Podcasts about humboldt professor

IN THIS EPISODE: In a change of pace, host Denise Silber delves into her professional field, digital health, as she  invites fellow Harvard alumna Dr. Ariel Dora Stern. Together they  explore Dr. Stern's extensive and unique, research-based findings on what drives successful business models in healthtech. Dr. Stern combines her Harvard PhD, insights from her decade on the HBS faculty, and her prestigious position as Alexander von Humboldt Professor at Germany's Hasso Plattner Institute to provide listeners with unparalleled expertise in the digital health business across the globe  Ariel Dora Stern provides  case learnings from Proximie, a company using augmented and virtual reality to improve surgical procedure, and shares more broadly  how startups can navigate the business challenges of healthcare. This episode brings valuable advice to entrepreneurs looking to scale their digital health solutions on both sides of the Atlantic. GUEST BIO: After completing her PhD at Harvard and spending ten years on the faculty of Harvard Business School, Ariel Dora Stern is currently the Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Digital Health, Economics and Policy at Germany's Hasso Plattner Institute. Ariel's research focuses on innovation and technology management in health care. Formerly, she served as the Director for International Health Care Economics at the Health Innovation Hub, an independent think tank of the German Ministry of Health. She is a member of several academic and industry advisory boards and advises numerous health care startups.

In this second episode of the CEPS Tech Podcast series on AI we will be looking at various proposals to launch a large-scale initiative on AI in Europe in the years to come. Does Europe need an “AI Moonshot” to catch up with other global powers? What characteristics should the moonshot have? We compare in particular the recent proposal tabled by advisors to the European Commission, to create a “CERN for AI in science”; the proposal by the scientific community to launch a moonshot to create alternatives to non-European generative AI models; and proposals to fund a pan-European Digital Public Infrastructure. Our host Tom Parker is joined by co-host Andrea Renda, Director of Research at CEPS, a well-known expert in AI governance and policy and Professor at the European University Institute. Joining them both to help unpick this topic are two leading experts in the AI field. Holger Hoos, Alexander von Humboldt Professor of AI at RWTH Aachen University (Germany) and Director of Research at CLAIRE who shares his insights on a Moonshot for AI and what Europe needs to do to not fall further behind in the AI field. Adriana Groh, Co-founder of the Sovereign Tech Fund which is focused on supporting the development, improvement, and maintenance of open digital infrastructure with the gaol to sustainably strengthen the open-source ecosystem by focusing on security, resilience, technological diversity as well as the coding talents. For further reading on CEPS' and Andrea Renda's research on other interesting AI topics follow this link. For more information on Holger Hoos and the work CLAIRE does, have a look here. To find out more about Adriana Groh´s work and the initiatives of the Sovereign Tech Fund have a look here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After protesters were arrested Tuesday following a days-long protest at Cal Poly Humboldt against the ongoing Israel-Gaza war, one professor is concerned about law enforcement involvement. Also, voters in Chester will soon decide whether or not to fund fire and ambulance services, and California is now recovering from an unprecedented three-year population decline.

This episode features Kate Rigby, PhD, Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Cologne. We talk about her many contributions to environmental humanities and ecocriticism. Some of the topics we cover include her work with European Romanticism, decolonization, and the enduring legacy of the ecofeminist philosophy of Val Plumwood. We also discuss her most recent book, Meditations on Creation in an Era of Extinction (Orbis Books, 2023), where she reflects on the challenges of extinction through theological interpretations of the Biblical account of creation. She draws on an ancient genre of theological writing about the days of creation, the hexameron.

