Viktoria Michels studied teaching for special needs education at the University of Cologne with the learning areas linguistic basic education and aesthetic education, as well as the specialization learning and intellectual development. She completed her studies in February 2019 with a Master of Education. In 2018, she worked as a Research Assistant in the project Reading and writing fluency – Conceptualization, assessment and support at the Mercator Institute for Literacy and Language Education. From 2018 to 2019 she taught as a substitute teacher in various primary schools. Since August 2020, she has been working at the Mercator Institute as a Research Associate in the EdToolS research project supported by the BMBF.