Executive Director, Head of the Knowledge Construction Lab and the e-teaching Transfer Lab

Ulrike Cress has held a Chair (W3 Professorship) at the University of Tübingen since 2008 and has been Executive Director of the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien (Leibniz Institute for Knowledge Media, IWM) since 2017.

Ulrike Cress focuses on knowledge and communication processes in the digital sphere, for example digital learning in schools and higher education, as well as on informal learning contexts such as citizen science, search as learning, and knowledge construction through social media.

With her Knowledge Construction lab, she investigates the social and cognitive-psychological processes involved in the joint construction and use of knowledge. Much of her work aims to further develop the cognitive-systemic ‘co-evolution model of individual learning and collaborative knowledge construction’ (Cress & Kimmerle, 2008). The model has been applied, for example, to mass collaboration (such as collaborative writing on Wikipedia), science communication, and participatory decision-making between doctors and patients. It is currently being extended to address hybrid knowledge construction between humans and AI.

Ulrike Cress has published more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles. She also serves as Executive Co-Editor of the International Journal of Computer-Supported Learning (2025 Impact Factor = 6.8). In 2022, she was named an ISLS Fellow by the International Society of the Learning Sciences. In 2021, she co-edited the first ‘International handbook of computer-supported collaborative learning.’

Since its founding in 2021, Ulrike Cress has been a member of the Standing Scientific Commission of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (SWK). Its task is to advise the German federal states on the further development of the education system and how to address its challenges, in particular on ensuring and improving quality, improving comparability across the education system, and developing medium- and long-term strategies on educational issues relevant to the states as a whole.

Since June 2022, Ulrike Cress has been Co-Director of the Tübinger LEAD Graduate School & Research Network. Since 2018, she has been Deputy Chair of the Board of the Deutsche Telekom Foundation, which promotes good education in the digital world.

Ulrike Cress is a member of the spokesperson group of the Leibniz Research Network on Educational Potential (LERN). She is also a member of numerous boards and advisory councils, including the German Literature Archive Marbach (DLA), the Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure – FIZ Karlsruhe, and the Kolping-Bildungswerk Württemberg Foundation.

For her contributions to society, Ulrike Cress received the Order of Merit of the State of Baden-Württemberg in 2024, presented by the then Minister-President Winfried Kretschmann.