Goethe Fellows
Christoph Burchard Appointed Founding Director of the Center for Critical Computational Studies
Christoph Burchard (Goethe Fellow 2019–2022) has been appointed founding director of the Center for Critical Computational Studies (C3S) at Goethe University. With this Center, the University is establishing a platform for inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary research on digitization technologies and their associated dynamics. Specifically, the focus is on the interactions between people, society, and digital technology. The University is looking to understand and responsibly shape the opportunities and challenges of (post)digital transformations and is therefore endowing the Center with twelve additional professorships. With its focus on »Critical Computational Studies,« it is pursuing a unique research approach that will also be reflected in teaching and educational formats.
In his research, Christoph Burchard has long been concerned with questions at the intersection of law and digitality. As a Goethe Fellow, he pursued a project on »The Normative Order of Artificial Intelligence,« as part of which he also took the lead in organizing the Bad Homburg Conference 2019 under the heading »Artificial Intelligence. How can we trust algorithms?«. Preparations for that conference already suggested the principles that are now being applied in C3S: Researchers from different disciplines (computer science, law, economics, and medicine) engage in discussions with experts from business, police, healthcare, and politics.
In view of the dynamic developments in the field of digitization and artificial intelligence, the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften is planning to dedicate the Bad Homburg Conference 2024 once more to the topic of artificial intelligence, this time in cooperation with C3S.