• Members

Prof. Dr. Michaela Pfadenhauer

Principal Investigator P7: "Personal sphere: Companionship and ComAI"

Michaela Pfadenhauer has been Professor of Sociology at the University of Vienna since 2014, where she represents the Department of Culture and Knowledge. After working as an assistant professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), TU Dortmund University and the University of St. Gallen, she was Professor of Sociology of Knowledge at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) from 2007-2014 and held visiting professorships at Boston University, the University of South Florida (USF) and Keio University, among others. Her research focuses on Artificial Companions and Social Robotics (ComAI), knowledge cultures and scientific skepticism, social and communicative constructivism, phenomenologically based ethnography.

Michaela Pfadenhauer has been Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna since 2024, is a member of the Council of the German Sociological Association (DGS) and the Board of the Sociology of Culture in the European Sociological Association (ESA) and an evaluator in the Starting Grant Panel Social Sciences of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).