Professor Knaus is a Professor of Educational Science specializing in Media Pedagogy and Head of Department of Media Education at The Ludwigsburg University of Education, Academic Director of the FTzM in Frankfurt am Main and Honorary Professor for Educational Technology at the Faculty of Computer Science & Engineering at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences (Frankfurt UAS); he served as Professor of General Education at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg as well as a Visiting Professor at the University of Otago (New Zealand), the University of Sydney (Australia) and the University of Vienna (Austria);
the primary focus of his research and work lies in the field of Media Pedagogy (digital transformation in educational institutions, (media) education in schools, methods and approaches in media pedagogical research, theories of media socialization) and socio- and educational informatics (digital transformation, theory of technology, text and image in digital communication);
he is a member of the steering group of the initiative No Education without Media! (Keine Bildung ohne Medien – KBoM!) and of the Association for Media Education and Communication Culture (GMK), the German Informatics Society (GI), the German Educational Research Association (GERA | DGfE), the Interdisciplinary Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences (IZdigital), and the Professional Group School (GMK) as well as a spokesperson for the Qualitative Research Section (GMK).