Prof. Dr. Martin Löffelholz (retired) is associate member of iRisCS-Com and founder and longtime head of iRisCS-Com's predecessor, the International Research Group on Crisis Communication (IRGoCC). Until end of September 2025, he held the Chair of the Media Studies Group at the Technical University of Ilmenau.
After studying communication science, political science, sociology and European ethnology at the University of Münster and completing his doctorate in 1988 with a thesis on the political planning of academic journalism training, Prof. Löffelholz worked at the Universities of Münster and Leipzig until 1998. When he moved to the TU Ilmenau in 1999, the Free State of Thuringia appointed him founding director of the Institute for Media and Communication Studies (IfMK).
In addition to his membership of the Association of Award Winners and Alumni of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation ("Humboldtians"), Prof. Löffelholz has held several visiting professorships outside Europe, including at the Universitas Atma Jaya Yogyakarta in Indonesia and the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. From 2012 to 2015, he was released from his duties as a university professor to take up the position of President of the Swiss German University in Jakarta, Indonesia. After his return, he headed the Board of Directors of the Institute for Media and Communication Studies (IfMK) at TU Ilmenau from 2017 until the beginning of 2021.
In his more than 430 scientific publications, including 24 books, Prof. Löffelholz deals primarily with journalism, war and crisis communication, political communication, organizational communication as well as intercultural and international aspects. He has led a large number of empirical research projects, including on risk and crisis communication of government authorities during the COVID-pandemic, on the image of Germany among multipliers in the Maghreb states, on media relations between the German and US armed forces, on the public relations work of the German domestic intelligence services and on the attitudes of online journalists in Germany and the USA.
Prof. Löffelholz is a member of various academic associations, including the International Communication Association (ICA), the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) and the German Society for Journalism and Communication Studies (DGPuK). From 1997 to 2000, he was spokesman for the DGPuK's Journalism and Journalism Research Section and later initiated the DGPuK's International and Intercultural Communication Section.
For three decades, Prof. Löffelholz has also worked as an expert, consultant and lecturer in international (development) cooperation, including for the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa), the German Academic Exchange Service, the Federal Foreign Office, political foundations and other institutions. From 2008 to 2012, he led a series of training events for journalists from ASEAN countries on behalf of GIZ. For the ifa, he designed and moderated dialog conferences in Abu Dhabi, Berlin, Jakarta, Nairobi and Oman, among others.
As part of his research work, he has frequently visited various countries in Africa, Asia and South and Central America. He has undertaken field research in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, El Salvador, Gambia, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Kenya, Kosovo, Oman, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Venezuela, Vietnam and the People's Republic of China. Before starting his university career, he worked as a journalist, including several years as a television and radio reporter for Westdeutscher Rundfunk.
