Christian Schaich has been the Administrative Director at ZOiS since 1 October 2016. He is responsible for all matters relating to the centre's administration and finances. After training as a bookseller in Cologne, he studied law in Passau, Odesa (Ukraine) and Berlin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) from 1992 to 1998. After the first state law examination, he wrote his doctoral thesis on the subject of Russian administrative law and was an Assistant Lecturer for Public Law and Russian Law, working with Prof. Dr. Alexander Blankenagel (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). This was followed by a traineeship at the Court of Appeal and the second state law examination. From 2004 to 2016 he was an Advisor and later Director for the Central and Eastern European region at the German Research Foundation (DFG). This included a period as head of the Moscow office of the German Research Foundation from 2005 to 2008. He has also been a lecturer in Administrative and Constitutional Law at the Foundation for International Legal Cooperation (including in Central Asia) since 2011.