Press release: New face for the Forum Wissen

No. 28 - 23.03.2022

Professor Christoph Bleidorn to take over scientific leadership in summer

Professor Christoph Bleidorn, biologist at the University of Göttingen, will become the Scientific Director on 1 June 2022, and thus the new "face" of the Forum Wissen, the University's future knowledge museum. Bleidorn is also the Director of the University's Biodiversity Museum, which is currently being reorganized. The previous Project Manager of Forum Wissen, Dr Marie Luisa Allemeyer, will leave the University of Göttingen in the summer.

"I am really pleased that we have found a scientist in the University – with experience of both museums and communicating science and research – to take on the scientific leadership of the Forum Wissen," said University President Professor Metin Tolan. The University plans to open the Forum Wissen in early June of this year.

Bleidorn, who was born in 1974, studied biology at the University of Bielefeld and received his PhD from Freie Universität Berlin. He then worked at the Universities of Potsdam and Leipzig, where he completed his habilitation qualification in 2015. After nearly two-years at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid, in autumn 2017 he was invited to apply to the Faculty of Biology and Psychology at the University of Göttingen, where he now leads the Department of Animal Evolution and Biodiversity. 

In 2018, he took over as Director of the University's then “Zoological Museum”, which is currently being reorganized and is expected to reopen as the Biodiversity Museum in 2025. The Biodiversity Museum will then be located in the same building, together with the planned Thomas-Oppermann-Kulturforum, in the Forum Wissen on Berliner Straße.