Bernd Oppermann is Professor at Leibniz University Hanover, Germany, where he holds a chair for German, European and International Private Law and Commercial Law. He received his first and second state examination in law at Frankfurt, Germany. He holds the LL.M. degree from U. of California (UCLA), received a Ph.D. (Dr. jur.) from the U. of Frankfurt, and his habilitation from U. of Hamburg for research in private law, civil procedure, business law, and legal theory. More recent publications concern competition law and comparative law.

Prof. Oppermann was guest lecturer and  did research at Universidade Católica Portuguesa and Universidade Lisboa (2001 – 2015), at Chulalongkorn University Bangkok (2002 – 2014), at Strathclyde University Glasgow and University of Durham (1996, 2011), at Marie-Curie Sklodowskiej Uniwersytet Lublin and Uniwersytet Jagiellonski Kraków (1994 – 1998, 2010 -2011); at Symbiosis University Pune, India (2008 – 2011), at Bandung University  and Gadjah Mada University Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2012 – 2014). Other teaching events took place at universities in Brasilia, China, Greece, Turkey, and Russia.

Bernd Oppermann was coordinating and holding together the ELPIS network for seventeen years (1998 – 2015). The ELPIS network is a European brain trust of a group of presently 35 EU and EFTA law faculties, the oldest network and one of the largest of that kind. Regular meetings, exchanges on different levels, the development of a homepage, and many specific events have been managed and performed from his chair at the law faculty of Leibniz University at Hanover.

In the frame of the ELPIS network activities, several European projects were successfully applied for, realized and finalized. One of them was the scientific coordination of the TEMPUS project “Reform of Russian legal education”, consisting in its core of four pilot projects in the Ural region at Tjumen, Ekaterinenburg, Perm und Ishevsk, Russia (2003 – 2007). The biggest challenge, however, has been the application and continuous coordination of an Erasmus Mundus (EU) pioneer project for the programme “European Legal Practice LL.M. Eur. joint degree” (France/Germany/Portugal) from 2004 to 2012. The setting of global links under the Erasmus Mundus scheme has led him to promote partnerships in Brasilia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. The efforts were made sustainable by means of organisation, teaching and research.

For his European activities and project coordination (TEMPUS and the ERASMUS MUNDUS schemes), Bernd Oppermann received an award (DAAD) and the titles Dr. h.c. from U. of Rouen and Prof. h.c. from UMCS at Lublin.