Overview of Profiles

Professor Christoph Barmeyer has been holder of the Chair of Intercultural Communication at the University of Passau since 2008. The emphasis in his research is on management in cultural comparison, intercultural communication and the development of intercultural skills.

Professor Stefan Bauernschuster has held the Chair of Public Economics of the University of Passau since 2013. Moreover, he is a research professor at the ifo Institute in Munich, CESifo Affiliate and a member of the Social Policy Committee of the German Economic Association. He is also one of the principal investigators of the DFG Research Training Group 2720.

Professor Dr. Oliver Decker has held the Chair of Modern German Literature/Media Semiotics at the University of Passau since 2011. He has been chairman of the German Semiotic Society (DGS) from 2014 until 2017.

Professor Robert Esser has held the Chair of German, European and International Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Law and White-Collar Crime since 2007. He has been heading the Research Centre for Human Rights in Criminal Proceedings (HRCP) affiliated with the Chair since 2010. A particular focus of his work is basic research at universities and continuing judiciary and bar education on specific issues of human rights protection in international policy advice, specifically in Eastern and Southeastern Asia (China, Japan, Nepal, Taiwan, Vietnam).

Professor Peter Fonk has been holder of the Chair of Theological Ethics at the University of Passau since 1994/95. He is director of the masters study programme Science of Charity and Value-Oriented Management and of the Institute of Applied Ethics in Economy, Education and Training. The emphasis in his research is on Christian social ethics, economic and corporate ethics.

Professor Jin Gerlach holds the Chair of Internet and Telecommunications Business at the University of Passau. He earned his doctoral degree at the Technical University of Darmstadt.

Professor Daniel Göler holds the Jean Monnet Chair of European Politics at the University of Passau. His research focuses on all matters concerning European integration. Naturally, this involves academic networking across the globe. At the same time, the chair makes European political topics accessible to the general public by organising events and publishing the Jean Monnet Papers.

Professor Michael Granitzer holds the Chair of Data Science. His research focuses on the use of machine-based learning methods and intelligent human-machine interfaces.

Professor Michael Grimm has held the Chair of Development Economics of the University of Passau since 2012. He is also one of the Principal Investigators of the DFG Research Training Group 2720 "Digital Platform Ecosystems (DPE)". Prior to this, he held the posts of Professor of Applied Development Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Visiting Professor at Paris School of Economics and Advisor for the World Bank in Washington, D.C. (United States).

Professor Christian Hammer holds the Chair of Software Engineering I. Language-based software security is one of his main research interests. His particular focus is on the security of mobile and web applications, Internet-of-Things devices and concurrent systems. After earning his doctorate at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), he did research at IBM Research and Purdue University. He then went on to become a professor at Utah State University, Saarland University and Potsdam University.

Professor Siegfried Handschuh coordinates numerous international research and development projects funded, among others, by the EU, Science Foundation Ireland and Enterprise Ireland.

Professor Christina Hansen holds the Chair of Education (Primary) with a focus on diversity at the University of Passau. Since August 2020, she has been the Vice-President for International Affairs, Europe and Diversity.

As of October 2022, Professor Tobias Harks holds the Chair of Mathematical Optimization at the University of Passau. Prior to his appointment in Passau he held professorships at Maastricht University  and Augsburg University. He obtained his doctoral degree at the Zuse-Institute in Berlin followed by a postdoc position at TU Berlin. His research interests contain discrete and continuous optimization with a focus on distributed optimization, algorithmic learning and game theory and mathematics of AI.

Professor Rüdiger Harnisch holds the Chair of German Language of the University of Passau. He is a member of two project advisory boards of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities and is a former member of the DFG Review Board for Linguistics.

Professor Susanne Hartwig has held the Chair of Romance Literatures and Cultures at the University of Passau since 2006. She studied classical philology and romance studies at the University of Münster. Today, she heads the DFG project "Narration, expectation, experience. Disability in contemporary European theater and film". Hartwig also acts as a scout for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in the Henriette Herz Scouting Programme (2020-2023). In 2010, she was included in the database academia.net – The Portal to Excellent Women Academics. Since 2014, she has been a member of the academic advisory board of the Specialised Information Service for Romance Studies.

Professor Harry Haupt has held the Chair of Statistics of the University of Passau since 2012; since 2014, he has held the post of Vice President for Research and the Advancement of Early Career Researchers.

