DR. JESSICA SZCZUKA
Dr. Jessica Szczuka is the Head of INTITEC and a leading researcher in digitized intimacy. She holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Applied Cognitive and Media Science from the University Duisburg-Essen, where she also earned her Ph.D. in Social Psychology: Media and Communication. During her postdoctoral phase, she spearheaded the psychological research component of the interdisciplinary project IMPACT. Her investigation focused on studying the communication, relationship development, and understanding that individuals have with AI systems across the lifespan.
Throughout her doctoral studies, Dr. Szczuka dedicated her research to empirically exploring the influence of digitalization on interpersonal relationships and sexual experiences.
Advancing research on the digitization of intimacy and destigmatizing the research topic are deeply important to her. Her research, heavily influenced by the fields of HCI and HRI, specifically examines the social response to social and sexualized artificial entities like chatbots, robots, or computer-generated sexually explicit content. Additionally, she considers it her responsibility to empirically address risks, such as privacy concerns in intimate chat communication (including sexting) or the inclusion of vulnerable user groups.
PAULA EBNER, M.SC.
Paula is currently persuing her PhD at INTITEC. Her academic journey started with a bachelor´s degree in psychology at Maastricht University, which is where she first delved into sex-research, investigating the impact of sexual synchrony on sexual functioning. She stayed at Maastricht University, completing a research master´s in legal psychology. In 2023, Paula joined INTITEC, where she aims to merge her legal background with her research experience on sexual intimacy.
Her research interests include non-consensual forms of porn and the exploration of erotic roleplay with chatbots. For her dissertation project, she chose to investigate the influence of romantic and sexual fantasies on parasocial relationships with chatbots, bringing attention to this previously unexplored dimension of human-AI interaction.
LISA MÜHL, M.SC.
Lisa is currently pursuing her PhD at INTITEC. Her doctoral research is part of SENTIMENT, an interdisciplinary project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR), which focuses on the dynamics of self-disclosure in emotionally intimate human–AI communication with LLM-based dialogue systems.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in media and business psychology at Media University Cologne, and her master’s degree in Applied Cognitive and Media Sciences at University Duisburg-Essen. In October 2022 she joined INTITEC as research assistant.
Her research interests include intimate communication and self-disclosure to natural language dialogue systems, dynamics of emotional-intimate experiences and perceived intimacy with AI systems, effects of privacy-by-design mechanisms on self-disclosure tendencies and sexualized technologies for vulnerable user groups.
JAN OBERST
Jan is currently studying Applied Cognitive and Media Sciences (B.Sc.) at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Since 2025, he has been employed in the Department of Social Psychology, conducting research within the INTITEC group.
INTITEC 