Christian Pentzold

Photo by Phillip Hiersemann

I’m Professor and Chair of Media and Communications in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Leipzig University. Before that, I worked in the Center for Media, Communication and Information Research at the University of Bremen and at Chemnitz University of Technology. In Leipzig, I’m one of the co-directors of the Center for Digital Participation. I’m broadly interested in people’s everyday use of digital media and the roles information and communication technologies play in modern societies. My work in communication research and media analysis links to insights coming from cultural sociology, linguistics as well as science and technology studies. In current projects, I study automation and digitization of the public sector, data and public sensemaking, citizen-driven innovation in IoT and journalism, as well as the interplay of time and media. Beyond that, I’m interested in applying theories of practice to the study of media and communication and in co-creation 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, communication history, 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 visited 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.

Since 2020 I have been an associate editor for Communications – The European Journal of Communication Research and in 2021 I joined Publizistik as an editor. I’m also on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Communication and Memory, Mind & Media.

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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