Jannes Tessmann

Jannes Tessmann is the Head of Stiftung Mercator’s Istanbul office, where he fosters civil society dialogue, institutional cooperation, and academic exchange between Europe, Germany, and Türkiye.

Tessmann holds a PhD in Economic and Social Geography from the University of Cologne. His research examines the governance of globally dispersed production networks, with a regional focus on Türkiye, Ivory Coast, and India. Before joining Stiftung Mercator, he was a researcher at the Istanbul Policy Center, focusing on labor governance and the workplace inclusion of refugees. He also worked at the Institute for Political Science and European Affairs at the University of Cologne, contributing to the establishment of the Turkish German University in Istanbul, and spent more than two years as a consultant for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). He serves on the Advisory Board of the Network Office for City Partnerships in North Rhine-Westphalia and the Consortium Turkish German University.