Professor Katharina Kilian-Yasin and Franziska Muller

Prof. Dr. Katharina Kilian-Yasin, Dr. Phil., graduated in Middle Eastern Studies at Heidelberg University. She has recently become Professor of International Business for Engineers at the Faculty of Engineering at Pforzheim University, Germany. At the same time she is working as an intercultural trainer and consultant with a focus on cooperations with partners from the Arab world.

Until 2010 she worked as a project advisor in a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) project for the Internationalisation and Integration of Foreign Students at Tübingen University where she conceptualised and implemented an ePortfolio “Studying with an International Perspective”. From 2004 to 2006 she was project manager of the CrossCulture Internships at the Institute for Foreign Relations in Stuttgart. From 2002 to 2004 she worked as a diplomat at the German Federal Foreign Office.

Before her PhD in Middle Eastern Studies (2002) she worked in the printing machines industry.

Franziska Müller, graduated in International Information Management at Hildesheim University/Germany in 2010. Her main subject was Linguistics and the analysis of intercultural communication.

She is currently working as a research assistant at Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences for the study program Business Administration and Engineering / International Management. Her work involves the training of industrial engineering students in cultural awareness, intercultural competency and cross-cultural management. Furthermore she is in her first year of doctoral work. The focus of her dissertation is the investigation of dynamics of intercultural communication in a specific context, and its implications for intercultural training in human resource management and academia.

During her studies she assisted in the conception and implementation of a certificate for intercultural engagement and an e-Portfolio aiming at the reflection of experiences during a semester abroad.