Under the auspices of Deutschlandjahr USA 2018/19, the American Council on Germany and the Heidelberg University Association partnered to hold a series of in-person “Heidelberg Lectures.” Over the next few months, we plan to continue this collaboration in an online format as part of WunderbarTogether 2020.
We hope you can join us on Friday, July 17 at 10 am EDT, for the first of four events. Heidelberg University’s Prof. Dr. Welf Werner – who also serves as the Director of the Heidelberg Center for American Studies – will discuss “Fighting Unemployment during the Corona Crisis: A Transatlantic Perspective.”
Born in Göttingen, Prof. Dr. Welf Werner was trained in economics, finance, management, and economic history at the Freie Universität Berlin and Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Before joining the faculty of International University Bremen as Professor of International Economics in 2004, he taught U.S. economic policy and history as lecturer and assistant professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies. Welf Werner received his Ph.D. and venia legendi from the Economics Department of the Freie Universität in 1992 and 2003, respectively. He was a John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies in 1994 and returned to the United States in 1997 as a research fellow at both Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and George Washington University.
In February 2018, Welf Werner was appointed Professor of American Studies at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at Universität Heidelberg and director of the Heidelberg Center for American Studies. His research and teaching focus on U.S. domestic and foreign economic policies while giving due regard to their intertwining with history and political science. His interdisciplinary cooperation has occasionally gone beyond the social sciences, as, for example, with the volume Wie viel Ungleichheit verträgt die Demokratie? Armut und Reichtum in den USA, co-edited with Winfried Fluck in 2004. Specific research interests have touched upon fields such as international trade in services, financial market globalization, monetary regime change, natural disasters and international risk management, globalization and inequality, welfare state reform, and the economic determinants of populism.
Welf Werner has occasionally advised private companies and industries on their international endeavors and engaged in public sector consulting, including for the economics ministries of Germany and Jordan. He has been granted research funding and academic honors from institutions such as Harvard University, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, VolkswagenStiftung, the German Academic Exchange Service, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, Bundesverband Deutscher Banken, Bremer Landesbank, and Stiftungsfonds Deutsche Bank.
