‘I am very pleased that Prof. Dr. Ute Lohrentz is taking up her position and would like to give her a warm welcome,’ said Katharina Fegebank, Hamburg’s deputy mayor and senator for science, research, equality and districts. ‘As its dean, Ute Lohrentz did an outstanding job of leading the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences. I am sure that she will use her integrative strengths to successfully continue developing HAW Hamburg and focus even more intensively on the topic of transfer in particular. I wish her every success in this endeavour. At the same time, I would like to sincerely thank Prof. Dr. Micha Teuscher, who courageously led the university through difficult waters with care and commitment for six years. He has contributed significantly to ensuring that HAW Hamburg is in a strategically secure position for the future and was, among other things, an instrumental participant in establishing the new Oberbillwerder Campus as a beacon for Hamburg’s second-largest urban development project. I would like to convey my heartfelt thanks for his engagement and stamina in shaping the future.’
Prof. Dr. Micha Teuscher took up his position in May 2017. From the beginning, he advocated strongly for intensive exchange between the university and society. ‘HAW Hamburg,’ he said in his farewell speech, ‘is a visionary campus for knowledge transfer which has shaped the city and the metropolitan region and will do so even more in future.’ Among other things, Micha Teuscher advanced digitalisation, academic professional continuing education and university construction. He drove the university’s successful application to the federal-state programme FH Personal, as well as efforts to obtain the right to grant doctoral degrees.
The university faced significant challenges during Micha Teuscher’s term, including the coronavirus pandemic; a difficult financial situation; and a cyber-attack, the consequences of which are still being felt. ‘Together we have demonstrated that we can also deal with crises. Nevertheless, my wish for Professor Lohrentz is that as president she can now focus more strongly on furthering strategic development,’ said Micha Teuscher. Despite conditions that have not always been easy for everyone, he said, an important foundation for this work has been laid through the discussion of new strategic perspectives.
Continuing this process and using it to make HAW Hamburg a place for sustainable transformation is a matter of particular importance to her, said Prof. Dr. Ute Lohrentz upon her inauguration. ‘The future of HAW Hamburg’ is the name of the steering group which, under her leadership, will now bring together and advance strategic efforts at the university under one roof. The initial meetings of the university’s governance bodies are planned for June, said Ute Lohrentz. ‘Together with the university members, I want to continue to develop HAW Hamburg and present it in a self-confident and positive light.’
In his opening remarks, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Eckart Kottkamp, chair of the HAW Hamburg University Advisory Board, stated that he was looking forward to these steps and wished the new president success with them. ‘I would also like to expressly thank the outgoing president, Prof. Dr. Micha Teuscher, for his work, which strengthened and even expanded the university during these difficult times.’
Ute Lohrentz was born in Rheine in 1965 and studied law and Romance languages and literatures at the University of Münster and the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Following her second state exam in law in 1994, she worked as an academic staff member in the University of Münster’s Department of Legal Theory and Civil Law until 1998. In 1999 she completed her doctorate in law.
After four years of employment as a lawyer, she was appointed professor of private law, with a focus on family law, child and youth law and social welfare law, in the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences at the Köln University of Applied Sciences (TH Köln) in 2003. From 2006 to 2013 she served as vice dean for studies and teaching, and between 2009 and 2011 she also completed an MBA in university and academic management. She contributed further to shaping the TH Köln as dean of the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences from 2013 to 2018, before coming to HAW Hamburg in March 2018 and taking up the position of dean of the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences. In December 2022, the HAW Hamburg Senate unanimously elected her as the new president.
