Academic Biography
Academic Career*
Frank Fischer was Distinguished Professor of Politics and Global Affairs at Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA) until he retired emeritus in 2015. During that time, he was also affiliated with the university’s Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. Before joining Rutgers, he taught at New York University and at the State University of New York’s Empire State College. In addition, He is a Faculty Fellow in Politics and Globalization at Kassel University. Over these years he has lectured widely in Europe, Canada, Australia, Asia and LatinAmerica on numerous topics, including environmental politics, American presidential government, participatory governance and deliberative policy analysis. Currently, he is a research associate at the Albrecht Daniel Thaer Institute at Humboldt University in Berlin.
After Rutgers, he took up residence in Berlin, Germany, where he has continued to conduct scholarly research and writing. In Germany and Europe generally, he has been a visiting scholar and lecturer at a number universities and research institutes. These have included the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin and the universities of Kassel University, Free University of Berlin (Fulbright Scholarship), Vienna, Salzburg, Rome (La Sapienza), Institute of Economics and Political Science in Budapest, Hungary, Leiden in the Netherlands, Roskilde in Denmark, London, Australian National University, Ahmedabad Institute of Management, Nagoya in Japan, Center for Environmental Policy at the Free Science of Berlin, Institute of Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, and Humboldt University in Berlin, Sciences Po in Paris, Singapore, Televiv, Madrid, Bangkok, Nepal, Prague Poland, Lundt,Amsterdam, Tokyo, Australian National Unversity, Witswaterand in South Africa, Ahmnedbad, Columbia in New York, Brasilia, Singapore, Sciences Po, to mention a few.
Areas of Research
Fischer’s research and teaching have focused primarily on the processes of public policymaking with special emphasis on comparative and global environmental politics and policy, American government, German green politics, economic policy, policy analysis, public administration, policy expertise, science and politics and the sociology of knowledge. He has also conducted field research on environmental governance, citizen participation, local knowledge and ecovillages in South Africa, India, Nepal, Brazil, the United States and Germany.
Fischer is best known for his key role in developing the post-positivist “argumentative turn” in policy analysis. Focused on discourse and communicative practices, this approach concentrate on the significance of argumentation in policy agenda-setting, policy formulation and evaluation. The broader influence of the argumentative turn has been to help initiate deliberative policy analysis, the interpretive policy analysis movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentative_turn) and critical policy studies.
In addition to the direct influence of his scholarship on policy studies, Fischer has played a large part in the institutional developments to advance critical policy studies generally. Central to these developments were his efforts to create a journal that would serve as an academic forum for these approaches. This, culminated in the establishement of the journal Critical Policy Studies(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Policy_Studies#:~:text=Critical%20Policy%20Studies%20is%20a%2) for which he was a founding co-editor. He also played a major in instituting the Critical Policy Studies Network,in conjunction with the American Political Science Association. In addition, he wasinstrumental in establishing the Advancing Critical Policy Studies book series and the Handbooks of Research on Public Policy Series for Edward Elgar Publishing, serving as series editor. He was also one of the
founding executive committee members of the International Public Policy Association, and played a central role in associating the Critical Policy Studies Network with that organization. Additionally, he was a leading figure in organizing a series of major international conferences on Interpretive Policy Analysis.
Awards
Professor Fischer has received a number of academic awards, including the Harold Lasswell Award for Contributions to Public Policy Scholarship (1999), the Aaron Wildavsk APSA Award for Enduring Contributions to Public Policy Studies (2017), an Interpretive Methods Charles Taylor APSA book award for Argumentative Turn Revisited (2014), a Policy Studies Organization book award for Confronting Values in Policy Analysis (1987), as well as a number of teaching awards at Rutgers University.
Life and Education
Professor Fischer grew up in Chicago and Northern Indiana, where he studied for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. After completing an A. B. in social psychology at Indiana University in 1965, he earned an M.A in economics in 1967 from Roosevelt University in Chicago. Studying there with Professor Walter Weisskopf, he developed on an ongoing interest in economic thought and political economy. In the latter half of the 1960s, Fischer left the Mid-West to study politics and political economy in New York City at the New School for Social Research, Columbia University, and New York University, where he received his doctorate in 1978. During those socially turbulent years, he also worked as a case worker for the NYC Department of Social Services in a blighted area of the Bronx, before joining the American Peace Corps Thailand program in 1966. Later he served as an advisor on community development and street gang violence for New York City’s Youth Services Agency (https://www.nytimes.com/1971/09/02/archives/hunts-point-youths-draw-gang-battle-lines-youths-in-hunts-point-are.html), Afterwards he was employed an as economist for the Technical Services Department of Chase Manhattan Bank and later as a policy analyst focused on the New York City fiscal crisis for the Tax Foundation, a policy think tank.
Fischer has attributed these research experiences as essential to the shaping of his post-positivist thinking about the nature and epistemology of economic, ecological andpolitical knowledge and its role in policy argumentation.
Websites
http://sites.google.com/site/FrankFischerpolicystudies
https://www.newark.rutgers.edu/about-us/have-you-met-rutgers-newark/frank-fischer-professor-emeritus
https://www.ippapublicpolicy.org/commitees
https://climatechange.rutgers.edu/people/affiliates/fischer-frank
https://www.uni-kassel.de/fb05/fachgruppen/politikwissenschaft/fellow-des-fachbereichs.html
https://www.agrar.hu-berlin.de/de/institut/departments/daoe/apol/mitarbeiter/FF
*From Frank Fischer, Politologe, Wikipedia