Profile
Manfred Liebel sees himself as an “unruly academic”, who always tries to go beyond the boundaries of the ivory tower of the university and to understand his teaching and research work as part of a political engagement and tool of political practice. Since his academic training in sociology and public law and his doctorate in philosophy he worked as professor of sociology at the Berlin University of Technology with a particular interest in disadvantaged children and youth in different parts of the world. Since the late 1980s he has been involved as a collaborator of the Working Children's Movements (NNATs) in Latin America, Africa and India. He emphasises that he has learned a lot from them and continues to do so. He is the founder of the international Master's in Childhood Studies and Child Rights at the Free University of Berlin and continues now as honorary professor and patron of the same Master's at the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam, Germany.