ZU appoints Professor Dr. Florian Muhle to the Chair of Digital Communication

“I prefer to do research in interdisciplinary contexts. This sort of research not only opens up new perspectives, but also opportunities for learning and better understanding of the research subjects. So I am very happy that I can now pursue my research interests at ZU because interdisciplinarity is a top priority here,” said Muhle explaining his motives for moving to ZU. “I can also fully identify with how teaching is geared toward inquiry-based learning. That’s because I’m passionate about firing students with enthusiasm for research and encouraging them to develop their own questions and gain research experience.”

“To enable our students to shape digital transformation in an intelligent way, we need a broad range of teaching and research opportunities that respond to the diverse challenges of a digitizing economy and society. By appointing Florian Muhle, we are expanding this offering to include a media sociological perspective, which has so far received too little attention in the often purely technological discussion of digital transformation, but which is indispensable for a holistic understanding of digitization,” said ZU President Professor Dr. Klaus Mühlhahn. “We are therefore very much looking forward to working together.”

Florian Muhle, born and raised in Oldenburg, took a bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences and Education and a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Media Studies at Bielefeld University. In his doctoral thesis at the Faculty of Sociology located there, he conducted “Social Theoretical and Empirical Studies on Limits to the Actor Capability of Social Machines in Virtual Communication Processes.” In the years following his successfully completed doctorate, Florian Muhle took on several leading positions in international research projects funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Volkswagen Foundation at the intersections of media sociology, politics, and digital communication. In the meantime, he completed his Habilitation at the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Bielefeld on “Forms and Limits of Personalized Address Formation in Communication”.

Visits as a guest researcher have taken Florian Muhle to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, the Graz University of Technology, and the Australian National University in Canberra, among others. “My research focuses on changes in media communication as a result of the extensive digitalization of social communication relations. This includes phenomena of datafication and automation of communication as well as changes in the mediation structures of the public sphere due to the emergence of a hybrid media system,” said Muhle.