Name Rainer Eisfeld | ||
Books Radical Approaches to Political Science: Roads Less Traveled Similar People Wolfgang Jeschke, A E van Vogt, Thea von Harbou | ||
Rainer Eisfeld (born 4 April 1941, Berlin) is a German political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Osnabrück.
Contents
- Education and career
- Research awards and honors
- Books and edited volumes selection
- Major chapters and articles selection
- References
Education and career
Eisfeld received an economics degree from the University of Saarbrücken in 1966 and his PhD in political science from the Goethe University of Frankfurt in 1971. He was assistant professor at Goethe University of Frankfurt, 1972–73, and professor of political science at the University of Osnabrück, 1974-2006 (now emeritus). His international appointments include visiting scholarships at UCLA and the University of Arizona. He taught at UCLA as a visiting professor in 2002.
Eisfeld was Chair of the International Political Science Association (IPSA)’s Research Committee on Socio-Political Pluralism, 2000-2006, and member of the IPSA Executive Committee (as Research Committee Representative), 2006-2012. A former reviewer for the Volkswagen Foundation (1983-1993), Eisfeld serves presently as reviewer for Political Studies, International Political Science Review, European Political Science, and as member of the Polish Political Science Yearbook’s Editorial Board. First appointed in 1994, he also continues to serve on the Board of Trustees of Concentration Camp Memorials Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora (State of Thuringia, Germany).
Research, awards and honors
Eisfeld’s work has appeared in Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Leviathan, German Politics & Society, European Political Science, Government and Opposition, the International Political Science Review, the International Review of Sociology Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, Revista Critica de Ciências Sociais(Bibliography), Iberian Studies, Teorija in Praksa, the Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review, and "Politicheskaja nauka". His research has focused on theories of pluralism, problems of participatory democracy, the development of the discipline in Germany and East-Central Europe, transition from dictatorship to democracy, and scientists’ compliance during the Nazi regime. Displaying a strong historical interest, Eisfeld has also, rather uncommonly for a political scientist, written about the persisting ideology of the American frontier (“progress through violence”), the projection of earthly hopes and fears on another world (the planet Mars), and teenagers’ dreams in the 1950s.
Eisfeld won a Faculty Dissertation Award from Frankfurt University in 1971 and a Volkswagen Foundation Research Grant (Akademie-Stipendium) in 1989. His work Mondsüchtig on Wernher von Braun’s involvement in the infamous Nazi slave labor program was selected by the journal Bild der Wissenschaft as one of the ‘Year’s Outstanding Books on Science’ in 1997.