Appointment: Julia Backmann

Prof. Dr. Julia Backmann graduated in 2006 with a Diploma in Business Administration from Münster University of Applied Sciences and Arts, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in European Business from the University of Portsmouth, and in 2007 with a Master of Science in Human Resource Management from the London School of Economics. She was awarded a Dr. rer. Pol. from WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management in 2014 with a thesis on the topic "Interorganisational R&D Projects: A Relational View". This was followed by a post as Assistant Professor at the Institute for Leadership and Organisation at LMU Munich from 2014 to 2018, combined with research stays in Perth, Munich and Tokyo. From 2019 to 2022, she was an assistant professor of management at University College Dublin. Since 2022, she has held the Chair in Transformation of the World of Work and served as co-director of the Research Centre for Business Transformation in Times of Radical Change at the University of Münster.

Research into new ways of working, transformation and resilience in organisations

Prof. Dr. Julia Backmann investigates leadership and collaboration in the context of technological and societal change, and highlights how organisations are shaping new ways of working, managing transformations, building resilience and harnessing diversity productively. Her empirical studies on AI-supported work, virtual collaboration, and innovations in working time have been published in renowned international subject journals such as “Organization Science”, “Information Systems Research”, “Academy of Management Journal”, and “Journal of International Business Studies”. Her current projects include an academic evaluation of the German four-day working week and collaborative research programmes with global companies on AI implementation and strategic transformation.

Linking theoretical concepts to real-world organisational challenges

Prof. Dr. Julia Backmann's teaching combines academic rigour with practice-oriented, reflective and experience-based learning processes in the fields of leadership and organisational transformation. She designs learning environments that systematically link theoretical concepts with real-world organisational challenges, integrating case studies, simulation-based formats, research-based content and digital and flipped classroom approaches. She teaches Bachelor's, Master's, PhD, MBA and executive programmes in both German and English.

Image: Peter Leßmann