Christian Schaich is a lawyer and ZOiS’s Managing Director. As such, he is responsible for legal matters, finances and the overall organisation of the institute. He trained as a bookseller in Cologne before studying law in Passau, Odesa and Berlin (Humboldt University of Berlin). After passing the first state law examination, he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation on Russian administrative and constitutional law and worked as an assistant to Prof. Alexander Blankenagel at the Chair of Public Law and Russian Law at Humboldt University. This was followed by a legal clerkship at the Court of Appeal and the second state law examination.

Schaich’s career in research administration began in 2004 at the German Research Foundation (DFG), where he initially assumed responsibility for partnerships with Russia and went on to head the Moscow office of the foundation. From 2009 on, he was responsible for the foundation’s Central and Eastern Europe division. He joined ZOiS as its (founding) Managing Director in 2016. Since 2011, he has also been a lecturer for the German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation and travels in this capacity to various educational institutions in Central Asia and elsewhere. His expertise lies in the area of German and international constitutional and administrative law.