HUMANS IN THE DIGITAL AGE (HDA)
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The research area Humans in the Digital Age (HDA) brings together research at the AAU, that addresses the digital transformation of our lives and investigates digitalization phenomena from various research perspectives.
The digital transformation bears both opportunities and risks for human coexistence. While the consequences for many areas of human life are difficult to assess, what is certain is that digitalisation is accompanied by profound processes of change. |
HDA focuses on people in interdisciplinary research that integrates technical and non-technical perspectives on digital change. This means that in addition to research being conducted in the technical, cultural, social and economic sciences, there are additional spaces for sustainable interdisciplinary cooperation and networking in research and teaching.
The Digital Age Research Center (D!ARC), which was founded in 2019, has a central role here. With four professorships (Computational Linguistics, Cybersecurity, Digital Culture and Machine Learning), the D!ARC itself is interdisciplinary, with close collaborations and strong research and teaching output. Furthermore, the D!ARC establishes and fosters interdisciplinary research- and teaching cooperations in the area of HDA across the university. This ranges from the initiating and conducting interdisciplinary research projects and the joint organization of conferences and workshops to interdisciplinary exchange and cooperation in teaching. Examples are the contribution to different study programs and the interdisciplinary thematic doctoral program Humans in the Digital Age, that is being offered since the winter term 2023.
Digital Lives.at – Digital biographies in Austria: Synthesis and cross-linkage of individual life stories from the www
In terms of content, this research project focuses on the – intentional or unintentional – “digital traces” of Austrian citizens on the www and explores how these traces can be joined to form an individual digital biography. The humanities offer numerous docking points for this topic (e.g., aspects of style and text type, the image of Austria as a cultural nation as transported in biographies, biographical media literacy). Against this background, researchers seek to closely integrate problem-solving methods from the realms of computer science and the humanities.
The area of potential “Humans in the Digital Age” is embedded in the University Centre “Digital Age Research Center (D!ARC)”.