Judith Wellen is head of the Strategy and External Relations Department at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She brings a wealth of experience from the international education field to the position, having served as head of the international strategy office at the Humboldt University Berlin (2012-2018) and as personal advisor to the president of the university (2010-2012). Prior to this she was the head of several professional development programs for international language mediators and multipliers at the Goethe Institut (2008-2009).Wellen holds degrees in art history and European ethnology from the Free University Berlin, Humboldt University Berlin, and Trinity College Dublin. She received a PhD (summa cum laude) in art history as a fellow of the Cusanuswerk (Episcopal Scholarship Foundation) at the Free University Berlin and was an associated fellow of the German-French graduate college “Institutional Orders, Text and Symbols” at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, EPHE Sorbonne, Paris and the Technical University Dresden. Her dissertation examined the relationship between art and politics, in particular the subject of political iconography in Early Modern Spain.
