Professor Reinhard HEINISCH, Ph.D.

Professor Reinhard HEINISCH, Ph.D.
Professor of Austrian Politics in Comparative Perspective

Rudolfskai 42, 5020 Salzburg

Tel.: 43 (0) 662-8044-6615
Fax.: 43 (0) 662-6389-6615
E-Mail:

Room: 2038
Office hours: Thursday, from 2 to 4 p.m.
(by prior appointment by Ms. Schütz, phone +43(0)662-8044-6600, room 2034)


Reinhard Heinisch is Professor of comparative Austrian politics. He began his academic career in the United States (MA-Virginia Tech 1987; PhD-Michigan State University 1994), working at the University of Pittsburgh from 1994 to 2009. His research and teaching focuses on questions of democracy, comparative populism, Euroscepticism and the behavior of political parties. His research has appeared in over 60 publications, including leading international journals such as the Journal of Common Market Studies, Party Politics, West European Politics, Democratization, Comparative European Politics and many others. He is author and editor of 8 books including Kritisches Handbuch der Demokratie in Österreich (Böhlau – 2020), The People and the Nation: Populism and Ethno-Territorial Politics in Europe (Routledge 2019). He has served as a consultant to various organizations and government agencies, including the U.S. Department of State, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Defense, and The Salzburg Global Seminar. He is an associate member of the European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh and regularly teaches at Renmin University in Beijing-China. He frequently comments on political developments in national and international media (e.g. BBC, Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, CNN, Foreign Affairs) and is a regular guest in new programs of the ORF and Servus TV. Heinisch is the recipient of the Austrian National Prize for Science by the Lupac Foundation of the Austrian Parliament. He has directed several research projects and serves currently as the team leader of an EU funded Horizon2020 project, “PaCE” to study the rise of populist politics.