On 19 November 2025, the Policy Innovation Lab at Stellenbosch University convened a workshop titled Towards a Systematic Regulatory Approach to Enabling Digital Public Infrastructure in South Africa. The workshop brought together representatives from the Presidency, the Digital Services Unit (DSU), government departments, and academic experts. Its aim was to explore the contours of a structured model for governing Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in South Africa.
The problem with ad hoc reforms

There is no shortage of reports highlighting Germany’s and Europe’s serious technological dependencies: social networks, cloud services, artificial intelligence – they are lagging in many areas and in danger of being left behind altogether. The lack of digital sovereignty did not arise suddenly, but in times of intensifying geopolitical conflicts, it now appears threatening. Europe is missing economic opportunities and has no influence on the design of the technologies.

The Carinthian regional government has once again honored outstanding scientific work in the field of digitalization. The Department for Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity is delighted to receive two award-winning theses at once.

Three QUT researchers affiliated with the Digital Media Research Centre have been successful in the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) scheme.
The DECRA scheme provides focused research support for early career researchers with demonstrated capacity for high-quality research and emerging capability for leadership and supervision.

Two projects involving QUT Digital Media Research Centre researchers have been awarded a combined total of more than $1.1 million in the latest Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Projects scheme. 
The ARC Discovery Projects scheme aims to expand knowledge base and research capacity in Australia, as well as economic, commercial, environmental, social and/or cultural benefits. 
Congratulations to DMRC researchers Professor Anna Huggins and Dr Ehsan Dehghan; affiliate investigator and DMRC alumnus Dr Sofya Glazunova; as well as colleagues at other universities. 

Le CRDP est ravi d’annoncer les résultats du Concours de bourses du Fonds Guy Rocher. Toutes nos félicitations aux lauréat.e.s du concours : Alex Alexis (doctorat), Ines Corbin (maîtrise) !
Bourse d’excellence au doctorat
Alex Alexis
(Droit, supervisé par Konstantia Koutouki)

Vom 13. bis 15. November 2025 fand an der Universität Klagenfurt die jährliche Konferenz des internationalen „Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN)“ statt. Das Motto lautete „Digitalization, Social Justice and Transforming Societies“ (Digitalisierung, soziale Gerechtigkeit und Gesellschaften im Wandel). Rund 150 Teilnehmer:innen kamen aus aller Welt nach Klagenfurt.

Das renommierte Shanghai-Ranking bewertet jährlich mehr als 2.000 Universitäten in über 100 Ländern in 57 Forschungsfeldern. Kriterien sind unter anderem die Anzahl und Zitationshäufigkeit wissenschaftlicher Publikationen, die internationale Vernetzung sowie die Auszeichnungen für exzellente Forschung.
Die Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) setzt ihre Erfolgsgeschichte fort: Im aktuellen „Global Ranking of Academic Subjects“ (GRAS) 2025 der Shanghai-Ranking Consultancy zeigt sie herausragende Ergebnisse in mehreren Fachbereichen.

Tech for Good Institute (TFGI), the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and Safer Internet Lab convened stakeholders in Jakarta on 29 October 2025 to explore coordinated responses to online fraud and scams across Southeast Asia.Southeast Asia’s digital economy is booming. Reaching US$263 billion in 2024, the region continues its double-digit growth trajectory.

Theory on Demand #59
    
Paritance: A Philosophical Investigation Behind Cognition and Simulation
By Henry Warwick

Die Universität und das Universitätsklinikum Würzburg bekommen zwei neue Sonderforschungsbereiche (SFB). Vier weitere SFB mit Würzburger Beteiligung haben so erfolgreich geforscht, dass sie ihre Arbeit fortführen können. Das hat die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) heute in einer Pressemitteilung bekannt gegeben.

The Open Technology Research Network (OTRN) will strengthen the global open technology research community and advance evidence-based policymaking around open technologies.
The post OpenForum Europe, Open Source Initiative, and Open Knowledge Foundation Announce Strategic Partnership to Advance Open Technology Research first appeared on Open Knowledge Blog.

Bereits im Jahr 2024 konnte ein Forschungsteam des Würzburg-Dresdener Clusters und des IFW Dresden zeigen, dass die Ober- und Unterseite von Platinbismut supraleitend sind – Elektronen bilden also Paare und bewegen sich widerstandsfrei. Jetzt hat sich herausgestellt, dass diese Paarbildung anders funktioniert als bei allen bisher bekannten Supraleitern. Besonders spannend: An den Rändern der supraleitenden Flächen befinden sich Majorana-Teilchen, nach denen schon lange geforscht wird und die als fehlertolerante Qubits in Quantencomputern eingesetzt werden könnten.

A workshop on interdisciplinarity in research and teaching recently brought Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) and Stellenbosch University (SU) colleagues together in Munich. Co-organised by SU’s Policy Innovation Lab and LMU’s Institute for Media and Communication Science it took place just after formal cooperation agreements were signed during the Bavarian Minister President’s visit to Stellenbosch.

El Programa de Derecho, Ciencia y Tecnología UC realizó una nueva sesión formativa para el equipo de ayudantes, esta vez enfocada en la negociación de contratos vinculados al uso de inteligencia artificial. 

En esta oportunidad, recibimos a Pedro Videla Hermansen, abogado de Johansson & Langlois y exalumno de la primera generación del Diplomado en Protección de Datos Personales UC (2019), quien compartió su experiencia en derecho y tecnología junto con un taller práctico sobre lectura y negociación de contratos comerciales relacionados con IA. 

consumo TIC

There is something obvious about our obsession with computation. With the invention of the wheel, human beings imagine a circular world that turns and turns again, an endless cycle of seasons, lives, kingdoms. Indian cosmology imagines this as samsara: the continuous cycle of birth, death, and rebirth through which living beings pass. With the invention of writing, the whole world becomes a book. For Judaism, God is the Author of Being and writes our names in the Book of Life.

There is something mesmerizing about the artworks currently exhibited at POST Arnhem. In the exhibition ‘Embodied Encryption’ you will find weirdly morphing videos of deepfake drag performances, abstract closeup visualizations of motherhood based on poetic scripts, and gender non-binary portraits generated from archive paintings of the Qajar dynasty. However, the exhibition in general does not come across as conceptually complex or abstract as this may sound.