Frank A. Stengel is a political sociologist concerned with German security policy, populism, and political and sociological theory. He currently works as a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Kiel University, Germany and as a Non-Resident Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin.
Dr. Stengel’s first book The Politics of Military Force (University of Michigan Press, 2020) examines post-unification German security policy from the perspective of the poststructuralist discourse theory of the Essex School and was included among Internationale Politik’s and Süddeutsche Zeitung‘s “Books of the Year 2022“. The book is based on Dr. Stengel’s doctoral dissertation, which was awarded the European International Studies Association’s Best Dissertation Award in 2018. He is also the co-editor of Populism and World Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd rev. ed., 2026, with David B. MacDonald and Dirk Nabers), which explores the inter- and transnational dimensions of populism.
Dr. Stengel received his doctorate in Political Science from the University of Bremen/Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences. Prior to joining Kiel University, he worked as a Research Officer for the Institutional Strategy at the University of Bremen, and during the 2019-2020 academic year, he was a DAAD Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.