Born 1952 in Aachen (Germany) and brought up in the nearby town of Eschweiler, Professor Giegerich studied English Linguistics, General Linguistics, English Literature and Journalism at the University of Mainz, graduating Magister Artium in 1978 under the supervision of Professors Klaus Faiss and Gerhard Wahrig.
He joined the University of Edinburgh in 1979 as a lecturer and completed his PhD (Aspects of Metrical Phonology: German and English) there in 1983 under the supervision of John M Anderson.
He was a Trustee of the Scottish Language Dictionaries until 2024 and is an Honorary Member of the Angus McIntosh Centre and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
His particular research interests have included the following: Heinz Giegerich is the founder of the Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language and was the General Editor of the series until 2024.
He was one of the founding Editors (with Laurie Bauer and Gregory Stump) of the linguistic morphology journal, Word Structure.