Professor Dr. Joachim Küpper is the dean of the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at Freie Universität. Küpper studied Romance languages and literature as well as history at the universities of Bochum, Paris, and Toulouse. He completed his doctorate and habilitation in Romance languages and literature at Universität Bochum and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. During the 1999/2000 fall/winter semester he accepted an appointment at Freie Universität and since then has held a chair in Romance languages and literature and comparative literature. In 2001 he was awarded a Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Since 2007 he has been the director of Dahlem Humanities Center at Freie Universität. In 2009 his proposal for a research project on “Early Modern European Drama and the Cultural Net” was approved for an Advanced Grant (2.4 million euros) from the European Research Council (ERC).

The German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina is the oldest academy involved in natural sciences in Germany. It was founded in 1652. Since 2008, Leopoldina has been the German National Academy of Sciences. Its members work in ad-hoc commissions and working groups and issue statements and recommendations for the government and the public. They represent German scientists in international academy circles.