Prof. Dr. Dirk Messner has been director of the German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) since 2003, and from 2004 he has been a member (Vice Chair since 2009) of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (Wissenschaftlicher Beirat globale Umweltveränderungen WBGU) to the German Federal Government. In 2006 he was appointed professor for Political Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

From 2002 to 2004 he was adjunct professor for Political Science at the Freie Universität (FU) of Berlin. In 2002 he finished his postdoctoral lecture qualification (habilitation) entitled "Desafíos de la globalización en América Latina". For eight years, from 1995 to 2003, he was the academic director of the Institute of Development and Peace/Institut für Entwicklung und Frieden (INEF) of the University Duisburg-Essen. This appointment followed the completion of his doctoral thesis under the title: "The Network Society: International Competitiveness as a Problem of Social Governance" at the FU Berlin.

Prof. Dr. Dirk Messner has published numerous books, articles and position papers, example.g.: Messner, Dirk/Tobias Debiel/Franz Nuscheler (eds.) (2007): Global trends 2007: vulnerability and security in the 21st century Bonn: Stiftung Entwicklung und Frieden, and Messner, Dirk et al. (German Advisory Council on Global Change) (2008): Climate Change as a security risk, London: Earthscan.