Dr. Elke Fein is a German political and social scientist, founding member and managing director of the Institut für integrale Studien (IFIS) in Freiburg, where she also serves as director of the Center for Integral Politics. She has been connected with IFIS since its founding in 2008 and has led projects such as Leadership for Transition (LiFT), which ran in several phases from 2013 to 2022.

Her work focuses on integral politics, adult development, political culture, Russia studies, social transformation, and the role of deeper cultural patterns in democracy and systemic change. She studied political and social sciences at FU Berlin and Sciences Po Paris, as well as Eastern European studies and Eastern European history at FU Berlin and the University of Freiburg. In 2005, she completed a PhD on Russia’s political transformation and the 1992 CPSU trial before the Russian Constitutional Court.

At IFIS, Fein works with integral process design, dialogue facilitation, Deep Democracy, round tables, and collaboratory formats. She is also the main author of the 2023 book “Integrale Politik – Grundlagen, Prinzipien und Inspirationsquellen”. In public profiles and interviews, she presents integral politics as a way to address polarization, transformation, and the “polycrisis” through more developmental and holistic approaches to political culture