Nele Heise

Nele is a communication scholar and has been named one of “100 brilliant women in AI ethics to follow in 2019 and beyond”. Her main research areas are normative and ethical aspects of digitisation, as well as the digital transformation of the media sector. Nele works as an independent media researcher, speaker and scientific adviser, primarily for media and educational institutions. 

After studying communications and history at the University of Erfurt, Nele became a junior reseacher at the Leibniz-Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut in 2011, working in a project on audience participation in journalism. Later she held positions as research associate and guest lecturer at the University of Hamburg. Most recently she worked with iRights e.V. in a project on the role of algorithms and AI in consumer’s everyday life.

In her academic research Nele focuses on topics like digital media use, particularly podcasting and online audio, web-based forms of participation, and the socio-technical constitution of digital media environments. One overarching question in her work is how digital change affects our communicative everyday life – and what that might mean for traditional roles and rules of sociality. Against this background, Nele is also involved in issues around online research ethics, e.g. as a member of the AoIR (Association of Internet Researchers) Ethics Working Group. 

Nele sees herself as a mediator between academia and society: Besides her scientific publications she is blogging, writing guest articles, and has been featured in several media. Moreover, Nele is engaging in various voluntary activities, for instance as adviser for the platform Podcasterinnen.org, or as jury member of the Surveillance Studies Journalism Award.