Professor Carolin Haeussler has held the Chair of Organisation, Technology Management and Entrepreneurship since 2011 and has been bringing researchers from all over the world to Passau with the International Centre for Economics and Business Studies. She is also one of the principal investigators of the DFG Research Training Group 2720 "Digital Platform Ecosystems (DPE)".

Professor Dirk Heckmann holds the Chair of Law and Security of Digitization at the Technical University of Munich and heads the Research Centre for IT Law and Network Policy at the University of Passau. He is also a member of the federal government's Data Ethics Commission and serves, among other functions, as a constitutional judge in the Bavarian Constitutional Court. From 1998 to 2019 he held the Chair of Public Law, Security Law and Internet Law at the University of Passau.

Professor Horst-Alfred Heinrich has held the Chair of Empirical Social Research at the University of Passau since 2010. His research focuses on a number of areas, including national identities as well as memory politics and politics of history.

Dr Christoph Heinzl has been Professor of Cognitive Sensor Systems at the University of Passau since September 2021. As such, he also heads the research group for knowledge-based image processing at the Fraunhofer Development Center X-ray Technology (EZRT). His research interests are found in scientific visualisation, visual analytics, virtual and augmented reality in visualisation, machine learning and X-ray computer tomography.

Professor Anna Henkel has been holder of the Chair of Sociology of Technology and Sustainable Development at the University of Passau since 2019. The emphasis in her research is on sociological theory, research into knowledge, materiality and sustainability and research in the field of digitalisation. Since August 2021, Henkel has been a substitute member of the "Committee for Health and Safety at Work" of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

Professor Moritz Hennemann has held the Chair of European and International Information and Data Law and headed the Research Centre for Law and Digitalisation (FREDI) of the Faculty of Law at the University of Passau since 2020. His research revolves around the global development of data and data protection law as well as the legal and regulatory framework of the digital economy.

Professor Ralf Hohlfeld has held the Chair of Communication Studies at the University of Passau since September 2008. He established the bachelor’s degree programme “Journalism and Strategic Communication” and ran it from 2017 to 2021. He is also the spokesman for the Collegial Management of the Passau Centre for Digitalisation in Society (CeDiS). His research focuses are in the field of empirical journalism research, media change and disinformation in the digital society.

Professor Stefan Katzenbeisser holds the Chair of Computer Engineering at the University of Passau. He conducts research on cyber security in embedded systems, on secure critical infrastructures and on technical data protection. He is spokesperson of the new research cluster "ForDaySec - Security in everyday digitalisation", which is funded by the Bavarian Science Ministry and where researchers from computer science, law and sociology have come together to develop new types of technical procedures to provide security in day-to-day digital life. Besides participating in research projects on secure mobility, he is also involved in the research initiative "6G Research and Innovation Cluster (6G-RIC)" which is coordinated by Fraunhofer HHI and aims to develop mobile telecommunication systems of the sixth generation by pushing back the limits of technology.

Professor Elif Bilge Kavun is Assistant Professor for Secure Intelligent Systems at the University of Passau. Before this, she was "Lecturer" for Cybersecurity at the University of Sheffield (Great Britain) and Digital Design Engineer for Crypto Cores at Infineon (Munich). She completed her doctorate on "Embedded Security" at Ruhr University Bochum in 2015. Professor Elif Bilge Kavun researches the security of novel intelligent systems as well as traditional computer and embedded systems. Among other things, she devotes herself to physical attacks and countermeasures.

Professor Thomas Knieper has held the Chair of Digital and Strategic Communication at the University of Passau since 2010. He is director of the non-profit organisation Jugend Film Fernsehen e.V. (JFF) in Munich. Before taking up his position in Passau, he had served as full professor for communication and media studies at TU Braunschweig, as managing director of IWF Wissen und Medien gGmbH in Göttingen and as assistant professor at the Institute of Communication and Media Research at LMU in Munich. In his research, he studies media change with a special focus on online communication.

Professor Andreas König holds the Chair of Strategic Management, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship and is deputy spokesperson of the DFG Research Training Group 2720: "Digital Platform Ecosystems (DPE)" at the University of Passau. His research output is published in leading international journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, the Academy of Management Review and Research Policy.

Professor Harald Kosch has held the Chair of Distributed Information Systems at the Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics since 2006. He is the German director of DFH/UFA Doctoral College, which brings together INSA de Lyon and the University of Passau. The main purpose of this exchange is to facilitate cooperation projects in intelligent digital systems.

Professor Hans Krah holds the Chair of German Literature and Film at the University of Passau. He generates ideas for the DFG-funded Research Training Group 1681/2 ‘Privacy and Digitalisation’, which is currently in its second funding term.

