Torsten Reimer

Torsten Reimer joined the University of Chicago as University Librarian and Dean of the University Library in April 2022. Torsten is leading the process of developing and implementing a comprehensive strategic vision for the future of the University of Chicago Library, the 9th largest academic library in North America.

Torsten came to Chicago from the British Library, where he served as Head of Content and Research Services, ensuring that contemporary collections and research services met the needs of in-person and online users of one of the world’s largest research libraries. He was the British Library’s strategic expert for scholarly communications, including open access, research data, and alternative publishing models.

Earlier in his career, Torsten served as Scholarly Communications Officer at Imperial College London, where he oversaw the development of open access and research data services. He also worked as a Program Manager for digital infrastructure at Jisc, the United Kingdom’s digital service provider for higher and continuing education, managing programs and innovation projects including the National Grid Service and National Centre for Text Mining. Prior to that, Torsten held several positions at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and King’s College London, where he coordinated an international network supporting digital scholarship in the arts and humanities.

Torsten holds a Magister Artium and PhD in history, both from LMU. He currently serves as an executive board member of DataCite, a global non-profit organization that provides persistent identifiers for research data and other research outputs. Torsten is also chair of the advisory board for the library system of the University of Cologne, vice chair of the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation, and vice chair of the Open Repositories conference. Previously, he has been involved in a range of community initiatives, including chairing the Digital Shift working group that developed a ten year digital transformation vision for the Research Libraries UK consortium.

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