Prof. Dr. Hiltraud Casper-Hehne
Former Head of the Department of Intercultural German Studies and the German-Chinese Institute for Intercultural German Studies and Culture Comparison
Hiltraud Casper-Hehne studied German and History at the TU Braunschweig. She received her doctorate from the Institute of German Linguistics and worked as a lecturer of the German Academic Exchange Service in Shanghai (China). After a variety of teaching activities at the TU Braunschweig, she took over as head of the department “German as a Foreign Language” and also became “Akademische Rätin” (lecturer) at the Language Centre, later also Deputy Director. From 1997 onwards the scientist worked on her habilitation on intercultural everyday communication, which was completed in 2003. Hiltraud Casper-Hehne was Chairman of the Board of the “Fachverband Deutsch als Fremdsprache” (“German as a Foreign Language Association”) from May 2001 to May 2009.
Prof. Dr. Hiltraud Casper-Hehne served as a university Professor of Intercultural German Studies/Linguistics from April 1, 2004, to September 30, 2026. She has been in retirement since October 1, 2026. Prof. Casper-Hehne has initiated various research projects for Eastern Europe and Asia in the field of Intercultural German Studies, including the project “Interkultur” within the framework of the EU higher education programme Asia-Link to promote cooperation between Europe and China. A bi-national Master's programme with a double degree was put in place. The scientist is founding director of the German-Chinese Institute for Intercultural German Studies and Cultural Comparison and has been appointed China Commissioner of the University of Göttingen. From 2007 to 2009 she was a member of the Senate of the University.
She has been Vice President for Research and International Affairs from April 2009 to March 2011 and Vice President for International Affairs at the University of Göttingen from April 2011 to March 2021. In 2015, the University of Göttingen received the Institutional Award for Innovation in Internationalisation from the European Association for International Education.
Prof. Casper-Hehne was a member of the board of the HERA network from 2012 to 2014 and of the Executive Board of the Coimbra Group from 2014 to 2016. In 2014, she also headed the German Council of Economic Experts on the development of a BMBF strategy for China. She has been a member of the Language Advisory Board of the Goethe-Institut from 2015 to 2021 and a board member of the German Academic Exchange Service since 2016. From 2018 to 2020 she has been a member of the EU Ad-hoc Expert Group on European Universities.
Prof. Casper-Hehne has led numerous international, European and national projects in the field of German as a foreign and second language as well as language promotion. For instance, from 2014 to 2016 she was the overall project manager of the project “Umbrüche gestalten” (“Shaping upheavals”), which was dedicated to the obligatory integration of language promotion and language training into teacher training at nine universities in Lower Saxony.
From 2023 to 2026, she led the EU project ROCKET: Role Playing Games on Conflict Transformation for Equity in Higher Education through Virtual Exchange.
Furthermore, since 2022, Prof. Dr. Casper-Hehne has served as head of the German expert working group on "Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)" under the auspices of the KMK/BMZ, which is developing an ESD orientation framework for the upper secondary level (Sekundarstufe II) at High Schools (Gymnasien).
From 2020 to September 2026, she was tasked by the Executive Board with coordinating the University of Göttingen’s activities within the ENLIGHT network, serving as the local project lead.
Prof. Dr. Hiltraud Casper-Hehne’s current teaching and research focus areas include language support and language education, language and politics, cultural studies, applied linguistics, discourse analysis, as well as "diversity, equity, and inclusion" and education for sustainable development.