About Hans-Joachim Händel

Joachim Händel was born in 1966 in Bautzen and has been engaged in entomology since his childhood.

After finishing school he studied biology in Leipzig for a few semesters and then worked as an entomologist at the District Plant Protection Office in Halle (Saale). Since 1990 he has been employed as an entomological preparator at the zoological collections of the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. He is a member of the steering committee of the Central Magazine of Natural Science Collections of the Martin-Luther-University.

His special fields of work are entomological museology, preparation and collection techniques of invertebrates as well as questions of collection conservation and collection management. Furthermore, he is engaged in the taxonomy and distribution of the Lepidopteran family Sphingidae - including questions of migration and the faunistics of butterflies of Central Europe. Since the 4th edition Mr Händel has worked on the standard work "Makroskopische Präparationstechnik - Wirbellose" (founded by R. Piechocki).

In 2013 he initiated the foundation of the working group "Practical Entomology/Museum Entomology", which he has been leading ever since.

Mr Händel is chairman of the Entomological Society of Halle, founding member of the Society for Biological Systematics (GfBS) as well as a member of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC), the Natural Sciences Collection Association (NatSCA) and other national and international entomological societies. Since 2007 he has been editor of the "Mitteilungen der DGaaE" and the "DGaaE-Nachrichten". He is also a member of the editorial boards of several entomological journals.