Christian Pentzold

Photo by Phillip Hiersemann

I’m Chair and Professor of Media and Communication in the Department for Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig. Before that, I worked in the Center for Media, Communication and Information Research at the University of Bremen and at Chemnitz University of Technology. At Leipzig, I’m one of the co-directors of the Center for Digital Participation. I’m broadly interested in the construction and appropriation of digital media and the roles information and communication technologies play in modern society. My work in communication research and media analysis links to insights coming from cultural sociology, linguistics plus science and technology studies. In current projects, I look at the public understanding of big data, humans interacting with robots, the smart home, the organization and governance of peer production, mediated participation in rural regions, as well as the interplay of time, data, and media. Beyond that, I’m interested in applying theories of practice to the study of media and communication and in linking qualitative approaches with digital methods.

I have designed and taught German-language and English-Language courses on bachelor-level and master-level in social science methods, media analysis, media systems and history, social connections in networked communication, media and cultural theory, organizational communication, and public relations.

I was an EPSRC-funded doctoral visitor to the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, and a visitor to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School. From 2012 to 2016 I was an Associate Researcher at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society, Berlin and in 2015 I joined the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries at King’s College London as a Post-Doc Research Fellow. As a Post-Doc, I have also been involved in the Research Training Group “CrossWorlds” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In spring 2018, I was a Humboldt Fellow at the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem which I joined again as a Lady Davis Professorial Fellow in 2021-2022. In May 2014, I received the dissertation award of the Sociology of Media Communication Section of the German Communication Association.

Since 2020 I have been working as an associate editor for Communications – The European Journal of Communication Research and in 2021 I joined Publizistik as an editor.

More about my publications can be found on Google Scholar

You can find me at the ResearchGate My ORCID: ORCID iD icon orcid.org/0000-0002-6355-3150

Christian Pentzold

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