Faculty Members

Chris Thomale was born in Münster, Germany, in 1982. He studied law and philosophy in Heidelberg, Cambridge (Clare College) and Geneva. In 2011, he received a PhD at law from the Free University of Berlin with a thesis on the law of unjust enrichment (“Leistung als Freiheit – Erfüllungsautonomie im Bereicherungsrecht”, Mohr Siebeck Publishers 2012). In the same year, he obtained the Diploma of the Hague Academy of International Law with distinction. He then worked as a Junior Lecturer at the Universities of Mannheim, Freiburg i.Br. and Heidelberg. In 2014, he obtained a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from Yale Law School, Connecticut, graduating first of his class. In 2017, Heidelberg Faculty of law awarded him a venia docendi for Civil Law, Private International Law, Commercial and Company Law, Civil Procedure Law, Philosophy of Law and Comparative Law. After having held a position at the University of Bremen, in 2019, he acceted a call from the University of Vienna, where he is tenured professor of International Company and Business Law. Since 2020, he has also been tenured professor of Comparative Law at the Università Degli Studi Roma Tre. Chris Thomale has held visiting professorships at the UFRJ (Rio de Janeiro), Georgetown School of Law (Washington D.C.), Université Toulouse 1 Capitole and National Taiwan University (Taipei), among others.