University Council

Professor Dr Birgitt Riegraf served as President of Paderborn University from April 2018 to March 2025. From 2015 to 2018, she held the position of Vice-President for Studies, Teaching and Quality Development at Paderborn University, having previously served as Dean of Studies at the Faculty of Cultural Studies. Since 2025, she has once again been working as Professor of General Sociology at Paderborn University. Riegraf has been involved in numerous science and higher education policy committees and bodies; among other roles, she was a founding member of the German Agency for Transfer and Innovation (DATI).

Riegraf studied Political Science, Sociology, Psychology and Religious Studies, as well as the interdisciplinary supplementary programme “Qualitative Methods in the Social Sciences”, at the Free University of Berlin. She was awarded her doctorate in Political Science in 1995 at the Otto Suhr Institute of the Free University of Berlin and completed her habilitation in 2004 at the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University. In 2009, she was appointed Professor of General Sociology at Paderborn University. She has held Maria Goeppert Mayer Visiting Professorships at the Technische Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig and at Georg-August University Göttingen.

Her teaching and research interests include science and higher education studies, sociological theory and gender studies, the sociology of inequality and intersectionality research, methods and methodology, as well as the sociology of the state, work and organisations.

Birgitt Riegraf has been a member of the University Council of the University of Vechta since October 2025 and has served as Chair of the Council since December 2025.

Christine Grimme, born in Damme, studied teacher education with a combination of Biology and Physical Education at the University of Münster. After completing her teacher training (Referendariat) in Marl, North Rhine-Westphalia, she worked as a teacher at the Canisianum Grammar School in Lüdinghausen from 1984 to 2001. Since 2003, she has been responsible for public relations at GRIMME Landmaschinenfabrik in Damme and, together with her husband and their two sons, has been managing the Grimme Group in the fourth and fifth generations.

Christine Grimme has been a founding member of the Rotary Club of Vechta since 2006, a founding member and board member of the Damme Community Foundation (Dammer Bürgerstiftung) since 2012, and a member of the Caritas Council of the Oldenburg Diocesan Caritas Association since 2018. She has been a member of the University Council of the University of Vechta since 2005. Since December 2025, Mrs Grimme has served as Deputy Chair of the University Council.

Gerhard Tepe studied Catholic Theology (Diploma) and Educational Sciences (Diploma) at the University of Münster and the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. After completing his doctorate at the Catholic Faculty in Freiburg, he established a facility for people with mental illness in Cloppenburg between 1994 and 1999, the Community Psychiatric Centre (GPZ). Following further senior management positions at the St Josef’s Foundation in Cloppenburg, Gerhard Tepe has been Director of the Oldenburg State Caritas Association (Landes-Caritasverband für Oldenburg e.V.) since 2003.

In this role, he has taken on a wide range of responsibilities on advisory boards and supervisory bodies; among other positions, he served as Chair of the Lower Saxony Hospital Association from 2012 to 2016. After previously contributing as a member of the Advisory Board of the Catholic University of Applied Sciences Vechta, he has been a member of the University Council of the University of Vechta since 2013.

Yvonne Stöber studied Economics at the University of Hanover. Following her graduation, she initially worked as a research associate, focusing on issues in health economics and insurance management. She subsequently moved into higher education and research management, where from 2008 to 2017 she was responsible for operational and strategic management tasks within the Cluster of Excellence REBIRTH at Hannover Medical School. In this role, she worked closely with both university-based and non-university research institutions. From 2017 to 2025, she was employed as a research manager at an interdisciplinary institute of Leibniz University Hannover. There, she was responsible for administrative management and was also involved in the coordination and preparation of research proposals and collaborative funding applications. Since 2025, she has been working as a policy officer in the Higher Education Department of the Ministry of Science and Culture of the State of Lower Saxony (MWK). She has been a member of the University Council of the University of Vechta since March 2026.

Lothar Bluhm, born in Wuppertal, studied German Studies, History, Philosophy and Educational Sciences at the University of Wuppertal. He completed his doctorate on diaries from the period of the Third Reich and subsequently obtained his habilitation on the communication system of early German philology. After holding a temporary professorship at the University of Wuppertal, he assumed the Chair of Germanic Philology (Linguistics and Literature) at the University of Oulu, Finland.

Since 2006, Lothar Bluhm has been teaching as Professor of Modern German Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Koblenz-Landau and, following the institutional restructuring, at the Rhineland-Palatinate Technical University of Kaiserslautern-Landau. From 2008 onwards, he served as Deputy Head and from 2010 to 2013 as Acting Head of the Centre for Teacher Education in Landau. From 2014 to 2020, he was Dean of the Faculty of Cultural and Social Sciences and a member of the Senate at the University of Koblenz-Landau.

He is the author of numerous publications on German literature from the Middle Ages to the present, on motif and topos research, on the history of scholarship, and on fairy-tale studies. In addition, he serves as Acting Editor-in-Chief of the journal Wirkendes Wort.

Lothar Bluhm has been a member of the University Council of the University of Vechta since 2022.

Claudia Garnier studied History and Slavic Studies at the universities of Giessen and Kasan and completed her degree in 1994 with a Magister Artium. She earned her doctorate in Medieval History in Giessen and Bonn in 1997. She subsequently worked at the University of Münster as a research associate at the Department of History and on projects within the Collaborative Research Centre “Symbolic Communication and Social Value Systems” and the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”.

In 2008, Claudia Garnier completed her habilitation at the University of Münster with a thesis on medieval rulership communication. Following temporary chair appointments in Heidelberg and Münster, she has been Professor of Pre-Modern History at the University of Vechta since 2011. From 2011 to 2013, she served as an adjunct Equal Opportunities Officer, and from 2013 to 2015 she was a member of the University Senate. In addition to her work on various examination boards, she served as Dean of Studies from 2019 to 2021 and as Dean of Faculty II in 2024/25.

Since September 2025, she has represented the members of the University on the University Council.

Josef Lange studied Catholic Theology (Diplom-Theologe), History and Political Science (Dr phil.) at the universities of Münster and Regensburg. Following academic and administrative positions at the University of Bayreuth (1974–1979) and at the administrative offices of the German Research Foundation (DFG) (1979–1984) and the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) (1984–1990), he served as Secretary General of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) from 1990 to 2000.

From 2000 to 2001, he was State Secretary for Science and Research in Berlin, from 2002 to 2003 Head of the Department for Interministerial Coordination at the Thuringian State Chancellery, and from 2003 to 2013 State Secretary at the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture.

Josef Lange has served as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research since 2004, as Chair of the Administrative Board of Pius Hospital Oldenburg since October 2014, as Chair of the Council for German Orthography since early 2017, as Chair of the University Council of Hannover Medical School (MHH) since July 2018, and as Chair of the University Council of the University of Vechta since October 2019. In addition, he has been a member of the University Council of the University of Regensburg since October 2021.