„Humane KI“ steht im Leitbild von Vincent C. Müller, dem Direktor des Centre for Philosophy and AI Research (PAIR) an der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). Technik müssen wir so gestalten, dass wir sie ggf. auch wieder zurückholen können, wenn unvorhergesehene Technikfolgen eintreten oder Werte und Ziele sich ändern, so dass die Technik nicht mehr passt. Für den Humboldt-Professor gehört ethische Reflexion zum professionellen Handeln aller, die Technik entwerfen und in die Welt setzen. KI und Digitale Systeme sollten wir einsetzen, um die grundsätzlichen Herausforderungen der Menschheit aktiv anzugehen.   Autor: Karsten WendlandRedaktion, Aufnahmeleitung und Produktion: Karsten WendlandRedaktionsassistenz: Robin Herrmann Licence: CC-BY, DOI: folgt.  In dieser Folge erwähnte Quellen: Centre for Philosophy and AI Research (PAIR) an der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU): https://www.pair.fau.eu Alan Turing Institute, https://www.turing.ac.uk MÜLLER, Vincent C.; AYESH, Aladdin. Revisiting Turing and His Test: Comprehensiveness, Qualia, and the Real World. 2012. https://philpapers.org/archive/MLLRTA.pdf Zum Ford Pinto Skandal: https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ford-pinto-case  

Lecture summary: United Nations (UN) and several UN Agencies have started to use behavioural sciences in order to achieve their policy goals, including for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). While it is to be appreciated that insights on actual behavior inform policy making of international actors, they raise scientific and normative considerations warranting caution. First, for those considerations it matters, who the acting and the targeted actors are, that is, where and for what behavioral sciences are used (inter-state or targeting citizens). Behavioural interventions come in many facets and warrant a differentiated view – a finely built roadmap is thus desirable. Second, there are concerns about the internal and external validity of experimental research on which behavioural sciences largely, but not solely, draws. Third, taking a differentiated view on behavioral sciences also allows for a more finely grained view on normative concerns underlying the operations of the United Nations. This contribution spells out those considerations while still advocating for the approach as such.Reading material: https://www.uninnovation.network/assets/BeSci/UN_Behavioural_Science_Report_2021.pdfAnne van Aaken (Dr. iur. and MA Economics) is Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Law and Economics, Legal Theory, Public International Law and European Law and Director of the Institute of Law and Economics, University of Hamburg. She was Vice-President of the European Society of International Law and is Chair of the European University Institute Research Council. She is a general editor of Journal of International Dispute Settlement and a member of the editorial boards of AJIL, the Journal of International Economic Law, International Theory, and EJIL (until 2021). She was a guest professor in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the USA (Global Law Professor at NYU and Columbia). She has been expert consultant for the IBRD, UNCTAD, GIZ, OECD and the UN High Level Advisory Board of Effective Multilateralism. Her research focuses on international (economic) law, international governance, behavioral economics/psychology and international legal theory. She has published widely on those topics.

Lecture summary: United Nations (UN) and several UN Agencies have started to use behavioural sciences in order to achieve their policy goals, including for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). While it is to be appreciated that insights on actual behavior inform policy making of international actors, they raise scientific and normative considerations warranting caution. First, for those considerations it matters, who the acting and the targeted actors are, that is, where and for what behavioral sciences are used (inter-state or targeting citizens). Behavioural interventions come in many facets and warrant a differentiated view – a finely built roadmap is thus desirable. Second, there are concerns about the internal and external validity of experimental research on which behavioural sciences largely, but not solely, draws. Third, taking a differentiated view on behavioral sciences also allows for a more finely grained view on normative concerns underlying the operations of the United Nations. This contribution spells out those considerations while still advocating for the approach as such. Reading material: https://www.uninnovation.network/assets/BeSci/UN_Behavioural_Science_Report_2021.pdf Anne van Aaken (Dr. iur. and MA Economics) is Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Law and Economics, Legal Theory, Public International Law and European Law and Director of the Institute of Law and Economics, University of Hamburg. She was Vice-President of the European Society of International Law and is Chair of the European University Institute Research Council. She is a general editor of Journal of International Dispute Settlement and a member of the editorial boards of AJIL, the Journal of International Economic Law, International Theory, and EJIL (until 2021). She was a guest professor in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the USA (Global Law Professor at NYU and Columbia). She has been expert consultant for the IBRD, UNCTAD, GIZ, OECD and the UN High Level Advisory Board of Effective Multilateralism. Her research focuses on international (economic) law, international governance, behavioral economics/psychology and international legal theory. She has published widely on those topics.

