40225 Düsseldorf
Building: 24.21
Floor/room: 05.69
Nordrhein-Westfalen Bundesrepublik Deutschland
From 2016 to 2020, Mena Mesenhöller studied her Bachelor's degree in Sociology and Japanese Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt. From 2020 to 2023 she pursued her Master's degree in Transcultural Studies at the University of Heidelberg. During both study programs, she spent semesters abroad in Japan – at Meiji University Tokyo and the University of Tokyo. From October 2024 to March 2025, she spent a research stay at Tokyo College affiliated to The University of Tokyo, which was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service.
Mena Mesenhöller completed various internships in Tokyo, such as at the German Embassy, the DAAD/DWIH, and the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation. She also worked at the Japanese Cultural Institute in Cologne.
Research interests
- Social Technology Studies
- Comparative Cultural Studies
- Transculturality
- Science and Technology Studies
| Since 2023 | Research Associate & PhD Candidate at the Institute for Modern Japanese Studies, Heinrich-Heine-University |
| 2024-2025 | Research stay at Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo |
| 2020-2023 | Master's degree, Transcultural Studies at Heidelberg University (one semester abroad at Tokyo University) |
| 2019-2023 | Student assistant in the Department of Business Informatics at the University of Siegen |
| 2022 | Internships at the German Embassy Tokyo, the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation, and the DAAD/DWIH Tokyo |
| 2019-2020 | Student assistant at the Japanese Cultural Institute Cologne, Germany |
| 2016-2020 | Bachelor's degree, Sociology and Japanese Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt (one semester abroad at Meiji University Tokyo) |
| Summer semester 2024 | Social Practice Theory in Japan |
| Winter semester 2023/24 | Digitalization, Technology, and Innovation in Japan |
| Summer semester 2023 | Gender (In)Equality? Women in the Japanese employment system. |
Mesenhöller, Mena. 2025. "Exploring the Application of Social Practice Theory in Technology-Related Research: A State of the Art Literature Review." Energy Research & Social Science 126 (August): 104145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2025.104145.
Uhde, Alarith, Mena Mesenhöller, and Marc Hassenzahl. 2022. "Social Practice Cards: Research Material to Study Social Contexts as Interwoven Practice Constellations." Proceedings of the InContext workshop at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '22). ACM, New York, NY, USA.
Uhde, Alarith, Mena Mesenhöller, and Marc Hassenzahl. 2020. "Context Factors for Pro-social Practices in Healthcare." New Perspectives on Digitalization: Local Issues and Global Impact: 39–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.25819/ubsi/1894.
Mesenhöller, Mena. 2025. "Automation of Everyday Life in an Ageing Society: Lessons from a Case Study on Self-Cashier Machines in Japan." Paper presented at Science and Technology Studies Italia Conference 2025: "Technoscience for Good: Designing, Caring and Reconfiguring", Politecnico di Milano, Jun. 11-13.