Prof. Dr. Christoph Thole
Director
Prof. Dr. Christoph Thole studied law at the universities of Bayreuth and Münster. After passing the First State Examination in Law in 2001, he became a research assistant to Prof. Dr. Gerhard Wagner at the Chair for Civil Law, Civil Procedure Law, International Private Law and Comparative Law at the University of Bonn. There, Christoph Thole wrote his dissertation in the field of civil law and civil procedure law. In 2005, he passed the Second State Examination in Law. During this time, he also obtained a Master degree in Economics (Dipl.-Kaufmann). Following the Second State Examination in Law, Christoph Thole returned to Bonn as a post-doc researcher at the Chair of Prof. Dr. Gerhard Wagner. In the time of the research for his habilitation, he was Visiting scholar at the Chicago Law School and Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford. In 2009, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Gerhard Wagner, he completed his habilitation on creditor protection in insolvency law, which focuses on transaction avoidance law and related areas of corporate law. He received the venia legendi for Civil Law, German and International Civil Procedure Law and Corporate Law.
After being a substitute professor at the University of Munich in winter 2009/2010, he was offered the Chair of Civil Law, Civil Procedure and Insolvency Law, European and International Private and Procedural Law at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in April 2010. In 2016, he was appointed to the University of Cologne. Since October 2016, he has been Director of the Institute for Procedural Law and Insolvency Law and of the Institute for International and European Insolvency Law at the University of Cologne. Since 2021, he has also been co-director of the Institute for Legal Profession Law. He declined further offers of professorships at the University of Halle-Wittenberg (2010), at the University of Bayreuth (2014) as well as at the University of Bonn (2016) and the University of Hamburg (2023).
Christoph Thole's research focusses on insolvency and restructuring law, including its international and corporate and company law aspects, on civil procedure law in its entirety, as well as on matters of tort law, questions of liability and damage and on property law.
He is editor and author of numerous publications. In 2018, he participated in the "ESUG Evaluation" tendered by the German Ministry of Justice.