Before joining the Centre he was Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, Director of the Centre for Social Research and Instruction at Rutgers, a Senior Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-directed the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit sector Project.

Prior to this he was Social Affairs Officer at the United Nations and held appointments at Yale University, the University of Cologne and the Science Center in Berlin. Dr. Anheier holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University. He is founding board member of the International Society for Third-Sector Research, founding editor of Voluntas, the international journal of research on nonprofit organisations, and member of the editorial board of several social science journals.

Dr. Anheier's work has focused on organizational studies, policy analysis and comparative sociology. He is involved in research on a comparative study on the size, scope and role of the private nonprofit sector in thirty developed and developing countries.