Christoph Scherrer


Christoph Scherrer is a German economist and political scientist. Currently, he is a professor of globalization and politics and Executive Director of the International Center for Development and Decent Work at the University of Kassel.

Life

Christoph Scherrer studied economics and American studies at the University of Frankfurt, where he also received his PhD in political science in 1989. From 1990-1998, he was an assistant professor at the J.F. Kennedy-Institute of the Free University Berlin. During this time, he was a guest professor at Rutgers University in Newark, a visiting fellow in the Department of Political Science at Yale University, held a J.F. Kennedy-Memorial Fellowship at Harvard University and was a Hewlett Scholar at the John E. Andrus Center for Public Affairs at Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT.
After obtaining his habilitation in 1999, he became a visiting professor of European politics at the Berlin School of Economics and a visiting professor at the University of Kassel. Since 2000, he has been a full professor of “Globalization & Politics” at the University of Kassel. Since then he has also held posts as a visiting fellow at YCIAS-Yale University, visiting professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, visiting scholar at the International Labour Organization, visiting professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai and senior fellow at the Center for Post-Growth Societies, University of Jena.
Currently, Scherrer directs two English-language Master programs: MA Global Political Economy and Labour Policies and Globalization. He is the Executive Director of the International Center for Development and Decent Work, an awarded center of excellence in development cooperation, Co-Director of the Böckler/Böll funded PhD program “Global Social Policies and Governance” and a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Labour University. He is laureate of the "Excellence in Teaching" prize of the state of Hessen, 2007.

Research

Scherrer’s research interests lay in the field of international political economy, in particular the social dimensions of globalization.
He contributed to the development of French Regulation Theory through an extensive study of the transition of the U.S. auto and steel industry to post-Fordism and through a post-structuralist inspired critique of its neglect of contingency in phases of stable capital accumulation. He introduced Gramscian insights to international political economy in Germany and coined the term ‘double hegemony’ for the interlaced linkage of the hegemony of the US-American national-state with the hegemony of an emerging international bourgeoisie.
He directed numerous studies on the “Social Dimensions of International Trade” and “Trade in Services” funded by the Hans Böckler Stiftung, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the German Foreign Office, the German Parliament, the European Parliament, and the Austrian Chancellery. His most recent work is co-directing an international research project on economic inequality.

Books

Chicago