Helmut K. Anheier (Ph.D. Yale University, 1986) is Director of the Center for Civil Society at UCLA’s School of Public Policy and Social Research, where he is also a full Professor of Social Welfare.  From 1998 to 2002 he was the founding director of Centre for Civil Society at the London School of Economics, and a member of LSE’s Department of Social Policy, where he now holds the title of Centennial Professor.  Prior to this he was a Senior Research Associate and Project Co-director at the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies, and Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. Before embarking on an academic career, Dr. Anheier served as Social Affairs Officer with the United Nations. He has also held research appointments at Yale University, the University of Cologne, and the Science Center in Berlin.

Dr. Anheier’s work has focused on civil society, the nonprofit sector, philanthropy, organizational studies, policy analysis and comparative methodology.  He was involved in research on a comparative study on the size, scope and role of the private nonprofit sector in thirty developed and developing countries, and was the co-director of the team developing the Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions for the United Nations (2002).  He is founding editor of Voluntas, the international journal of research on nonprofit organizations, and of the Global Civil Society Yearbook (Oxford University Press), and series editor of an international book series on nonprofit and civil society studies (Kluwer/Plenum, New York). He is author of several books and numerous articles that have appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Annual Review of Sociology, Contemporary Sociology, Sociological Forum, the British Journal of Sociology, International Sociology, World Development, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Voluntas, Questions d’economie nationale, Nonprofit Management and Leadership, Urban Affairs Quarterly, Zeitschrift für Soziologie, and Koelner Zeitschift fuer Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie.

Recent books include Global Civil Society 2002, 2001 (Oxford University Press), From Charity to Creativity: Philanthropic Foundations in the 21^st Century (Comedia and J.Rowntree Reform Trust,2002) The Third Sector at the Crossroads (Routledge, 2001), The Nonprofit Sector in Germany (2001), When Things Go Wrong: Failures and Breakdowns in Organizations (Sage, 1999), Private Funds, Public Purpose (Plenum, 1999), The Nonprofit Sector in Developing Countries (Manchester University Press, 1998), and Defining the Nonprofit Sector (Manchester University Press, 1997). He has just completed the second edition of the Global Civil Society Yearbook, has four other books forthcoming (Civil Society: Measurement and Policy Dialogue, Earthscan, London; The International Encyclopedia of Philanthropy and Civil Society, Taylor & Francies; The Nonprofit Sector, Routledge; and The Theory of Nonprofit Enterprise, Kluwer Academic.  He is currently working on the role of philanthropy internationally, exploring the intersection of globalization, culture and civil society, and interested in methodological aspects of measuring the globalization and regionalization of civil society.

Dr. Anheier serves on the board of several national and international organizations, and is a corresponding member of the Royal Irish Academy.