He is currently a professor of art history at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich[2] and the director of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte.
He was subsequently a postdoctoral fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence with a lectureship at the University of Göttingen.
Ulrich Pfisterer has had fellowships at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts CASVA/The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[4] He was invited Director of Studies at the École pratique des hautes études/Sorbonne University in Paris and a Fellow at the research group “BildEvidenz.
[5] Since October 2006, he has been Professor of Art History at the Institut für Kunstgeschichte at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (chaired since 2008).
In June 2015, he was named Director of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (2015–2017 together with Wolf Tegethoff).