From June 23-24, 2019, representatives of the Israeli Ministry of Education and the non-profit organization Givat Haviva visited the University of Innsbruck. On Sunday night they went to the benefit concert of the Uni-Orchester and enjoyed a wonderful muscial evening.

The following day they visited the Unit for Peace and Conflict Studies at the Grillhof Education Center, where Dr. Josefina Echavarría Alvarez and Dr. Noah Taylor gave a very good insight into the institution. The tour and presentation  at the Grillhof Education Center was followed by a joint lunch.
Later that day they met Rector Tilmann Märk, as well as Prof. Ivo Hajnal, Prof. Dirk Rupnow, Prof. Andreas Oberprantacher, Prof. Ulrike Jessner-Schmid and Dr. Barbara Tasser for interesting discussions.

AIANI was delighted to have them here in Innsbruck!

In May 2019, Prof. Alon Segev from the Loyola University Chicago (USA) visited the University of Innsbruck for the second time. He was invited by Prof. Andreas Oberprantacher from the Department of Philosophy to teach a seminar on the “Philosophy of Religion”.

Prof. Segev taught the seminar “Religionsphilosophie: Universalismus und Partikularismus”, which was aimed to give students an overview of significant religious philosophical and theological positions on universalism and particularism in the context of Christianity and Judaism. In the seminar a special focus was put on the examination of well-known religious-philosophical and theological texts of modernity, written by prominent theologians of various traditions and denominations.

Prof. Segev authored several books including “Thinking and Killing” in 2013 and “Political Readings of Descartes in Continental Thought” in 2019. Moreover, he is also a foremost expert in philosophy of religion and hence, he was able to make an important contribution to the research area “Practical Philosophy” at the University of Innsbruck.
Prof. Andreas Oberprantacher from the Department of Philosophy, Prof. Wolfgang Palaver from the Department of Systematic Theology, as well as a good number of interested students, were delighted to have Prof. Alon Segev as a lecturer at the University of Innsbruck.

His stay was supported by the city of Innsbruck!

Last week, the second Hackathon of the University of Innsbruck and the Holon Institute of Technology (Israel) took place at the University of Innsbruck. For four days, four interdisciplinary groups of students from Israel and Innsbruck were working together on prototypes, which enable children with and without disabilities to play together. The FabLab Innsbruck supported the students, which came from various backgrounds: computer Science, Industrial Design, Psychology, Educational Science etc.
In only four days they were able to create very impressive results: a robot that dances together with the children, an “intelligent” ball with which the children can learn the different colors, a kaleidoscope that only works if two kids use it together and music instruments that allow the kids to conduct their own band.
By playing together and observing the kids reaction to the ideas, the students found out what the children liked and what they did not like. They worked hard to improve their innovative, technically advanced projects and were able to present the results and prototypes of the play objects to the children and the public.
The second LFUI-HIT Hackathon was a great success and we are looking forward to the next collaboration between the two institutions!
The project was generously supported by the “Förderkreis 1669 - Wissenschafft Gesellschaft” of the University of Innsbruck and by HIT.