Researchers
Dr. Almut Pflüger is founder of Dr. Pflüger rechtsforschung and sole proprietor of Pflüger Rechtsforschung GmbH. As a lawyer she wrote her doctoral thesis on a topic related to research into legal facts. Her international tasks encompass not only establishing expert opinions and statements on third parties’ surveys but also testifying in courts, e.g. in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, in the UK or Scandinavia and participating in court hearings in the Netherlands and Belgium.
2001 she founded Dr. Pflüger Rechtsforschung in Austria and was admitted there as a “generally sworn and court-certified expert for the field of market and opinion research, especially legal research in trademark and unfair competition law, cartel law and research into legal facts” in 2003.
After her studies in law and sociology in Munich, Freiburg and Berlin, and periods of work abroad for the United Nations in New York and for the Commission of the European Communities in Brussels she wrote her doctoral thesis on a topic in the field of research into legal facts. In 1989, she became head of this department within (TNS) Infratest, Munich, and two years later – as an expert in empirical legal research – she took on the task of preparing expert opinions in the field of industrial and intellectual property and copyright law, both in and out of court. From 2000 to 2012 she was responsible for the entire legal research division of TNS (Infratest) (now KANTAR) and in addition – from 2009 until 2012 – data protection officer for all companies of the TNS group in Germany.
In 2012 she founded her own institute, Pflüger Rechtsforschung GmbH, also in Germany, which she serves as managing director.
From 2011 to 2017, as Chair of the Second Board of Appeal of the complaints council of the Rat der Deutschen Markt- und Sozialforschung e.V. (ADM, a joint and disciplinary body of the German associations of market, opinion and social research), she was responsible for passing judgements on alleged violations of professional ethics in market and opinion research.
She is a member of the professional associations of the German and the Austrian market and social researchers (BVM and VMOE) and the Austrian market research institutes (VdMI), the European Society for Opinion and Market Research (ESOMAR) as well as a member of GRUR (German Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property; member of the board), ECTA (European Communities Trade Mark Association), MARQUES and the AIPPI (International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property).
Dr. Heiko Dobel is a lawyer, holds a degree in media sciences and is an expert for empirical legal research. From 2007 to 2012, he worked in this function for TNS (Infratest), Munich, and additionally – from 2009 to 2012 – as deputy data protection officer for this company. In 2012, he joined the newly established Pflüger Rechtsforschung GmbH right from the beginning.
He studied law at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and later media management at the Institut für Journalisitik und Kommunikationsforschung (Institute for Journalism and Communications) at Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover (University of Music, Drama and Media Hanover). These studies focused on empirical social research methodologies as well as on statistics and data analysis. After that, he completed his professional legal internship training [Rechtsreferendariat] at the Kammergericht Berlin (Berlin Court of Appeal) and wrote his doctoral thesis in law on a topic in the field of industrial and intellectual property related to empirical legal research.
He is a member of the European Society for Opinion and Market Research (ESOMAR) and of the professional association of German market and social researchers (BVM) as well as GRUR (German Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property).
Mirjam Pamp is a political scientist and joined Pflüger Rechtsforschung GmbH in 2015 as an expert for (empirical) legal research.
She graduated from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science (major) and Law (minor) in 2012 and obtained her Master’s degree in Political Science from LMU in 2015. She focussed on statistical analysis and survey research.
Prior to joining Pflüger Rechtsforschung, she gained experience in electoral research at Infratest dimap. As a staff member of the Chair of Empirical Political Research and Policy Analysis at LMU, in 2013 she organised exit polls for the state and federal elections in Munich, together with the LMU's Statistical Consulting Unit, and also conducted interviews herself. She published the results of this project in 2017 as author and co-editor under the title "Exit Polls und Hybrid-Modelle. Ein neuer Ansatz zur Modellierung von Wählerwanderungen".
Aliz Horváth is a social scientist and started at Pflüger Rechtsforschung GmbH as a project manager in 2020. During her master studies she had her first work experience as a staff member of the Europaeum, the East-West Centre of the University of Regensburg that serves as a coordination body for interdisciplinary German-Russian studies.
In 2017, she finished her studies with a BA in Governance and Public Policy – Political Sciences at the University of Passau with majors in political science and law. She kept these majors during her Master’s in East-West-Studies at the University of Regensburg from which she graduated with an MA in 2019.
Kirsten Becker is an anglicist. After a one-year study period in Paris at the Sorbonne (French), she studied English (major) and Political Science (minor) at Clarion University, PA, USA and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree (BA). Later, she studied Education at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany, and then taught English and other subjects for a few years at a secondary school.
In 1995, Kirsten joined the Legal Research Division of Infratest in Munich where she also conducted face-to-face and telephone interviews for legal research purposes. Since 2012, she is taking care of all organisational and other matters relating to Pflüger Rechtsforschung GmbH, including translations.
Franka Roitzsch is a commercial jurist. After a year in the United States of America she studied Law at Technische Universität Dresden (TU) and graduated with a Master’s degree in Corporate and Commercial Law (LL.M.) in 2016.
From 2016 - 2017, she worked as a consultant in the field of insolvency law before she joined Pflüger Rechtsforschung GmbH in 2018 and has since been able to gain experience with the wide-ranging tasks of legal research. Her work includes, inter alia, extensive research work and the management of project databases.