29. July 2024

At the 2024 joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) July 16-19 in Amsterdam, 3748 participants were involved in panels, presentations, making & doing contributions, and other events that explored the role of STS in making and doing contributions to transformations in an era of grand societal challenges.

27. June 2024

On 22 April 2024, IFZ was involved in the planning and organization of the conference "Transformation through Cooperation V" at the Graz Museum, which was hosted by the association ACT (Actin in Commons - Actin in Transition) from Graz. The conference is an annual format with the aim of discussing topics that address the urban-rural interface with a broad range of stakeholders from the social, environmental, cultural, health and education sectors, science, civil society, agriculture, business, politics and administration.

11. June 2024

There will be no simple technological solutions to complex social challenges such as healthy nutrition for all people or responsible implementation of artificial intelligence in organizations without taking social aspects, environmental factors, social structures and power relations into account. The IFZ therefore researches the field of tension of digital and sustainable transformation in transdisciplinary projects with a social justice perspective.

7. March 2024

The University for Continuing Education Krems invited Anita Thaler to give a lecture on March 7, 2024 on the occasion of International Women's Day 2024 on how gender gaps in science affect us all.

13. February 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) has gained increased attention in Austrian companies due to increasing reporting on ChatGPT, the AMS Berufsinfomat or the European AI Act. The IFZ has been focusing its research on the topic of digitalization and AI for many years and has developed a concept for responsible AI in the dAIalog.at and VEKIAA projects.

21. November 2023

Biodiversity loss, alongside climate change, stands as one of humanity's most pressing challenges. Despite its significance, biodiversity is often sidelined in policy decision-making. Addressing this gap, PLANET4B, an innovative research project, delves into understanding how decision-making processes influence biodiversity. 

15. November 2023

With the ‘To be Published’ event series, the Coordination Centre for Gender Studies and Equal Opportunities at the University of Graz and the IFZ have been promoting the dissemination of results from excellent theses in the field of gender studies for many years.

24. August 2023

From July 5 to 7, 2023, the summer school "Breaking the Bias: Inspiring Diversity in R&I" took place in Athens, organized by Anita Thaler (IFZ) and Clemens Striebing (Fraunhofer) with dedicated international colleagues from the COST Action VOICES.

26. January 2023

The Gendered Innovations training programme by the nexus Institute in cooperation with TU Berlin demonstrates how sex and gender analysis can be an applicable tool to various industries in order to unclose vital paths for a world recognized in its diversity. Anita Thaler provided the VITAPATCH case study to share insights about the background of "Gendered Innovations" as well as the application of participatory methods for adapting the concept.

1.12.2022
At the end of our project "Development of social gardening in Graz: Concepts and the relation to food justice" we invite you to an event on Wednesday, December 7^th, 2022 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Festsaal of the Heilandskirche (Kaiser-Josef-Platz 9, 8010 Graz). Please register by tuesday, December 6^th, 4 p.m., number of places are limited: david [punkt] steinwender ifz [punkt] at.

27.10.2022
On behalf of the Styrian University Conference, our colleague David Steinwender works on the continuation of the exhibition for schools "Climate Crisis and Change in Awareness". The exhibition together with accompanying material is being developed as part of the project "Climate Crisis - Let's Act Now!". In the latest issue of the journal GAIA, the project is described and its challenges are highlighted.

24.10.22
An article on the revised Austrian Action Plan on Sustainable Public Procurement is published in the latest issue of the magazine "Das kommunale Magazin für einen nachhaltigen Einkauf".

19.09.2022
Our longtime colleague at the joint institute "Technology and Science Studies" (with locations in Graz – at IFZ – and in Klagenfurt – at the university) Wilhelm – Willi – Berger says goodbye to his well-deserved retirement.

16.05.2022
IFZ was co-hosting the annual conference on ”Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies” (May 2-4) in 2022 in Graz with Günter Getzinger, Michaela Jahrbacher, Franziska Häller and colleagues from TU Graz again. IFZ researchers gave several presentations and organized sessions with international cooperation partners to showcase their diverse portfolio on responsible research and innovation (RRI) in practice.

