I am professor at and deputy director of the Berlin School of Library and Information Science and joined the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2014 as junior professor, before becoming a full professor (W3) in January 2019. Before joining the school, I was assistant professor at the iSchool at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark (2012-2014). My research focuses on information behavior in a digital information environment and was awarded for the best Information Science master’s thesis and for the best dissertation. My research examines why people avoid information, which patterns people use to collect and evaluate information, and also how people manage their own personal data. How humans react to and deal with the digital transformation is one of the core questions for my professorship. I am also director of the iLab, an information behavior and retrieval laboratory (80 m²) founded in 2014.
Together with Sharon Macdonald and Christoph Bareither, I co-lead the DFG funded project Curating Digital Images, where I and my colleague Vera Hillebrand will use an innovative combination of ethnographic approaches and eye tracking methods used in information behaviour science. While eye tracking offers the chance to grasp the visual perception of visitors and users in the process of curation and thus reaches a level of sensory analysis beyond the scope of ethnographic research, the ethnography on the other hand provides additional contextual knowledge to better interpret the sensory data and understand its social, cultural, emotional and aesthetic implication.
Together with Sharon Macdonald and Christoph Bareither, I co-lead the DFG funded project Curating Digital Images, where I and my colleague Vera Hillebrand will use an innovative combination of ethnographic approaches and eye tracking methods used in information behaviour science. While eye tracking offers the chance to grasp the visual perception of visitors and users in the process of curation and thus reaches a level of sensory analysis beyond the scope of ethnographic research, the ethnography on the other hand provides additional contextual knowledge to better interpret the sensory data and understand its social, cultural, emotional and aesthetic implication.