Eric Merkel-Sobotta

Vice President, Marketing & Communications, Paradigm Publishing Services

I joined Paradigm, which is the publishing services division of De Gruyter Brill in April 2025 to work on marketing, internal and external communications and branding and bring together teams at Sciendo, Ubiquity and the University Press Library.

My previous job in publishing was at Taylor & Francis from 2020 to 2024, I was responsible for external and internal communications, brand and reputation management and policy/external affairs.

Prior to Taylor & Francis, I was Vice President Communications & External Affairs at De Gruyter from 2016 to 2020, and from 2005 to 2015, I was Executive Vice President Corporate Communications at Springer Science+Business Media in Berlin. From 2002 to 2005, I was Director, Corporate Relations at Elsevier in Amsterdam.

Before joining the world of publishing, I spent five years at strategic communications and public affairs agency, APCO Europe (in Brussels and Berlin), five years as Director European Affairs for United Parcel Service (UPS) in Brussels, and also gained experience in various communications functions for trade associations in Brussels.

I have an M.A. in European Studies from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium and a B.A. in Political Science and Germanic Languages & Literatures from the George Washington University in Washington, DC. I speak English, German, French and Dutch and have some knowledge of Spanish and Polish.

In my free time I like to cook, grow things, read and ride around on my motorcycle.