Christine Volkmann

Christine Katharina Volkmann is a German economist and holds the UNESCO Chair for Entrepreneurship and Intercultural Management at the University of Wuppertal’s Schumpeter School of Business and Economics. 

From 1981 to 1986 Christine Volkmann studied Business Administration at the University of Giessen, where she also worked as an assistant to the German economist Dietger Hahn. She earned her doctorate in strategic business planning in 1989, while working as a research assistant at Lufthansa on the privatisation of the aviation market in Europe. Afterwards, she joined Deutsche Bank and held several leadership positions until 1999. In 1999 she became a professor at the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences in Gelsenkirchen and has been a UNESCO Chairholder for Entrepreneurship and Intercultural Management since 2005.

In 2008 she received a call to the Schumpeter School of Business and Economics at the University of Wuppertal; she is also a director of the German Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovations Research (IGIF) and co-founded the interdisciplinary Jackstädt Research Center for Entrepreneurship. Moreover, since 2005 she has been a visiting professor at the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, where she teaches graduate courses in leadership and innovation management, and since 2015 has also been a visiting professor at the University of Graz. She has served as an advisor to the European Commission, the President of the European Economic and Social Committee, the World Economic Forum in Davos, and the European Foundation for Entrepreneurship Research (EFER). In 2018 she became a member of the State Council on the Digitisation of the Economy of the government of North Rhine-Westphalia. Since 2015 she has also served as a member of the selection committee for the German Entrepreneur of the Year.