Knieper has primary research interests in strategic and visual communication. He studied mass communication, statistics, psychology, sociology, and philosophy of science. He received his master of science in statistics in 1989 on the topic of new methods in visualizing hierarchical cluster analysis. In 1995 he received his doctoral degree in mass communication on the topic of infographics. His postdoctoral thesis in 2001 was about editorial cartooning. In 2001 he received a venia legendi (postdoctoral lecture qualification) for communication research with emphasis in visual communication by the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. In 2000 he established (together with Marion G. Müller) the Visual Communication Group in the German Association of Journalism and Mass Communication (DGPuK). For two terms of office, from 2000 till 2004, he was division head of this group.

In 2004 he was elected a full member of the Human Science Center at the LMU Munich.

Email and Website