As a senior research fellow, Dr Thomas Urban supports the WIFU in research projects and practice formats that take historical perspectives on family businesses and business families. He studied history, English studies and public law at Bochum University. Following his doctorate in modern history in 2005, he was a research assistant at the social, business and corporate history departments of the Universities of Bochum, Cologne and Bonn. Among his research topics was the history of the Haniel and Schmitz-Scholl/Tengelmann trading families since the 19th century and the Thyssen business family in the 20th century. He was a habilitation scholarship holder at the WIFU Foundation’s Department of Leadership and Dynamics in Family Businesses from January 2016 to October 2019, during which he researched the ability of family companies to withstand crises from a historical perspective, with a special focus on the business family.

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