• Learning: learning environments, tutoring settings
• Family: family relationships, family as an educational context, home-school cooperation
• Teacher education: competencies, digitalization
• Perspective-taking: communication, reading literacy, mental representations, partner model
• Quality management

since 10/2021     Member of the board of the Graduiertenzentrum der Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften

since 10/2018     Chair of the Promotionsausschuss der Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften

since 05/2018     Member of the board of the Zentrum für Geschlechterstudien/Gender Studies of the Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften

since 03/2015     Member of the doctoral committee of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities

since 2013         Member of the Educational Science Network in cooperation with the second phase of teacher education

2013 - 2015        Member of the Faculty Council of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities

2013 – 2015       Head of the  Kompetenzzentrum Schreiben of Paderborn University

2012 - 2015        Spokeswoman of the Psychology Department

2012 - 2015         Member of the board of the Zentrum für Geschlechterstudien/Gender Studies of the Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften

since 2012          Member of the Zentrum für Geschlechterstudien/Gender Studies of the Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften

since 2010          Member of the Zentrum für Bildungsforschung und Lehrerbildung (PLAZ)

2005 – 2007        Member of the Institute Council of the Psychological Institute, University Jena

2000 – 2002        Member of the WG 'Fach-Evaluation im Universitätsverbund Halle-Jena-Leipzig' for the Institute of Psychology of the University Jena

1996                   Staff representative and board member of SFB 245 "Sprache und Situation", Universities of Heidelberg/Mannheim

After completing a doctorate in cognitive psychology-oriented language psychology, I worked in a family psychology project on conversations between adolescents and their parents. Since then, I have been combining the fields of family and language with varying emphases - in each case with a view to their personal and situational influencing factors.

In my habilitation and in accompanying DFG projects I investigated the relationship between adults and their parents on an individuation-psychological basis. In addition to comprehensive questionnaire and diary surveys with both generations, behavioral observations of conversations were used here.

Furthermore, I pursue a linguistic psychological line of thought and deal with the influence of perspective-taking ability on the comprehension of texts at preschool and primary school age as well as with the significance of partner and technique models for explaining. In doing so, I collaborate with colleagues from computer science and its didactics as well as linguistics.

Recently, the topics of family and language have increasingly converged again. Together with colleagues from the Department of Psychology at the University of Paderborn, I am investigating processes of family literacy. In this context, we are investigating the cooperation between home and school, especially on parent-teacher conferences. The LIFE project (Lesen in Familie erleben - Experience Reading in the Family) has emerged from this basic work. It specifically focuses on literacy acquisition in the school entry phase as well as on family participation in this process, but also promotes cooperation between school and home. In addition, the DigHomE project, in cooperation with colleagues from the field of media education, is investigating the family as an educational context for learning with digital media.

Another current research project continues previous work on the relationship between adults aged 25-45 and their parents. The focus in the DFG-funded project F.E.EL is on interdependence in the relationship as expressed in the reciprocity of support and socialization as well as influence within the relationship. In cooperation with colleagues from the Catholic University of Milan, a cross-cultural comparative questionnaire study on the influence of values, attitudes, and relationship quality on interdependence is being conducted.

In addition to the above-mentioned topics, research on the professionalization of teachers has been added to my activities in teacher education. On the one hand, I am concerned with the interdisciplinary competencies of student teachers, which has resulted in the development of the LehramtsNavi. With the help of online self-assessments and workshops, this project promotes students' examination of their study- and career-oriented competencies. On the other hand, I am involved in the quality management of the NRW-wide project ComeIn, which creates conditions for building digitization-related competencies of teachers in all three phases of teacher education.