Sophia Volk appointed Associate Professor at LMU Munich
On October 1, 2025, Dr. Sophia C. Volk will start a new position as Associate Professor of Communication Science with a Focus on Strategic Communication at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich. She joins the Department of Communication and Media (IfKW), where her research and teaching will center on strategic communication and science communication in digital media contexts.
Sophia Volk has been a Senior Research and Teaching Associate at IKMZ since 2021 and was part of the Science Communication Division led by Prof. Dr. Mike S. Schäfer. She received her Ph.D. from Leipzig University, which was recognized with a dissertation award, where she previously worked at the Chair of Strategic Communication.
During her time at IKMZ, Sophia contributed to various research projects, including the DSI Abundance Project, the SNSF-funded project Communication of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Switzerland or the Agora-funded research project Should our Medicine go Viral? A Constructive Dialogue with Swiss Society. Her teaching in the BA and MA study programs at IKMZ focused on media management, strategic and science communication, and was honored a IKMZ teaching award. Sophia was active in academic service, co-leading the IKMZ Postdoc Club and co-organizing the annual IKMZ graduation celebration, serving as elected speaker of the DGPuK division PR/Organizational Communication and acting as jury member of the SACM dissertation award, or co-hosting multiple Paper Development Workshops at EUPRERA.
At LMU, Sophia will continue and expand her research on the impact of digitalization on strategic and science communication and become engaged in the Munich Science Communication Lab (MSCL). She will also continue collaboration with IKMZ through the ongoing SNSF-funded research project Science Communication in the Age of AI.