Prof Dr Elke Kronewald, born in 1977, has been Chairwoman of the DRPR since 2023 and a member of the Council elected by the DPRG since 2020. She has been Professor of Communication Management and PR Evaluation at Kiel University of Applied Sciences since 2016 and teaches on the Public Relations and Corporate Communication (BA) and Applied Communication Science (MA) degree programmes.

Prior to this, she held the professorship for PR and Communication Management at the Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Stuttgart for five years. From 2006 to 2010, she was project manager at PRIME research international/F.A.Z.-Institut in Mainz, where she was responsible for international media resonance analyses as well as topic and issues management. From 2002-2006 she worked as a research assistant at the Medien Institut Ludwigshafen, an institute for applied media and market research, and subsequently as a freelance communications researcher and consultant in Mannheim. Since then, she has focussed in particular on analysing, designing and evaluating (online) communication.

From 1996 to 2001, Elke Kronewald studied communication science, psychology and psycholinguistics (M.A.) at the Institute for Communication Science and Media Research at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, where she completed her doctorate (Dr phil.) between 2002 and 2006.