Lecture summary: United Nations (UN) and several UN Agencies have started to use behavioural sciences in order to achieve their policy goals, including for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). While it is to be appreciated that insights on actual behavior inform policy making of international actors, they raise scientific and normative considerations warranting caution. First, for those considerations it matters, who the acting and the targeted actors are, that is, where and for what behavioral sciences are used (inter-state or targeting citizens). Behavioural interventions come in many facets and warrant a differentiated view – a finely built roadmap is thus desirable. Second, there are concerns about the internal and external validity of experimental research on which behavioural sciences largely, but not solely, draws. Third, taking a differentiated view on behavioral sciences also allows for a more finely grained view on normative concerns underlying the operations of the United Nations. This contribution spells out those considerations while still advocating for the approach as such.Reading material: https://www.uninnovation.network/assets/BeSci/UN_Behavioural_Science_Report_2021.pdfAnne van Aaken (Dr. iur. and MA Economics) is Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Law and Economics, Legal Theory, Public International Law and European Law and Director of the Institute of Law and Economics, University of Hamburg. She was Vice-President of the European Society of International Law and is Chair of the European University Institute Research Council. She is a general editor of Journal of International Dispute Settlement and a member of the editorial boards of AJIL, the Journal of International Economic Law, International Theory, and EJIL (until 2021). She was a guest professor in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the USA (Global Law Professor at NYU and Columbia). She has been expert consultant for the IBRD, UNCTAD, GIZ, OECD and the UN High Level Advisory Board of Effective Multilateralism. Her research focuses on international (economic) law, international governance, behavioral economics/psychology and international legal theory. She has published widely on those topics.

Lecture summary: United Nations (UN) and several UN Agencies have started to use behavioural sciences in order to achieve their policy goals, including for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). While it is to be appreciated that insights on actual behavior inform policy making of international actors, they raise scientific and normative considerations warranting caution. First, for those considerations it matters, who the acting and the targeted actors are, that is, where and for what behavioral sciences are used (inter-state or targeting citizens). Behavioural interventions come in many facets and warrant a differentiated view – a finely built roadmap is thus desirable. Second, there are concerns about the internal and external validity of experimental research on which behavioural sciences largely, but not solely, draws. Third, taking a differentiated view on behavioral sciences also allows for a more finely grained view on normative concerns underlying the operations of the United Nations. This contribution spells out those considerations while still advocating for the approach as such.Reading material: https://www.uninnovation.network/assets/BeSci/UN_Behavioural_Science_Report_2021.pdfAnne van Aaken (Dr. iur. and MA Economics) is Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Law and Economics, Legal Theory, Public International Law and European Law and Director of the Institute of Law and Economics, University of Hamburg. She was Vice-President of the European Society of International Law and is Chair of the European University Institute Research Council. She is a general editor of Journal of International Dispute Settlement and a member of the editorial boards of AJIL, the Journal of International Economic Law, International Theory, and EJIL (until 2021). She was a guest professor in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the USA (Global Law Professor at NYU and Columbia). She has been expert consultant for the IBRD, UNCTAD, GIZ, OECD and the UN High Level Advisory Board of Effective Multilateralism. Her research focuses on international (economic) law, international governance, behavioral economics/psychology and international legal theory. She has published widely on those topics.

