academy of the Belt and Road and member of the International Advisory Board of the "Belt and Road" Research Station (Hong Kong). In Kosovo, she participated in the EU project "Reform of the Civil Code", in Macao in the project "Reform of Law Studies", for the Ontario Department of Justice (CA) with a comparative law study on various forms of cohabitation. At the Centre of Private Law (Moscow) she was consulted as an expert on the reform of Russian IPR and by the German Bundestag on civil partnerships. She received the Russian "International Higher Juridical Prize, Themis' 2014" from the "International Fund for Support of Legal Initiatives" for special achievements in the international field.

Prof. Dr. Elmar Wilhelm Weiler was born in Bochum on June 13, 1949, is married and has two children. After graduating from high school in 1968, he studied biology and chemistry at the Ruhr University in Bochum from 1970. After graduating in October 1974, he worked on an experimental dissertation on the "Radioimmunological determination of digoxin and related compounds in Digitalis lanata EHRH", for which he was awarded his doctorate in February 1977. In 1978/ 1979 he had several research stays at the Biology Department of the University of South Florida in Tampa. In 1982, Elmar W. Weiler completed his habilitation in botany at the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) with a thesis on "Hormone levels and their changes in plant development and movement processes".

From 1975 to 1982 he was scientific assistant, from 1983 to 1985 private lecturer and academic councilor at the Chair of Plant Physiology at the Ruhr University Bochum. In 1985, he accepted a professorship in Plant Physiology (C4) at Osnabrück University. In 1987, Elmar W. Weiler declined an appointment to the Chair of Molecular and Cell Biology at the Free University of Berlin. He accepted an appointment to the Chair of Plant Physiology at the Ruhr University Bochum on October 1, 1988. In 1992, he declined the call to the Chair of Botany at the Technical University of Munich, as well as the call from the Max Planck Society as Director of the MPI for Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam in 1993.

From 1990 to 2000, Weiler was spokesman for the DFG Research Training Group "Biogenesis and Mechanisms of Complex Cell Functions", and from 1998 to 2001 spokesman for the SFB 480 "Molecular Biology of Complex Performance of Botanical Systems". From 1993 to 1995 he was Dean of the Faculty of Biology at the RUB, from 1991 to 2003 he was Director of the Central Isotope Laboratory at the RUB. Weiler is a member of the German Botanical Society, the Society for Biological Chemistry, the American Society of Plant Physiologists, the Scandinavian and Japanese Societies of Plant Physiologists, among others. He is co-editor of the journal PLANTA.

Elmar W. Weiler has received numerous awards for his research. In 1983 he received the Tate and Lyle Award of the Phytochemical Society of Europe, in 1989 the Green Rosette of European Science and the Funding Award for European Science of the Körber Foundation, in 1995 the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the DFG and in 1997 the Carus Medal of the German Society of Natural Scientists Leopoldina. He has been a full member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 1995, an associate member since 1996, a full member of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2002, a full member of the German Society of Sciences Leopoldina since 2002 and a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 2006.

From 2000 to 2006, Weiler was a member of the Senate, from 2003 to 2006 a member of the Main Committee and the Grants Committee for General Research Funding of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and from 2003 to 2008 a member of the Board of Trustees of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund.

From 2003 to 2006 he was Vice-Rector for Planning, Structure and Finance at the Ruhr University Bochum. From 01.12.2006 to 30.09.2015 he was Rector of the RUB.

Elmar Weiler was named Rector of the Year 2009 by the German University Association (DHV). In 2010, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Tours. He has been a member of the University Council of Osnabrück University since 2011 and has been its Chairman since 2019.