Thomas Bierschenk (born June 18, 1951, in Linz am Rhein[1]) is a German ethnologist and sociologist.
He is also on the advisory board of the African Power and Politics Program of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI, London) and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the “Laboratoire d'études et des recherches sur les dynamiques sociales et le développement local” (LASDEL, Niamey, Niger).
In 2010 he was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Bénin by the government of the Republic of Benin for his services to German-African scientific cooperation.
(1) “Public Services and Civil Servants in West Africa: Education and Justice in Benin, Ghana, Mali and Niger” and (2) “The State as a Construction Site.
He is also involved in the project “Significations of Oil and Social Change in Niger and Chad: An anthropological cooperative research project on technologies and processes of creative adaptation in relation to African oil production” (coordination: Prof. Nicholaus Schareika, Göttingen; Dr. Andrea Behrends, Halle).