Wolfgang Kraushaar (born 2 September 1948) is a political scientist and historian.

Kraushaar grew up in the German village of Niederruf in Germany.

From 1974 to 1975 he was the chairman of AStA and took a residency at the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung since 1987.

He focuses on the analysis of protest and political opposition in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic during the period from 1949 to 1990, especially the protests of 1968, the Red Army Faction and K-Gruppen.

He furthermore maintains a focus on national and international protest movements, totalitarianism and extremism, pop-culture and modern media.