Curriculum Vitae
Oliver Locker-Grütjen is actively involved in networks, committees and organisations concerned with science and higher education policy, both nationally and internationally. In May 2024, he was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Max Planck Society at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Since July 2021, he has been a member of the Commission for Research Data and Research Information (KFiD) of the Joint Science Conference (GWK), which he has chaired since 2025. From 2021 to 2024, he was a member of the ‘Thuringia 2030+’ advisory board set up by the State of Thuringia to support the development of higher education institutions. Within the State Rectors’ Conference of Universities of Applied Sciences e.V. (LRK), he has been an active member of the ‘Resilience’ and ‘Sustainability’ working groups since 2020. He is a long-standing member of the advisory board of the Network for Research and Transfer Management (FORTRAMA) and serves as a panellist for the German Economy Foundation (sdw), particularly in the area of support for early-career researchers and doctoral candidates.
Prior to his appointment as university president, Locker-Grütjen was Academic Director of the Sciences Support Centre (SSC) at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), where he was responsible for early-career researchers as well as research strategy, funding and transfer. He also held the position of Executive Director of the Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Research, Early-Career Researchers and Knowledge Transfer.
Prior to this, he headed the Research and Development Department at the UDE, served as Executive Director of the Research Centre for Microscale Environmental Systems (ZMU) and oversaw the merger of the two universities of Duisburg and Essen.
In April 2023, Locker-Grütjen was awarded an honorary professorship in Ecology, specialising in sustainability transformation through participation, at Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences (H-BRS). The professorship is affiliated with the Centre for Responsibility and Ethics (ZEV). Having graduated with a degree in Environmental Science, he was awarded his PhD in 2012 with a thesis on the framework conditions for research at German universities. In addition to a research stay in Zambia, he has held visiting positions at, amongst others, Queen’s University Belfast, UK, and Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where he played a key role in establishing the cross-border degree programme ‘Transnational Ecosystem-based Water Management’.
A native of Duisburg, he is married and has three children.