Professor Rückert's field of research is the area of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning and their application to medicine and healthcare. His research focuses on (1) the development of innovative algorithms for biomedical image acquisition, image analysis and image interpretation – especially in the areas of image reconstruction, registration, segmentation, tracking and modelling; (2) AI for extracting clinically useful information from biomedical images – especially for computer-assisted diagnosis and prognosis. Since 2020, Daniel Rückert is Alexander von Humboldt Professor for AI in Medicine and Healthcare at the Technical University of Munich. He is also a Professor at Imperial College London. Federated disentangled representation learning for unsupervised brain anomaly detection

What is environmental humanities? How are scholars reconsidering our approach to the natural world, and where can you go to learn more? In the second of a two-part episode on the environmental humanities, host Roxana talks to Kate Rigby, Christine Okoth and Peter Riley – three academics who approach environmental concepts from very different perspectives in their work. They discuss the difficulties of thinking about the future, postcolonial approaches to ecocriticism and the political problems of 'pure' nature. Kate Rigby is Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Environmental Humanities at University of Cologne, where she directs the centre for Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities. A well established figure in the environmental humanities, her most recent monograph, Reclaiming Romanticism: Towards an Ecopoetics of Decolonization (2020) reconsiders the ecopoetic legacies of British Romanticism through a decolonial lens. Christine Okoth is Lecturer in Literature and Cultures of the Black Atlantic at King's College London. Having recently completed a position as Research Fellow in the English Department at the University of Warwick, she is currently writing a book about ecology, extraction, and contemporary literature. Peter Riley is Associate Professor in Poetry and Poetics at Durham University. His recent book, Strandings: Confessions of a Whale Scavenger (2022), won the Ideas Prize for non-fiction. He is currently editing Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass for the Oxford World's Classics series (forthcoming 2022), and his academic research examines nineteenth through twentieth century poetry in relation to labour history, Marxism, and archival studies. Date of episode recording: 2022-04-18 Duration: 00:46:14 Language of episode: English Presenter: Roxana Toloza Chacon Guests: Kate Rigby, Christine Okoth, Peter Riley Producer: Damian Walsh; Assistant Producer: Anna De Vivo; Editor: Daniel Lewis

Michael Köhl und Sebastian Diehl forschen an den Grundlagen quantenmechanischer Phänomene. Am Exzellenzcluster ML4Q bringen sie ihre Expertise in experimenteller bzw. theoretischer Physik zusammen, um Netzwerkarchitekturen für Quantencomputer zu schaffen. Es gilt viele Probleme zu lösen – zum Beispiel auch die Frage, wie Quantencomputer miteinander vernetzt werden können, obwohl die Quantenzustände, die sie zum Funktionieren benötigen, schwer stabil zu halten sind. Die Experten Prof. Michael Köhl leitet die Arbeitsgruppe Experimentelle Quantenphysik an der Universität Bonn. Seine Forschung befasst sich mit der Untersuchung ultrakalter Atome und gefangener Ionen zum Zweck der Quanteninformationsverarbeitung und Quantensimulation. Köhl hat während seiner Diplom- und Doktorarbeit in den Arbeitsgruppen der Nobelpreisträger Wolfgang Ketterle (MIT) und Theodor Hänsch (MPI Garching) gearbeitet. Nach Forschungsaufenthalten in der Schweiz (ETH Zürich) und Großbritannien (University of Cambridge) kehrte er als Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor an die Universität Bonn nach Deutschland zurück, wo er seit 2013 einen herausragenden Forschungsschwerpunkt an der Schnittstelle von Quantenoptik und kondensierter Materie entwickelt. https://www.quantum.uni-bonn.de/ Prof. Sebastian Diehl leitet seine Arbeitsgruppe am Institut für Theoretische Physik an der Universität zu Köln. Im Rahmen der Exzellenzinitiative erhielt Diehl 2015 den Ruf an die Uni Köln, um an der Schnittstelle zwischen der Quantenoptik und der Vielteilchenphysik zu forschen. Ein wichtiges Ziel seiner Forschung ist es, neue makroskopische Phänomene aufzudecken, die quantenmechanische Vielteilchensysteme reflektieren. Dazu entwickelt er theoretische Werkzeuge, um solche Quantensysteme effizient beschreiben zu können. Gleichzeitig arbeitet seine Arbeitsgruppe daran, experimentelle Plattformen zu identifizieren, in denen die theoretischen Voraussagen getestet werden können. https://www.thp.uni-koeln.de/diehl/index.html Der Cluster Quantencomputer versprechen Rechenleistungen jenseits derer aller klassischen Computer, z.B. für Materialforschung, Pharmazeutik oder künstliche Intelligenz. Ziel von ML4Q ist es, neue Computer- und Netzwerkarchitekturen zu schaffen, die auf den Prinzipien der Quantenmechanik beruhen. ML4Q steht für Materie und Licht für Quanteninformation und bündelt die einzigartige Expertise der beteiligten Partner in drei Schlüsseldisziplinen der Physik – Festkörperforschung, Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation – um die beste Hardware-Plattform für Quanteninformations-Technologie und Blaupausen für ein funktionales Quanteninformations-Netzwerk zu schaffen. Mehr Infos in ML4Q in Kürze! https://ml4q.de Der Podcast 57 Exzellenzcluster, 1 Podcast. Regelmäßig berichtet „Exzellent erklärt“ aus einem der Forschungsverbünde, die im Rahmen der Exzellenzstrategie des Bundes und der Länder gefördert wird. Die Reise geht quer durch die Republik, genauso vielfältig wie die Standorte sind die Themen: Von A wie Afrikastudien bis Z wie Zukunft der Medizin. Seid bei der nächsten Folge wieder dabei und taucht ein in die spannende Welt der Spitzenforschung! Wenn Euch der Podcast gefallen hat, abonniert „Exzellent erklärt“ bei dem Podcast-Anbieter Eurer Wahl. Ihr habt noch Fragen? Hinterlasst uns einen Kommentar oder schreibt uns an info@exzellent-erklaert.de

