Prof. Dr. Gabriele Britz
Director
Gabriele Britz is Professor at the Institute of Public Law at Goethe University Frankfurt (since 2024).
She is a Constitutional Law scientist and was Judge at the German Federal Constitutional Court – Bundesverfassungsgericht (2011 – 2023, First Senate).
She graduated and received a PhD from Goethe University in 1993. Her dissertation on municipal energy supply under German and European law was awarded the University´s Baker-McKenzie Prize. After completing her legal clerkship with stations at courts and government agencies, she passed her second state exam in 1997. She was a visiting scholar at Kennedy School of Government – Harvard University and at Yale Law School in 1994 and 1999 and completed her habilitation on cultural rights and the legal treatment of cultural difference with the Habilitation Scholarship from the State of Hesse in 2000. In 2001, she was awarded the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize of the DFG. 2001/2002 she was a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
She held a Professorship for Public and European Law at the Justus Liebig University of Giessen (2001 – 2024), before she became professor of public law, in particular constitutional law at Goethe. She has published about 150 scientific papers and she has been member of several scientific committees and advisory boards including the DFG´s Review Board for Law of the German Research Foundation.
In 2025, she joined the Johanna Quandt Young Academy @ Goethe as Director.
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Prof. Dr. Matthias Lutz-Bachmann
Founding director
Matthias Lutz-Bachmann is Professor at the Institute of Philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt.
He received a doctorate in philosophy from Goethe University Frankfurt (1981) and a doctorate in theology from the University of Münster, WWU (1984). He completed his habilitation at the WWU (1987) and held a Professorship at the Free University Berlin (1989-1994).
Since 1994, he teaches and conducts research at Goethe University Frankfurt with a focus on medieval philosophy, practical philosophy with special emphasis on political philosophy and ethics, philosophy of religion and critical theory.
Prof. Lutz-Bachmann was appointed as Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, USA in 1998. He was member of the DFG’s Review Board of Philosophy (2001-2005) and Vice President of Goethe University Frankfurt (2009-2015).
Since 2012, he is Director of the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften in Bad Homburg, an Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities of Goethe University Frankfurt in collaboration with the Werner Reimers Foundation.
In 2017, Prof. Lutz-Bachmann received the Hessian Cultural Prize and founded, together with Prof. Enrico Schleiff, the Johanna Quandt Young Academy at Goethe.
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Prof. Dr. Klement Tockner
Director
Klement Tockner is Director General of the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research and Professor for Ecosystem Sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt (since 2021).
He was President of the Austrian Science Fund – FWF (2016-2020), Professor for Aquatic Ecology at the Free University Berlin (2007-2020) and Director of the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin (2007-2016).
He received a PhD from the University of Vienna (1993) and a Titulary Professorship at ETH Zürich (2005). He is an internationally leading freshwater scientist, in particular in the research domains biodiversity, ecosystem science and environmental management. He is Co-Editor of the journal Aquatic Sciences and Subject Editor of the journal Ecosystems.
He has published about 250 scientific papers including 179 ISI papers. In 2009, he edited a comprehensive book on European Rivers (Rivers of Europe, Elsevier; 2nd Edition in 2021). Prof. Tockner has successfully managed large inter- and transdisciplinary projects such as the EC-funded project BioFresh. He is member of several scientific committees and advisory boards including the National Institute of Environmental Studies, Japan (NIES) and the Biology Research Centre (CZ).
He is elected member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the German Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina. In 2021 he joined the Johanna Quandt Young Academy at Goethe as Director.
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Former Directors
Prof. Dr. Enrico Schleiff
Founding director
Prof. Dr. Enrico Schleiff, born on 17 November 1971 in Luckenwalde, first studied physics at the Charles University in Prague before moving to the Gutenberg University in Mainz, where he took his oral examination in 1994.
He then completed his diploma thesis at the Institute for Biophysical Chemistry at the University of Basel. After laboratory work at the Institute for Particle Physics at the University of Dresden and a position as laboratory assistant at Gutenberg University in Mainz, he went to the Department of Biochemistry at McGill University Montreal in Canada as a PhD Fellow, where he received his doctorate in 1999.
From 1999 to 2002 he worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Biology at the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel and then for one year at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. In 2003 he habilitated there in cell biology and botany and worked from 2003 to 2007 as head of a junior research group founded by the Volkswagen Foundation itself. Since 2007, he has held a W3 professorship for molecular cell biology of plants at the Institute of Molecular Biology at JWG University in Frankfurt, where he was Vice President from 2012 to 2018.
From 2014 to 2019, Enrico Schleiff established the Buchmann Institute for Molecular Life Sciences in Frankfurt as director. Since 2017, he has also been a member of the FIAS board of directors and its chairman since 2019.