Bernhard Ebbinghaus (* 1961) is a German sociologist.
Ebbinghaus studied from 1981 until 1988 sociology at the University of Mannheim and was in 1984/85 a Fulbright student at the New School for Social Research. Following a year at the Institut Universitaire d'Etudes Européennes in Geneva, he was from 1989 until 1992 a doctoral student at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy, where he defended in 1993 his Ph.D.thesis on Labour Unity in Union Diversity: Trade Unions and Social Cleavages in Western Europe, 1890-1989. From 1992 until 1996 Ebbinghaus was teaching sociology at the University of Mannheim and coordinator of an international research project on trade unions in Europe at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES). From 1997 until 2004 he was Senior Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) in Cologne, in 1999/2000 he was John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, in Fall 2001/02 Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, 2003/2004 Interim Professor at the University of Jena, Germany. Ebbinghaus completed his habilitation thesis in sociology at the University of Cologne in 2003.
Since October 2004 Ebbinghaus is Professor of Sociology (Chair of Macrosociology) at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Mannheim. From November 2006 until October 2009 he was founding director of the Doctoral Center for the Social and Behavioral Studies of the Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences (GESS). From February 2008 until January 2011 he was Director of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES).