Prof Dr Udo Steinbach

Biography

Prof Dr Udo Steinbach is co-founder and partner of the Berlin Governance Platform. Prof. Steinbach heads the MENA Study Centre at the Maecenata Foundation.

Dr Udo Steinbach has been researching the contemporary Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia since 1971. He has also advised parliament and government on current political, economic, cultural and religious issues in these regions. During his years as Director of the German Orient Institute in Hamburg (1976-2007), he was actively involved in political dialogue projects of the German Federal Government, including the Euro-Arab Dialogue and the Human Rights Dialogue with political, academic and religious representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He was also a founding member and long-standing chairman of the German Middle East Dialogue Association (DAVO). He has been an honorary professor at the University of Hamburg since 1991.

Udo Steinbach studied Oriental Studies (history and culture of the Arabic, Persian and Turkish-speaking peoples of the Near East) and Classical Philology in Freiburg i. Br. and Basel. He received his doctorate in 1970 with a thesis on literary history ("Dhat al-Himma: Kulturgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu einem arabischen Volksroman"). With his appointment as head of the Middle East department, which was established in 1971 at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Ebenhausen near Munich; now Berlin), he turned his attention to the contemporary history of the Middle Eastern region. After a journalistic interlude as head of the Turkish editorial department at Deutsche Welle (1975; then Cologne), he became director of the German Orient Institute in Hamburg in 1976. In this role, he made a significant contribution to communicating the results of his research to the public via the media. With the end of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s, he opened up the Institute to academic enquiry into developments in its Muslim parts. Towards the end of the 1990s, the focus was also turned to developments in the Islamic communities in Germany and Europe.

As Director of the German Orient Institute, he was editor of the academic journal "Orient" as well as the "Mitteilungen" and "Schriften des Deutschen Orient-Instituts". He is also the author and editor of numerous publications on the politics, society and culture of the Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia. These include standard works such as the book "Der Islam in der Gegenwart" (published in five editions with Werner Ende) (since 2010 also in English: "Islam in the World Today") and "Die arabische Welt im 20. Jahrhundert. Awakening - Upheaval - Perspectives" (2016).

After his retirement, he helped to establish the Centre for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Marburg between 2007 and 2010. He is still a member of numerous science, science policy and science funding committees relating to these regions.

Further information: www.udosteinbach.eu