معرفی
Ellen Fricke is a Full Professor of German Linguistics at Chemnitz University of Technology, where she holds the Chair of German Linguistics, Semiotics and Multimodal Communication within the Faculty of Humanities. She has been a faculty member since 2012 and serves as Project Leader for Research Area D "Intentionality in Hybrid Societies" in the CRC 1410 "Hybrid Societies" since 2020.
Her research spans multimodal grammar, pragmatics, gesture and multimodal interaction, embodiment, language and cognition, semiotics and media theory, image-text relations, deixis and spatial cognition, and gestures in human-machine interfaces. Fricke's work bridges theoretical linguistics with practical applications in human-robot interaction and technology design, demonstrating how linguistic principles can inform the development of more intuitive human-computer interfaces.
Her recent publications reveal a growing focus on hybrid societies, intentionality in multimodal interaction, and the application of gesture research to real-world technological challenges. Fricke's scholarly output demonstrates consistent evolution from foundational theoretical work on gesture and language to increasingly applied research that addresses contemporary challenges in human-technology interaction.
- Tiburtius-Anerkennungspreis (state of Berlin) for her dissertation
- Founder and Head of the "Arbeitsstelle Gestenforschung und Sprechwissenschaft"
- Member of the Executive Board of the Center for Humans and Technology (MeTech)
- Former Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Chemnitz University of Technology (2019-2022)
Fricke has secured significant third-party funding including the €1.2 million MANUACT project (2015-2018) and her current €369,000 project within the CRC 1410 "Hybrid Societies." She has demonstrated exceptional commitment to public engagement through museum exhibitions like "Gestures – past, present, future" developed in collaboration with Ars Electronica Futurelab and the Chemnitz Museum of Industry.
Her leadership extends to founding research centers, serving as Chairwoman of the German Society for Semiotics (2016-2021), and directing the Institute for German Studies and Intercultural Communication (2013-2016).
