Melanie A. Kilian, M.A.

PhD project

"Where to Go and What to Do: Towards Understanding Task-Based Information Behavior at Transitional Spaces"

“In public transitional spaces, such as airports, users are faced with diverse challenges regarding information interaction and use. These challenges arise due to the scheduled and/or location-dependent procedures users are required to perform. Understanding what these users need or desire in the context of such spaces, what information is on offer, both online and in situ, and how these aspects interrelate is important to facilitate the design of systems that are accepted by the users concerned. However, very little is known about human information behavior (HIB) in public transitional spaces. As a starting point to understand how behavior in such spaces relates to or differs from information behavior in other contexts, holistically, I will create an explanatory model of airport information behavior by conducting an exploratory grounded theory based field study and relating my findings to those of existing models.”
(Excerpted from: Melanie A. Kilian. 2019. Where to Go and What to Do: Towards Understanding Task-Based Information Behavior at Transitional Spaces. In 2019 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR ’19), March 10–14, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages.)

Peer-reviewed publications

Kilian, Melanie A., Elsweiler, David, and Ruthven, Ian. "Right Answers to Wrong Questions: The Dysfunctional Nature of Information Needs". Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Accepted/In press. doi.org/10.1002/asi.70010 (external link, opens in a new window)

Kattenbeck, Markus, Kilian, Melanie A., Ferstl, Matthias, Ludwig, Bernd, and Alt, Florian. "Towards task-sensitive assistance in public spaces (external link, opens in a new window)". Aslib Journal of Information Management, Emerald, Bingley. 2019. doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-07-2018-0179 (external link, opens in a new window)

Kilian, Melanie A. "Where to Go and What to Do: Towards Understanding Task-Based Information Behavior at Transitional Spaces (external link, opens in a new window)". 2019 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR '19), Glasgow, Scotland, UK, March 10–14, 2019, ACM, New York, NY, USA. 2019, pp. 413–416. doi.org/0.1145/3295750.3298972 (external link, opens in a new window)

Kattenbeck, Markus, Kilian, Melanie A., Ferstl, Matthias, Alt, Florian, and Ludwig, Bernd. "Airbot: Using a Work Flow Model for Proactive Assistance in Public Spaces (external link, opens in a new window)". MobileHCI '18. Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services Adjunct, Barcelona, Spain, September 3–6, 2018, ACM, New York, NY, USA. 2018, pp. 213–220. doi.org/10.1145/3236112.3236142 (external link, opens in a new window)

Burghardt, Manuel, Karsten, Heike, Pflamminger, Melanie, and Wolff, Christian. "Twitter als interaktive Erweiterung des Mediums Fernsehen: Inhaltliche Analyse von Tatort-Tweets (external link, opens in a new window)". Workshop proceedings of GSCL 2013.

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Talks & Presentations

03/2019

Doctoral Consortium Presentation “Where to Go and What to Do: Towards Understanding Task-Based Information Behavior at Transitional Spaces” as part of the Doctoral Consortium of the ACM SIGIR 2019 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR), March 10–14, 2019, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, UK.

10/2018

Poster presentation “Theory Construction through Thick Data - How to Model Airport Information Behavior Holistically” as part of the 1st Regensburg Big Data Day, October 30, 2018, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.

06/2018

Doctoral Consortium Presentation ?Facing Information Behavior in Public Spaces: Using Procedure Adaptation for Sustainable Assistance at Airports“ as part of the 1st Doctoral Workshop of the Network Internet and Digitization Ostbayern (INDIGO), June 20, 2018, University of Passau, Passau, Germany.

05/2018

Invited Talk: ?Big Data, Big Brother, Big Problems –  Ethical Challenges in an Increasingly Digitalised World“ (translated title) as part of the 2nd general meeting 2018 of the Green Youth Ostbayern, May 19-20, 2018, Kelheim, Germany.

Computer Science and Society (in cooperation with the Data Security and Cryptography Group – Prof. Dr. Juliane Kr?mer)

lecture | undergraduate course

winter 2023/24 | winter 2024/25

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Conducting Qualitative and Mixed Methods Human Information Behavior Research

research seminar | graduate course

winter 2019/20 | winter 2020/21

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Ethics for Software Engineers & Data Scientists

advanced seminar | graduate course

winter 2017/18 | winter 2018/19 | winter 2019/20 | winter 2020/21 | winter 2021/22 | winter 2023/24 | winter 2024/25

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GIScience & Human Information Behavior (in cooperation with Markus Kattenbeck)

research seminar | graduate course

summer 2017

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Human Information Behavior (in cooperation with Markus Kattenbeck)

research seminar | undergraduate course

winter 2016/17

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Information Ethics and Philosophy

lecture and seminar | graduate course

summer 2016 | winter 2016/17 | summer 2017 | summer 2018 | summer 2019 | summer 2020 | summer 2021 | summer 2022 | summer 2023 | summer 2024 | summer 2025

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Qualitative and Quantitative Data Collection (in cooperation with Christina Bauer)

seminar | undergraduate course

summer 2019

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Qualitative Interviews and Grounded Theory Analysis

hands-on seminar | undergraduate course

summer 2017 | winter 2017/18 | winter 2018/19

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Requirements Engineering & Air Travel Information Behavior

research seminar | graduate course

winter 2017/18

Memberships

• SIGIR (12/2018 – now)
• iSchools Community "Qualitative Research Group" (05/2023 – now)

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Services to the community

• CHIIR 2022 (Webmaster and Member of the Local Arrangements Team)
• European iSchools Doctoral Seminar Series (11/2020 – 12/2020: Organizing Committee Member)
• CHIIR 2019 (Student Volunteer)

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Services in academic administration

Project responsibility

• Management and implementation of the migration of the central pages of the Faculty of Informatics and Data Science during the website relaunch of the University of Regensburg (06/2025 – 07/2025)

Committee work

Pending functions and offices

• Re-election: Representative of the group of academic staff and doctoral candidates in the faculty council of the Faculty of Informatics and Data Science (3rd term: 10/2025 – 09/2027)

Current functions and offices

• Re-election: Representative of the group of academic staff and doctoral candidates in the faculty council of the Faculty of Informatics and Data Science (2nd term: 10/2023 – 09/2025)
• Member of the working group "Study Affairs of the Faculty of Informatics and Data Science" (06/2023 – now)
• Public Relations Officer of the Faculty of Informatics and Data Science (07/2022 – now)

Past functions and offices

• Member of the working group "Development of a M.Sc. program in Data Science at the University of Regensburg" (11/2023 – 11/2024)
• Member of the working group "Development of a M.Sc. program in Computer Science at the University of Regensburg" (11/2023 – 11/2024)
• Member of the working group "Development of a B.Sc. program in Data Science at the University of Regensburg" (01/2023 – 06/2023)
• Member of the working group "Development of a B.Sc. program in Computer Science at the University of Regensburg" (06/2022 – 04/2023)
• Member of the Presidential Committee “Digital Teaching at the University of Regensburg” (05/2022 – 07/2022)
• Elected representative of the group of academic staff and doctoral candidates in the founding faculty council of the Faculty of Informatics and Data Science (1st term of office, 03/2022 – 09/2023)

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Areas of responsibility in the Information Science Group (in addition to research and teaching)

• Organizing and moderating the Doctoral Seminar Series of the Information Science Group and the Media Informatics Group at the University of Regensburg
• Web editing/content management and public relations
• Managing qualitative research equipment
• Teaching and counseling degree candidates in qualitative research methods