Leandra Thiele

• Multimodal text and discourse linguistics
• Game studies (empathy and mental health games)
• Game user research

Possible theses topics:

• Multimodal (discourse) analyses of dynamic media, e.g. digital games or social media
• Different kinds of discourse linguistics analyses via digital methods
• Game user studies

  • Game design/development for social issues (e.g., mental health)

Leandra Thiele is a doctoral fellow funded by the Klaus Tschira Foundation and conducts her doctoral research at the Digital Media Lab since September 2025.

She completed her Bachelor’s degree in English-Speaking Cultures and Linguistics and her Master’s degree in English-Speaking Cultures with a specialization in Multimodal Linguistics at the University of Bremen. Afterwards, she worked as a research associate in the BMFTR-funded project FakeNarratives from 2023–2024, which investigated disinformation strategies in news media. She then joined the Collaborative Research Center EASE – Everyday Activity Science and Engineering, where she contributed to research on human-robot interaction. In between, she also conducted research on effective educational video design.

Her research generally focuses on digital multimodal discourse, combining computational/digital and empirical approaches to study text, narrative and interactive strategies across audiovisual, graphic, and specifically digital media. In her doctoral project, she analyzes discourse structures and embodiment in digital empathy and mental-health games, aiming to identify design strategies that foster empathy.

Projects:

• EASE

Publications:

Google Scholar

ORCiD

Research Gate