Summary

Stephan Bierling is professor of international relations at the University of Regensburg/Germany and holds the only IR-professorship in the country especially dedicated to transatlantic relations.

He received his M.A. (with distinction), his Ph.D. (summa cum laude) and his postdoctoral degree (habilitation) from the University of Munich . Before taking the position of full professor in Regensburg in May 2000, he taught at the universities of Nuremberg and Munich . Bierling was a visiting professor at Austin College (Sherman/TX), Fort Hare University (Alice/South Africa), Hebrew University (Jerusalem) and the University of California/San Diego. In 2001 Bierling was the German Marshall Fund fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles . Since 2002, he has been a non-resident fellow at the Center for Applied Policy Research (CAP) in Munich .

For the last 22 years Bierling has led a group of 20 to 30 German students to the annual ‘Symposium on U.S. Foreign Policy' that takes places in the first two weeks of August in Washington , D.C. and brings together about 60 students from all over the world. Since 2004 under his supervision students from Regensburg University have participated in the National Model United Nations in New York . Every semester he invites politicians, journalists, diplomats and foreign policy experts to speak to his students. In 2006, 2007 and 2009 Bierling did lecture tours in China and Chile and spoke to students at 15 universities.

Bierling's main field of research and teaching is American domestic, economic and foreign policy and transatlantic relations. He also writes on German foreign and domestic policy and the global economy. Bierling has published nine books (The National Security Advisor of the US-President, 1990, 180 p; Partners or Opponents? The President and Congress in US-Foreign Policymaking, 1992, 300 p.; Economic Aid for Moscow: Motives and Strategies of Germany and the US, 1998, 350 p.; German Foreign Policy: Norms, Actors, Decisions, 1999 (2nd pr. 2005), 350 p.; History of US Foreign Policy Since 1917, 2003 (3rd ed. 2007), 270 p.; Brief History of California, 2006, 245 p.; Bandwagoning with America . Europe's Foreign Policy Options, Hamburg 2007, 120 p.; History of the Iraq War, 2010, 253 p.; Nelson Mandela, 2012, 128 p.), four dozen academic articles and numerous pieces in national and international newspapers in German and English (e.g. International Herald Tribune, Handelsblatt, Die Welt, Rheinischer Merkur, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sueddeutsche Zeitung). From 1995 to 2008 Bierling was a senior reviewer for Germany 's leading foreign policy journal, Internationale Politik. He is a frequent commentator for radio and television shows and gives a lot of public talks.

From 1986 to 1989, Bierling was a stipendee of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. In 1996, he received the Ludwig-Erhard-Award for outstanding economic analysis of experts under 35 years of age. In 2002, he won the "Academic Teacher of the Year Award" of the State of Bavaria . In 2008 and 2010, he was runner-up of the nation-wide “Professor of the Year”-award in the category humanities/social sciences bestowed by the magazine UNICUM. Bierling has held many administrative positions, among them chairman of the political science department, dean of the humanities department III and vice president of the university. Since 2009 Bierling is the resident mentor for all stipendees of the Adenauer foundation at the University of Regensburg.

Bierling was born in 1962 in the Bavarian Alpine village of Oberammergau and lives in Munich . He enjoys books, the arts, the outdoors, traveling, tennis, red wine and (too much) good food. His wife is an editor for Sueddeutsche Zeitung , Germany 's largest national daily.