Marc Helbling

Prof. Marc Helbling is the Hans Blumenberg Visiting Professor at the University of Münster’s Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” (2021). He holds a permanent position as Professor of Sociology of Migration and Integration at the University of Mannheim and is a Research Fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Previously, he was a Professor of Political Science at the University of Bamberg and led an Emmy Noether Junior Research Group at WZB. His research focuses on migration policies, xenophobia, populism, and extremism, with recent projects addressing climate migration and terrorism-policy linkages.

Education and Career: Born in Chur, Switzerland (1977), Helbling has held visiting research positions at Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford. He received the Fernand Braudel Fellowship (2016) and the Immigration Research Network’s Best Paper Award (2018). He was an elected member of the Junge Akademie (2010–2015) and the Leopoldina Academy.

Research Interests:

• Immigration and citizenship policy dynamics
• Social and political extremism
• Islamophobia in Western Europe
• Climate change’s impact on migration
• Terrorism and security policy

Recent Activities: Delivered the public lecture Islamophobia in Western Europe: Fear of Muslims or Fundamentalists? (June 2021) and co-led a masterclass on attitudes toward Muslim practices with early-career researchers at the Cluster.