Franziska Oren

Current research

I am pursuing a PhD in the project "Intentions, Selection, and Agency" where my colleagues and I investigate how we remember what we have decided to do. In order for this to happen appropriately, we need to select and retrieve the right intention in a particular given context from a large set of multiple intentions that we have formed at some point in the past. This ability is central for human agency. Without it, we would lose our ability for long-term planning, and our psychological and practical life would lose its structure and stability. 

The major aim of my project is to propose a new computational model of how the problem of intention selection and retrieval is solved by human agents. The fundamental idea is that selecting intentions from long-term memory is a selection problem similar to selection problems in visual attention.

My research is conducted under the supervision of Søren Kyllingsbæk, Head of the Department of Psychology, and evolves in collaboration with Thor Grünbaum from the Philosophy section at the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, both University of Copenhagen. 

Primary fields of research

My PhD studies can be situated among the following research fields: 

• Intentional actions & prospective memory
• Planning, selection & executive control
• Computational modeling

I primarily conduct behavioural experiments and make use of quantitative analysis methods.

CV

born 1988 in Karlsruhe, Germany

Education:

• MA Cognition and Communication, with an elective in Experimental Psychology | University of Copenhagen, 2015
• BA Psychology and Media Science | University of Cologne, 2012

Academic positions:

• since 2016: PhD Student | Center for Visual Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen
• 2018: Visiting Researcher | MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge
• 2014–2015: Visiting Thesis Student | Eye-tracking group, Lund University 
• 2010–2011: Research Assistant | Department of Psychology, University of Cologne 

Other professional positions:

• 2012–2016: Journalist for radio and podcast programs | Westdeutscher Rundfunk & Deutschlandfunk (German national radio)
• 2011–2014: Editorial and Production Assistant | Westdeutscher Rundfunk (Cologne, Germany)

Special activities: 

• since 2017: member of the PhD board of the Faculty of Social Sciences, acting as the representative of Psychology PhD students, and member of the local PhD board at the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen

Fields of interest

Besides my primary PhD-related fields of research, I have a general interest in:

• Memory
• Future-oriented cognition
• Media, communication & cognition
• Eye movements

Teaching

• Spring 2017: MA course "Empirical Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Communication" | Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen
• Co-supervision of BA and MA theses in cognitive experimental psychology | Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen

Knowledge of languages

English, German, Danish