Ansgar Zerfass

Ansgar Zerfass, born 1965, is Professor in Communication and Leadership (II) at BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, Norway, since 2013. He is also Professor and Chair in Strategic Communication at the Institute of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig, Germany. He teaches within the Master of Management program Communication for Leaders at BI and is involved in various research activities at the department.

Dr. Zerfass studied business administration and communication science at the University of Erlangen-Nueremberg, Bavaria, and graduated in management (Dipl.-Kfm.). He started his academic career as a research associate with Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Horst Steinmann at the Chair of Strategic Management at the same university and gained a doctorate in business administration (Dr. rer. pol) summa cum laude. Afterwards, he worked in practice for 10 years in the fields of corporate communications and political consulting. During that time, he held an executive management position at MFG Baden-Württemberg, the center of excellence of the federal state for information technology and media. At the same time, he achieved a Habilitation (academic lecture qualification/second doctorate) in communication science at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg under the mentorship of Prof. Winfried Schulz.

Services: Currently, he acts as Editor of the International Journal of Strategic Communication (Routledge Publishers, USA), Past President of the EUPRERA European Public Relations Education and Research Association, Brussels, Academic Advisor of the Corporate Communication Cluster Vienna (CCCV), Vienna, Austria, Plank Scholar at the Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations at the University of Alabama, USA, Publisher of the multilingual knowledge portal communicationcontrolling.de, as well as Managing Director of the Academic Society for Corporate Management and Communication, which bundles the engagement of more than 35 global companies and various universities for knowledge transfer and research funding in the field of corporate communications. He is a member of ICA, ECREA, EUPRERA, DGPuK, DPRG, and EBEN/DNWE.

Dr. Zerfass has published 33 books and more than 300 journal articles, book chapters, and study reports papers in several languages so far. He runs a large number of empirical projects, for example as lead researcher of the annual European Communication Monitor, the largest transnational study on strategic communication in more than 40 countries (since 2007), as initiator of the Asia-Pacific Communication Monitor and as coordinator of the multi-year research program Value Creating Communication across several universities.