Biography

Siegfried O. Wolf is Director of Research at the South Asia Democratic Forum (SADF), a Brussels-based think tank, and Senior Researcher (affiliated member) at the South Asia Institute (SAI), Heidelberg University. He was educated at the SAI and Institute of Political Science (IPW) in Heidelberg. Additionally, he is a visiting fellow at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST, Islamabad, Pakistan), affiliated researcher at the Pakistan Security Research Unit (PSRU, Durham University, UK), and a former research fellow at IPW and Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH, New Delhi, India). He has also worked as a consultant for the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Germany, and was a member of the external expert group of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Task Force, Federal Foreign Office, Germany. Furthermore, Dr Wolf works as a political commentator and an in-depth analyst for several well-known international media within and outside South Asia.

Dr Wolf is the co-author of ‘A Political and Economic Dictionary of South Asia’ (Routledge; London 2006), co-editor of ‘Terrorism Revisited. Islamism, Political Violence and State-Sponsorship’ (Springer: Heidelberg, 2017), ‘Politics in South Asia. Culture, Rationality and Conceptual Flow’ (Springer: Heidelberg, 2015), ‘The Merits of Regionalisation. The Case of South Asia’ (Springer: Heidelberg, 2014), and ‘State and Foreign Policy in South Asia’ (Samskriti: New Delhi, 2010), and Deputy Editor of the ‘Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics’ (HPSACP).

Among his research interests are China’s ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative (BRI; ‘New Silk Road’) with a special focus on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC); civil-military relations; terrorism in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region (Af-Pak) and Bangladesh; Jihadism; regional integration and cooperation; as well as international relations in South Asia.