Dr. Johanna Schäwel is a lecturer for special tasks at the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Applied Sciences Ruhr West (Hochschule Ruhr West, HRW) in Bottrop (Germany). In Addition, she is a core member of the project COURAGE.

She completed her bachelor's and master's degree in applied cognitive and media science with a focus on psychology (in the master's program) at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Her master's thesis dealt with the effects of persuasive technologies on prosocial behaviors of users.

Afterwards, she wrote her doctoral thesis on online privacy and social media users’ acceptance of technical interventions for privacy protection at the University of Duisburg-Essen at the Chair of Social Psychology: Media and Communication.

After her PhD she was a research assistant and Post-Doc at the Department of Media Psychology at the University of Hohenheim. Johanna Schäwel is conducting research in the field of social media from the psychological perspective