That same year, she accepted a position at the University of Hamburg as a professor in the Department of Education,[3] specializing in socialization and development research.
In March 2016, she accepted a joint professorship for sociology and psychoanalytical social psychology[4] at the Goethe University in Frankfurt together with the position of managing director of the Sigmund Freud Institute, which she assumed in November 2016[5] King's research and publications focus on the analysis of relationships between social conditions and individual development, between culture and the psyche.
The book Female Adolescence,[6] published in 1992 with Karin Flaake, combined social and cultural scientific analyses with developmental psychological and psychoanalytical perspectives.
In particular, she investigated the intergenerational dynamics of adolescence and developed a concept of generativity at the intersection of subject and cultural theory.
Her research on intergenerational relationships extends to studies on families and the psychosocial development of parents, children and adolescents in the context of migration and flight.