Heiner Bielefeldt
Professor of Human Rights and Human Rights Policy, University of Erlangen, Germany; former U.N. Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Religion or Belief
Foto: Harald Sippe
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Heiner Bielefeldt is Full Professor of Human Rights and Human Rights Politics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (since October 2009). Before taking the newly established chair for Human Rights, he was Director of the German Institute for Human Rights (based in Berlin) which is the officially accredited national human rights institution of Germany. Between August 2010 and October 2016 Bielefeldt served as the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief. When discharging this mandate, he conducted fact-finding missions in different parts of the world and presented thematic reports to the UN General Assembly as well as the UN Human Rights Council. Bielefeldt’s research interests include different interdisciplinary facets of human rights theory and practice, with a particular focus on freedom of religion or belief. His most recent publication, together with Michael Wiener, on this subject is Religious Freedom Under Scrutiny, University of Pennsylvania Press 2020.