Board elections at ZIN – Doris Fuchs leaves the board, Sigrid Kannengießer joins as a new member
On October 29 2025, the ZIN held its general meeting, at which the election of a new board was also on the agenda. While ZIN spokesperson Prof. Dr. Tillmann Buttschardt and executive board members Prof. Anne Käfer and Prof. Bodo Phillip were elected for another term, Prof. Doris Fuchs did not stand for re-election. Her place on the executive board will be taken by Prof. Sigrid Kannengießer.
With Prof. Doris Fuchs, the scholar whose idea led to the founding of ZIN in 2015 and who served as ZIN spokesperson until 2022, is stepping down from her position as a member of the executive board. Over the past ten years, she has worked tirelessly and with great commitment to make the ZIN a place where scholars from all departments of the University of Münster can conduct research and teach together on sustainability issues. It is thanks to Doris Fuchs' integrity, perseverance and persuasiveness that sustainability is not only the subject of theoretical research at the ZIN, but that the centre's work has always focused on contributing to the practical implementation of sustainability at the University of Münster and beyond, as well as on communicating with society. Ten years after its founding, the ZIN is now a firmly established central research institution at the University of Münster with over 60 members from 13 of the university’s departments – a development that would not have been possible without Doris Fuchs' initiative and commitment.
We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks to Prof. Doris Fuchs, for her work as a member of the ZIN Executive Board over the past 10 years and are delighted that she will continue to be involved in ZIN as a member in the future! At the same time, we are equally pleased to report that Prof. Dr. Sigrid Kannengießer was newly elected to the ZIN Executive Board at the General Meeting.
Communication scientist Sigrid Kannengießer has been an active member of ZIN since 2023. She is a professor of communication science specialising in media sociology at the Institute for Communication Science and conducts research in the fields of digital technologies, artificial intelligence infrastructures and sustainability; digitalisation and sustainable consumption; energy communication; critical data practices; and gender studies in communication and media science. Among other things, she is concerned with the question of how digital and AI technologies can be made more sustainable. She is also involved in the collaborative ZIN project “Zukunft schmackhaft machen".
Prof. Dr. Sigrid Kannengießer now forms the new ZIN executive board together with Prof. Dr. Tillmann Buttschardt, Prof. Dr. Anne Käfer and Prof. Dr. Bodo Phillip, whom we would like to thank warmly for their dedicated work over the past years.
