Karola Pitsch

Karola Pitsch is a Professor for Multimodal Communication, Social Interaction & Technology at the Institute of Communication Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen. She leads a research group focused on multimodal interaction, human-robot interaction, and workplace communication, and directs the Multimodal Interaction & Eye-Tracking Lab. She actively supervises student theses and teaches courses in conversation analysis and multimodal data methods.

Her research interests center on multimodal conversation analysis, human-robot interaction, and interaction in complex work environments, particularly in medical emergencies and public settings. She employs video ethnography, mobile eye-tracking, and micro-analytic methods to study real-world social interaction. Her work bridges linguistics, communication studies, and human-computer interaction.

Her recent publications reflect a strong trend in methodological innovation for multimodal data, including anonymization tools, corpus structuring, and quality assurance workflows. She also investigates coordination in emergency drills and the use of robots in everyday contexts like museums and calendar management. Her work emphasizes ethical data handling and technical robustness in research.

Scientific Awards:

• No awards mentioned in the text.

Advising and Grants:
She supervises Bachelor's and Master's theses, as evidenced by the list of supervised theses provided on her website. She leads active research projects such as 'Multimodal Personenreferenzen' and 'Interaktion & Raum', though specific grant funding is not detailed. Her team includes multiple research assistants and student employees, indicating sustained research activity and mentorship.

Labs and Teams:
She leads the Multimodal Interaction & Eye-Tracking Lab, which supports research using mobile eye-tracking and multi-sensor data. Her team includes scientific staff (e.g., Dr. Maximilian Krug, Anne Ferger, Felix Bergmann), student assistants, and associated researchers like Dr. Andre Krause. The group collaborates on developing tools for data processing and corpus creation.