© Lucas MelzerSusanne Ritzmann has held the SDG Professorship for Sustainable Product Design at the Kunsthochschule Kassel and the Kassel Institute for Sustainability (KIS) since 2023. She is a member of the board and directorate of the KIS.
She studied industrial design at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle and product and process design at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). As a design researcher, she completed her doctorate there from 2012 to 2017 on the design didactics of sustainability. Her dissertation project, which discusses waste as a design-theoretically relevant constant in relation to sustainability, was funded by the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU) with a doctoral scholarship.
During and after her doctorate, Susanne Ritzmann conducted research at the UdK's Design Research Lab on topics such as civic design, energy sufficiency, and open labs. At the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Berlin, she then conducted research as a senior researcher on open source structures in the field of mobility in an experimental think tank funded by the VW Sustainability Council.
Between 2020 and 2023, Susanne Ritzmann worked as a scientific advisor in research funding in the field of education and science, supporting federal and state ministries in the design and implementation of funding programs. She also conducted workshops, projects, and studies with and for clients from politics, education, science, and civil society in the field of digitization and education.
Since 2013, Susanne Ritzmann has held various teaching positions at the Berlin University of the Arts, the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (HTW) and the Berlin University of Applied Sciences for Media, Communication and Business (HMKW).
Susanne Ritzmann is a member of the German Society for Design Theory and Research (dgtf).