Prof. Dr. Niels Van Quaquebeke is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior and Head of Department of Leadership and Management at the KLU. He is additionally affiliated (part-time) with the University of Exeter as a Distinguished Research Professor. He is recognised as one of the Top100 German speaking business scholars (in WirtschaftsWoche and in the under 40 category in the last two Handelsblatt rankings). A psychologist by training, he pursued his PhD at the University of Hamburg and as a visiting scholar at various business schools around the globe. In 2008, he received the ERIM top talent post-doc fellowship at the Rotterdam School of Management of the Erasmus University where he later also taught as an Assistant Professor.

In his research, Van Quaquebeke focuses on the issue of leadership. Among others, he explores the communicative basis of successful leadership, the importance of values, ways of leading ethically, and the function of interpersonal respect. He is involved in the Research Institute on Leadership and Operations in Humanitarian Aid (RILOHA), which seeks to enhance the effectiveness of humanitarian aid operations via psychological insights, the Exeter Centre for Leadership, and the Erasmus Centre for Leadership Studies.

Van Quaquebeke currently serves as Senior Associate Editor for The Leadership Quarterly (LQ) and on the editorial boards of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (OBHDP) and the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (JOOP). He was awarded repeated scholarships by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German National Academic Foundation) as well as an award by the German government for the innovative approach of the RespectResearchGroup which he headed for ten years. He received KLU’s best overall teaching award three times (2012, 2014, 2019). His recent research on "respectful inquiry” as a leadership tool received the biennial innovation award by the IO chapter of the German Psychological Society (DGPs). His work is frequently mentioned in the public media.

Before turning academic, Van Quaquebeke has worked in various internal and external consultancy roles. Today he bridges the gap from science to practice with his spin-off re|spic|ere, as part of the teaching body within KLU's executive education, and by authoring popular video-blended courses on:

• The Psychology of Leadership (German, English 1, 2, 3)
• The Psychology of Negotiations (German, English)
• (Self) Managing Remote Work (German, English).

Students who wish to write a thesis with Prof. Dr. Van Quaquebeke are requested to enroll and watch his “Introduction to Thesis Supervision” videos before reaching out. Amongst others, they also explain the format of the proposal to be handed in before registering the thesis.