Verena Blechinger-Talcott is Vice President for International Affairs and Professor of Japanese Politics and Political Economy at Freie Universitaet Berlin. She studied Political Science, Japanese Studies and Law in Munich, Kyoto and Tokyo. She received her M.A. in Japanese Studies in 1991 and her PhD in Political Science in 1997, both from Munich University. After working as a lecturer at Munich University (1993-97), she joined the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo, in 1997, where she focussed on comparative research of Japanese politics and international relations. From 2001-2002, she was also Deputy Director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies. After postdoctoral research as Advanced Research Fellow in the Program on US-Japan Relations at Harvard University, she was Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Hamilton College, Clinton (NY). In 2004, she joined the faculty of Freie Universitaet Berlin. At Freie Universitaet Berlin, she was Dean of the Department of History and Cultural Studies (2007-2011) and a member of the Academic Senate (2013-2018). In 2018, she was elected and appointed Vice President for International Affairs at Freie Universitaet Berlin.

She has been invited as Visiting Professor to the University of Tokyo (2008). In 2012, she became Director of the Graduate School of East Asian Studies which is funded through the German Federal Excellence Initiative. She is a member of the editorial advisory boards of “Social Science Japan Journal” (University of Tokyo) and “Japan Forum” (British Association for Japanese Studies) and a member of the International Advisory Board of the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo, serves on the Advisory Board of the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ), and, since 2011, she is also the Treasurer of the European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS). She has written and edited several books and numerous articles on Japanese politics, international relations and political economy.