Dr. Reinhard Heinisch

Dr. Reinhard Heinisch is a Professor of Comparative Austrian Politics at the University of Salzburg and head of the Department of Political Science. He received his academic training in the US where he completed his PhD at Michigan State University and then taught at the University of Pittsburgh from 1994 to 2009. Heinisch’s research focuses on the rise of the radical right, populism, democracy, and political parties.

Dr. Heinisch is the author of over 40 research articles and more than 50 other scholarly publications including 14 books. His research appeared in journals such as Journal of European Political Research, Political Studies, Journal of Common Market Studies, Party Politics, West European Politics, Democratization, Representation, and many others.

His book publications include Understanding Populist Party Organization: The Radical Right in Western Europe (Palgrave 2016); The People and the Nation: Populism and Ethno-Territorial Politics in Europe (Routledge 2019), Political Populism. A Handbook, Nomos (2021), and Politicizing Islam in Austria (Rutgers University Press 2024).

He has funded his research with various project grants by including Marie Curie research fellowship by the European Union (2010), a European Union Horizon 2020 grant to study populism and counterstrategies, and a grant by the Austrian Research Fund (2022) on studying populism and conspiracy theories.

Dr. Heinisch is the recipient of Austrian National Science Prize by the Austrian parliament (2017), past president of the Austrian political Science association, and served as the head of Working Group on Democracy by the Austrian Research Association. He continues to be a faculty associate of the University of Pittsburgh and has been a regular visiting scholar with the Renmin University of China in Beijing.