This lecture series offers a comprehensive and wide-ranging perspective on global challenges our societies are facing today. In our rapidly changing world we are currently challenged by unprecedented dynamic processes on a global scale such as climate change, demographic change, mass migration, dwindling resources, violation of human rights, social inequality and poverty, mass unemployment and the redefinition of human work in the era of digitalization, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

The lecture series also offers expertise from leading academics in the fields of climate change, cancer research and media and communications. On November 22, Ingrid Hoelzl, City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative New Media and currently Visiting Scholar at the Department of Gender Studies, Central European University in Budapest, Hungary will talk about POSTIMAGE: OR WHAT WE DO TOGETHER and present her concept of the “postimage” and the rise of a new ecology of vision due to the latest developments in computational neuroscience. In this research field vision is modelled as taking place in overlapping areas of the visual cortex, and/or of computer/machine vision in which imaging involves a range of visual and non-visual data (think of self-driving cars, assembly robots and drones). As a consequence the very concept of the image as a stable visual entity and a stable representation of the world, which stands at the core of the humanist episteme, is being challenged. On January 10, Frank Rösl, head of the Division of Viral Transformation Mechanisms, Research Programme Infection, Inflammation and Cancer at the German Cancer Research Center Heidelberg will talk about implications of personalized medicine. On January 17, Angela Josephs, MA will talk about "Automatisation, Robotics, and the Future of Human Labour". She is in charge at Phoenix Contact - one of the world’s leading manufacturers of electrical and electronic connection technology, interface technology, and industrial automation systems - for the corporate communication, both internally and externally, as well as the company’s support for the arts and culture. On January 24, Thomas Schneider von Deimling, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg and Dim Coumou, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, two experts from the field of climate and Earth system modelling, will provide insights into long-term interactions between climate and our biogeosphere. They will talk about how global warming affects the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events like heat waves, heavy rainfall, and persistent droughts.

Requirements: Attendance is mandatory at all lectures. Attendance will be registered on a sign-in sheet at the beginning of class. To participate effectively in class it is expected that students have read the works on the required reading list. The written assignment is to hand in a 750-word essay in English after some lectures on a given topic that has been addressed in the lecture. During discussions students will be asked to present the topic of his/her paper in class. Further details will be discussed in class. Students are required to use concepts and themes from the reading assignments in their written assignments and the final exam. Each student will take a final oral exam (45 minutes) at the end of semester.

On November 8, 2017, topics for the lectures will be assigned to students and information provided on topics and issues that will be covered during the course of the term. Documents and materials will be available online at Base Angewandte as of November 8, 2017. Please be ready to give your full attention to the course each time we meet.

Students from other faculties or universities will be given a place on the course subject to room capacities.