Dr. Christiane Gaehtgens was born in 1957 in Wilhelmshaven / Germany.
She read German and Slavonic studies in Gießen and Bonn and obtained a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Bonn in 1987.

From 1989 she spent two years of postdoctoral study at University of Washington/Seattle/USA. Upon her return to Germany in 1991 she was appointed as Head of North America - Programmes at DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). In 1994 she took a position as Director of the DAAD office in London/UK.

In 1998 she became Secretary General of the newly founded Science Council of Lower Saxony in Hannover/Germany (Wissenschaftliche Kommission Niedersachsen).
From 2003 to July 2008 she was Secretary General of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK), based in Bonn and Berlin.

She has recently established “impact-consulting”, a private agency that advises universities and research institutions on issues of strategy, policy, internal governance and quality assurance.

Dr. Gaehtgens is an expert in Higher Education Policy and its impact on the governance of institutions of research and higher education at national, European and international level. Through her work for DAAD she has a background internationalisation of teaching and research, which has led to a number of more recent projects. She is especially interested in cooperation with the US and with Eastern Europe. During her time at HRK she has established a project to support the implementation of the Bologna-process in Russia.

As Secretary General of the Wissenschaftliche Kommission Niedersachsen, Dr. Gaehtgens has developed, implemented and assessed a new method for research assessment at German universities. Over the years she has become closely involved with the major issues of quality assurance, ranging from the impact of ranking to quality assurance in teaching and institutional quality management. During the last years she has focused on European issues, especially the implementation of the Bologna process. She has also done some work on ERA, with a particular focus on the common labour market for researchers. For the last two years she has been team member for the European research project “Mapping Diversity. Developing a Classification of Higher Education Institutions in Europe”, led by Professor Frans van Vught.

In a personal capacity Dr. Gaehtgens is member of a number of advisory panels and boards, among them the Österreichischer Wissenschaftsrat (Austrian Science Council) and the “Institut für Zukunft der Arbeit” (IZA). She also chairs the Committee for Higher Education of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) in Germany. In 2009, she was appointed as an expert to the Irish Universities Quality Board (IUQB).
Dr. Christiane Gaehtgens is married with four children.