Sandra Tietjens studied Romance studies and philosophy in Munich and Lille, and holds a master’s degree in Intercultural Communication and education from the University of Cologne. In her thesis, she focused on language integrated strategies in classrooms during the practical semester of student teachers at the University of Cologne. Prior to her work at the Mercator Institute for Literacy and Language Education, she has worked as a mentor for scientific writing, as a team leader in a project conducting assessments of personal potentials of teenagers, and as a teacher of German as a second and foreign language in different institutions.

Since 2020, she has been working as a research assistant in the Department of Language and the Educational System and is involved in the federal-state project Schule macht stark (SchuMaS) and for the research database Lernertexte (FD-LEX). She also holds a teaching position in the continuing education program German as a Second Language.