10.02.2022

The project "We procure that!" developed 15 measures with which contracting authorities can provide an incentive for their suppliers to increasingly deliver goods or services using low-emission delivery systems.

09.12.2021

Since February 2021, IFZ is partner in the EU-project ULaaDs - Urban Logistics as an on-Demand Service. IFZ contributes its social science expertise in the field of participatory methods and stakeholder engagement.

08.11.2021
Feminist technoscientists and education researchers in Austria were happy, when 2012/2016 the two school shop classes for textiles and technology have finally been merged. So did our colleague Anita Thaler, who was invited on November 5th, 2021 to an “learning from each other” event at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, to talk about “From fashion, music and media to technology – Gender-sensitive technology didactics in schools“.

The German Evaluation Society (DeGEval) organised a panel on September 16, 2021 to dis-cuss the role of evaluation research in times of societal transformation. Our colleague Anita Thaler was invited by the board of DeGEval to discuss this topic with Sandy Taut (Bayerisches Landesamt für Schule), Udo Kelle (Universität der Bundeswehr, Hamburg) and Ruppert Pichler (Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technol-ogy (BMK), Vienna).

24.06.2021

Our colleague Anita Thaler (head of the research unit Gender, Science and Technology) met and exchanged ideas with 75 women who work in electronics and software industries. Her talk followed presentations from successful engineers Heike Schwager (Senior Director Automotive Radar Development, Infineon AG), Jennifer Zhao (EVP and GM in Advanced Optical Sensors Division, ams AG) and Sabine Martinjak (Women in Tech Lead, Bulme Graz). The international online event, organised by the Graz Women in Engineering core team, took place on June 23rd 2021, the International Women in Engineering Day to celebrate women in technology jobs, but also to reflect on difficulties in the engineering working environment.

The 19th Annual STS Conference Graz 2021 "Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies" is the joint Annual Conference of the Science Technology and Society Unit of the Institute of Interactive Systems and Data Science of Graz University of Technology, the Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Technology, Work and Culture (IFZ) and the Institute for Advanced Studies of Science, Technology and Society (IAS-STS).

10.02.2021

Anita Thaler and Julian Anslinger researched for FELIN_female leaders initiative how companies have changed in the Covid-19 pandemic, and which challenges leaders, especially female leaders, had to face and with what kind of strategies they reacted to those changes.
The result is an insight into ten Styrian organisations from the logistics, technology, travel agency, health, and public services sector.

19.01.2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world and no one’s life was untouched by the measures taken since spring 2020 by governments to contain the virus. Anita Thaler and her Queer STS colleagues Daniela Jauk, Birgit Hofstätter and Magdalena Wicher took this contemporary crisis as a starting point for scholarly and personal reflection in the fifth issue of the Queer STS Forum.

06.10.2020
In a webinar of the Austrian funding agency FFG (on October 5th 2020), IFZ researcher Anita Thaler reported from her experiences as a gender expert in the research project VITAPATCH.

25.08.2020
This was the question Anita Thaler aimed to answer with her conference presentation „‚Configuring the User as Somebody?’ A Transdisciplinary Technology Design Approach” at this year’s virtual EASST/4S conference .

03.06.2020
This was the title of a talk, our gender and technology researcher Anita Thaler held on May 28, 2020 at the ISPA-Forum of Austria’s Internet Service Providers.
After an introduction of federal minister Elisabeth Köstinger, Thaler explained why it is so important for sustainable change in the IT sector to use your own room for manoeuvres instead of waiting for others to change first (which would be throwing the hot potato).

21.05.2020
With the projects VEKIAA (Responsible Integration of AI Assistants at the Workplace) and dAIalog.at (Fostering Fairness of and Trust in AI through Formats of Participatory Technology Design) the IFZ extends its profile with the topic of artificial intelligence (AI).