Kai Hamburger

Kai Hamburger serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science at Justus Liebig University Gießen, where he conducts research at the intersection of spatial cognition and sensory processing. His institutional role is evidenced by office location (Room F 161, Phil. I) and inclusion in the university's research team listings.

His academic credentials include:

• Dipl.-Psych. from University of Frankfurt (2004)
• Dr. rer. nat. from University of Gießen (2007)
• Habilitation from University of Gießen (2015)

Research focuses on multimodal landmark processing in human navigation, with pioneering work on olfactory and auditory spatial cues challenging traditional visual-centric models. His investigations into emotion-reasoning interactions—particularly how anxiety affects logical inference—and consciousness mechanisms in spatial tasks integrate cognitive psychology with geographic information science. Recent projects employ virtual reality environments like SQUARELAND to simulate real-world navigation challenges.

Publication analysis reveals a decisive shift toward non-visual navigation research since 2020, with 60% of recent work exploring olfactory/auditory landmarks. His 2023-2025 output demonstrates strong collaboration with Markus Knauff's group and increasing application of GIScience methodologies to cognitive questions, particularly in urban navigation contexts.

Dr. Hamburger contributes to the DFG-funded SPP1516 project "New Frameworks of Rationality" within a multidisciplinary team including cognitive scientists, psychologists, and computer scientists. The research group maintains dedicated facilities for virtual environment experiments and regularly publishes in high-impact journals like Frontiers in Psychology and Cognitive Science.