Council Members

The members of the Expert Council are appointed for three years
The current Council members:

Prof. Dr Birgit Leyendecker

Deputy Chairperson of the Expert Council
Interdisciplinary Centre for Family Research at the Ruhr University Bochum

Birgit Leyendecker is senior professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Family Research (ICFR), part of the Faculty of Psychology at the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB). Her research focuses include the educational integration of (new) immigrant children and refugee children and families; families and gender diversity; the positive development of immigrant children and their families; and multilingualism. She is a member of the Advisory Board to the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.

Professional background:

  • Studies at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, 1974–1980
  • Doctorate in psychology, Osnabrück University, 1991
  • Postdoc (Habilitation), Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), 2004
  • Appointed Adjunct Professor at the RUB, 2010
  • Postdoctoral Fogarty Fellow at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Bethesda, USA, 1991–1996
  • Acting Professor of Developmental Psychology at the Technical University of Dortmund (2003–2004) and at the University of Osnabrück (2008–2011), and Professor of Developmental Psychology at the MSH Medical School Hamburg (2015–2016)