PUBLISHED:March 27, 2009

Professor Christine Windbichler of Humboldt University, Berlin, at Duke Law as CICL Scholar, March 24-April 1, 2009

We are pleased to welcome Professor Christine Windbichler, Humboldt-University, Berlin, back to Duke as our Spring 2009 CICL Scholar. Professor Windbichler teaches comparative corporate governance, corporations, labor and management relations (including co-determination), and business law. Her research interests include also the law of corporate groups, law and institutional economics and contract theory, especially relational contracts. She has an extensive publications list in both German and English, and is the author of a standard textbook on business associations. While at Duke she will present her paper, "The Information Regime in Corporate Governance" in the Global Law Workshop, on Monday, March 30 (4:30 - 6:00 pm, Room 4042).

She has recently written a commentary entitled “The Financial Crisis and Academic Research” which points out the interdisciplinary nature of the current problems in the financial markets, and the difficulties of dealing with such problems in the university setting. She instead posits that the Research Foundation, DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), which is the central, self-governing organization of science and research in Germany, may be better positioned to address such issues by drawing on the skills of diverse experts. The full commentary may be found here.

Professor Windbichler joined the Law faculty at Humboldt-University, Berlin, in 1992, also serving as Dean 1999-2000. Before engaging in the restructuring of Humboldt after the fall of the Berlin Wall, she was full Professor of Law at the University of Freiburg after teaching at Osnabrueck, Cologne, Augsburg, and Munich, and practicing law with a Munich law firm. She has been involved in numerous academic-administrative functions including Speaker of DFG-Funded Graduate Training Program in Europeanization of Private and Commercial Law and Faculty Coordinator of Humboldt Joint Degree Program (J.D./M.LL.P.) with Cornell Law School.

Professor Windbichler is Commissioner of the German Auditor Oversight Commission (AOC) and Vice President of DFG (German Research Foundation). She holds elected membership in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science, and is a member of various professional organizations such as the German-American Lawyers Association, the International Association of Boalt Alumni, the Society for Comparative Law, the International Association for Labor Law and Social Security, Society of European Contract Law (SECOLA), the Association of Private Law Professors, and the Rotary Club Berlin Gendarmenmarkt.

Professor Windbichler is staying from March 24th through April 1st; her office is in the law library, 4218C. She can also be reached at christine.windbichler@rewi.hu-berlin.de.