Gesche Joost


Gesche Joost is a German design researcher.

Early life and education

Gesche Joost studied design at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and completed her Ph.D. in Rhetoric at the University of Tübingen.

Career

Since 2011, Joost has been a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts specializing in design research, and since 2005, she has been the head of the Design Research Lab at Telekom Innovation Laboratories. Joost focuses her research on human-computer interaction, aspects of gender and diversity in communications technology, social sustainability in design, as well as design theory and research.
In 2002, Joost was a founding board member of DGTF, which she has also chaired since 2008.
During the winter semester 2007/2008 Joost was a visiting professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Hildesheim for Gender & Design. From 2008 to 2010, she held an assistant professorship at TU Berlin for Interaction Design & Media. She directs several research projects at T-Labs, for example on tactile human-computer interaction. Within the scope of the Generation 50+ project, she participated in the development of the DECT telephone Sinus A 201 and received the iF product design award in 2010.
From 2006, Joost served as personal adviser to Germany's former finance minister Peer Steinbrück. In the negotiations to form a Grand Coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and the SPD following the 2013 German elections, she was part of the SPD delegation in the working group on digital policy, led by Dorothee Bär and Brigitte Zypries.

Criticism

In 2013, questioned Joost's independence in research and teaching on the basis of its close ties with Deutsche Telekom, citing, among others, objections by Pirate Party politician Ralf Engelhardt and lawyer Jörg Heidrich.
In 2018, Der Spiegel and the ARD magazine "Report Mainz" reported on Joost's voluntary work on the Calliope project, which was compensated by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for 50,000 euros per year.

Other activities

Corporate boards

Joost's many publications include Bild-Sprache. Die audio-visuelle Rhetorik des Films as well as Design als Rhetorik.