Professor Jan Krämer holds the Chair of Internet and Telecommunications Business and is spokesperson of the DFG Research Training Group 2720: "Digital Platform Ecosystems (DPE)" at the University of Passau. He is a Research Fellow at the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE), a Brussels-based think tank.

Professor Martin Kreuzer has held the chair of Mathematics with a focus on Symbolic Computation since 2007. His main research areas are computer algebra, commutative algebra, algebraic geometry and their applications. He is particularly interested in algebraic cryptography, which deals with the construction of new cryptosystems and the security analysis of existing cryptosystems using algebraic methods. The DFG project "Algebraic Error Attacks", which investigates the protection of cryptographic hardware against fault injections, is his most important activity in this field.

Professor Franz Lehner has held the Chair of Information Systems (Information and IT Service Management) at the University of Passau since 2004. He is the founder and creator of the European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR) and the International Association of Knowledge Management (IAKM). He was the founding President of the Danube University Krems.

Kai von Lewinski is Professor of Public Law, Media Law and Information Law at the University of Passau and chairs the DFG-funded Research Training Group 1681/2 ‘Privacy and Digitalisation’. Prior to this, he was the Academic Director of the Foundation for Data Protection in Leipzig.

Comparative Linguist Johann-Mattis List has held the Chair for Multilingual Computational Linguistics at the University of Passau since January 2023 and heads the ERC-funded research group "ProduSemy". Before that, he served as stand-in professor at Bielefeld University and as senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena where he headed another ERC-funded research group on computer-assisted language comparison. Professor List earned his doctorate at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf and wrote his habilitation at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.

Professor Sebastian Martens, M.Jur. (Oxon.) has been holder of the Chair of Civil Law, Roman Law, European Private Law and European Legal History at the University of Passau since 2015.

Professor Susanne Mayr has held the Chair of Psychology and Human–Machine Interaction of the Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences since 2015.

Professor Ulrike Müßig is head of the Chair for Civil Law, German and European Legal History at the University of Passau. She served as Professeur invité at Paris II (Panthéon-Assas, 2019/20), as Advanced Grantee (ReConFort, 2014-18) and is corresponding member of the Austrian and Andalusian Academy of Sciences.

Professor Bettina Noltenius is holder of the Chair of Criminal Law, Criminal Proceedings Law, Criminology and Philosophy of Law at the University of Passau. The emphasis in her research is on German and European (criminal) law, philosophy of law and German criminal law in modern times.

Professor Robert Obermaier is vice-president of research at the University of Passau and holder of the Chair of Accounting and Control. His work is concentrated on the areas of controlling, enterprise assessment, production and decision theory.

Professor Martina Padmanabhan has held the Chair of ComparativeDevelopment and Cultural Studies with a focus on Southeast Asia since 2012, where she implements new methodologies for interdiciplinarity.

Professor Joachim Posegga holds the Chair of IT Security at the University of Passau. He earned his doctorate at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and conducted industrial research in the field of security for a period of ten years before he was appointed head the Research Group "Security in Distributed Systems" of the Department of Informatics at the University of Hamburg. In 2009, he moved on to Passau and was appointed head of the Institute for IT Security and Security Law (ISL). In his research, he focuses on web security, security architectures and protocols, placing a special emphasis on the Internet of Things.

Professor Joscha Prochno was awarded his doctorate in 2011 at Kiel University, where he had previously earned his Diplom degree. His academic career then took him to the University of Alberta in Canada, the Johannes Kepler University of Linz in Austria and the University of Hull in England. He has been professor at the University of Passau since April 2021 and holds the Chair of Functional Analysis. Professor Prochno also serves as co-editor of the two journals Mathematische Nachrichten and Journal of Complexity. In 2021, Professor Prochno was awarded Austria's most prestigious mathematics prize.

Professor Malte Rehbein has held the Chair of Digital Humanities at the University of Passau since 2013. He is a member of both the board of Digital Humanities in German Speaking Countries and the Scientific Advisory Board of Deutsches Museum.

Professor Lars Rensmann has held the Chair of Political Science with a focus on Comparative Government since the summer semester of 2022. Before that, he served as professor for European policy and society at the University of Groningen, as associate professor of political science at John Cabot University in Rome and as DAAD assistant professor of political science at the University of Michigan. In his research, Professor Rensmann studies crises of democracy, authoritarianism, antisemitism, populism and right-wing radicalism around the world using a comparative approach. He is currently conducting a "darkfield study" in North Rhine-Westphalia to shed light on the spread of antisemitic prejudice and resentment in society.

