Frank Biermann is a research professor of Global Sustainability Governance with the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Biermann is an internationally leading scholar of global institutions and organizations in the sustainability domain, with widely cited research on international organizations, multilateral regimes, climate refugees, Sustainable Development Goals, the politics of science, global justice, and fragmented architectures of governance.
Biermann pioneered the ‘earth system’ governance paradigm in global change research in 2005 and was the founder and first chair (2008-2018) of the Earth System Governance Project, a leading global transdisciplinary research network of sustainability scholars.
Biermann is the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal, Earth System Governance (Elsevier); co-editor of the Earth System Governance series with MIT Press; co-editor of Cambridge Elements in Earth System Governance; and edits a further book series with Cambridge University Press. He is frequently invited to participate in advisory and evaluation committees and has spoken in the United Nations General Assembly, the European Parliament and the European Economic and Social Committee.
From 2003 to 2015, Biermann was professor and head of the Department of Environmental Policy Analysis at the Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University Amsterdam. From 2007-2014, he was director of the Netherlands Research School for Socio-Economic and Natural Sciences of the Environment, a national alliance of 11 institutes with 600 PhD students that was evaluated in 2014 as a ‘network of excellence’. In 2001-2011, Biermann led the Global Governance Project, a research programme of 12 European institutes.
Biermann holds a Habilitation in Political Science (2001), a PhD in Political Science summa cum laude from Freie Universität Berlin (1997), and master’s degrees in Political Science (Freie Universität Berlin, 1993) and International Law (University of Aberdeen, 1994), both with distinction.