The final colloquium was preceded by the submission of the habilitation thesis, which consists of several publications in top-class international peer-reviewed journals ('cumulative habilitation'). In these studies, Andreas Schwarz documents his research on risk and crisis communication in the context of emerging technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence), emerging science (e.g. astrobiology) and health crises (e.g. COVID-19). This work has appeared in the journals Science Communication, Health Communication, Risk Analysis, Corporate Communications, and the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, among others.
The expert reviewers gave this research a very positive rating across the board. At TU Ilmenau, this was crisis and journalism researcher Martin Löffelholz. In addition, the internationally renowned scientists in the field of risk and crisis communication Amiso George (Texas Christian University, USA) and Augustine Pang (Singapore Management University, Singapore) were part of the review panel. Professors Thomas Grebel and Andreas Will from TU Ilmenau evaluated Andreas Schwarz's teaching qualifications with a positive result.
Andreas Schwarz has been researching and teaching risk, crisis, technology and science communication at the TU Ilmenau for 20 years now. He is the founder of the Risk and Crisis Communication Section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA), co-editor of the Handbook of International Crisis Communication Research and has been involved in raising over eight million euros in research funding since completing his doctorate.