Professor Ursula Reutner has held the Chair of Romance Languages and Cultures of the University of Passau since 2009; since 2014 she has held the post of Vice President for International Relations.

Professor Tomas Sauer holds the Chair of Digital Image Processing. In addition, he heads the Fraunhofer research group 'Knowledge-based Image Processing' at the University of Passau and the Institute for Software Systems in Technical Applications of Computer Science (FORWISS Passau).

Professor Wolfram Schaffar has held the Chair of Development Policy at the University of Passau since April 2021. Previously, he was, among other things, Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Tübingen and Professor of Political Science and Development Research at the Institute for International Development at the University of Vienna.

Professor Hannah Schmid-Petri is the holder of the Chair of Science Communication at the University of Passau and leads the Fraunhofer 'Science Communication' research group, which is based at the Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence 'Integrated Energy Systems' CINES. She is also one of the principal investigators of the DFG Research Training Group 2720. She analyses public discussions on political issues such as digitalisation and climate change.

Professor Christine Schmitt has been Chaired Professor of Physical Geography with a focus on Human-Environment Research at the University of Passau since April 2021. She is an active member of the scientific advisory board of the Society for Tropical Ecology (gtö) and of the BayWISS Joint Academic Partnership Life Sciences and Green Technologies and has experience in policy support at an international level.

Professor Meinhard Schröder holds the Chair of Public Law, European Law and IT Law. He is a member of the Passau Institute of Digital Security (PIDS) and the Institute for Digital Society Law (IRDG). His research focuses not only on traditional legal fields like municipal law and administrative procedural law but also on digital economy law, data protection law and e-government law.

Professor Jan Hendrik Schumann has held the Chair of Marketing and Innovation of the University of Passau since 2012. He is also one of the principal investigators of the DFG Research Training Group 2720. Since July 2013, he has also worked a director of the Institute of Market and Economic Research.

Professor Andrea Sieber has been holder of the Professorship of Medieval German Literature at the University of Passau since 2016. The emphasis in her research is on the history of literature and media and the reception of the Middle Ages. Since September 2019 she has been a board member at the Association of German Philologists (DGV).

Professor Malte Steinbrink was holder of the Chair of Social and Cultural Geography. This social and cultural geographer was a member of the interdisciplinary Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg (South Africa). His research interests included geographical development, migration and tourism research and empirical scientific observation.

Professor Christian Thies has been holder of the Teaching Professorship of Philosophy at the University of Passau since 2009. The emphasis in his research is on practical philosophy and, seen historically, in particular classical German philosophy.

Professor Florian Töpfl holds the Chair of Political Communication with a Focus on Eastern Europe and the Post-Soviet Region at the University of Passau. He heads the ERC Consolidator project "The Consequences of the Internet for Russia’s Informational Influence Abroad (RUSINFORM)" at the University of Passau. Before Dr. Töpfl was appointed professor at the University of Passau in 2020 he conducted research as the head of an Emmy Noether Research Group at Freie Universität Berlin (2014-2019) and as Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2012-2014).

Professor Brian Valerius took up the Chair of Artificial Intelligence in Criminal Law at the University of Passau in October 2022. In his research, he focuses on the entire gamut of criminal law and of criminal procedural law. More specifically, he studies the challenges that come with digitalisation and notably with artificial intelligence. Further priorities include medical criminal law as well as international and intercultural issues.

Professor Daniela Wawra has held the Chair of English Language and Culture of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities since 2010. From 2018 to 2020 she was Vice President for Study, Teaching and Internationalisation at the University of Passau. 

Professor Thomas Widjaja has held the Chair of Business Information Systems since 2016. He is also one of the principal investigators of the DFG Research Training Group 2720. Previously, he gained his doctoral and postdoctoral degrees at TU Darmstadt.

Professor Thomas Wünsch holds the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History of Eastern Europe and its Cultures. In his research he focuses on the history and culture of Poland, Czechia, Ukraine, Russia, Central Asia and the Balkans. He heads a branch of Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft and the Perspektive Osteuropa initiative at the University of Passau.

Professor Jens Zumbrägel has been Professor of Mathematics with a focus on Cryptography since 2017. He is all enthusiastic about algebra and its applications in public key cryptography and communication technology. His research focus is on the discrete logarithm problem, and currently also on post-quantum cryptography and codes over rings.