What is the common ground for modern psychotherapy? - Professor Stefan G. Hoffman, Professor Jacques P. Barber, Professor Paul Salkovskis, Professor Bruce E. Wampold https://english.swps.pl/eaclipt The field of psychotherapy has developed from different roots, and many clinicians and scientists still consider psychotherapy as a collection of unconnected groups of theories and associated interventions. This approach prevents a cohesive development of the discipline and a holistic treatment of patients. During the webinar, Professor Stefan G. Hofmann from the Philipps-University Marburg, Germany and Boston University, USA will talk about process-based psychotherapy, which takes the view that mental health problems are assumed to exist as systems of inter-connected elements. The keynote lecture will be followed by a panel discussion on finding the common ground for evidence-based psychotherapies. KEYNOTE LECTURE: PROCESS-BASED PSYCHOTHERAPY For decades, evidence-based therapy, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), has been defined in terms of treatment protocols focused on syndromes as defined by the DSM and ICD. These psychiatric classification systems assume that psychological problems are expressions of latent disease entities. However, there is little evidence to support this restrictive assumption. A process-focused approach (Process-Based Therapy, PBT) is now emerging. This approach does not rely on the assumption that psychological problems are expressions of latent disease entities, but it does not rule it out either. Instead, mental health problems are assumed to exist as systems of inter-connected elements. As is true for many complex networks, such a change can occur abruptly once the network reaches a tipping point. PBT directly links treatment techniques to processes in the individual client, thereby linking classification to treatment based on functional analysis and complex networks. This offers a less restrictive and more externally valid alternative to the latent disease model, while offering exciting new directions for future research in psychiatry and is in line with personalized medicine. KEYNOTE SPEAKER Stefan G. Hofmann, Ph.D. – is the Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Clinical Translational Psychology of the Philipps-University Marburg, Germany, and also Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University. He has been president of ABCT and IACP, and is editor-in-chief of Cognitive Therapy and Research. He has published more than 400 peer-reviewed journal articles and 20 books. He has been included in list of a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate and Thomson Reuters since 2015, among many other awards, including the Aaron T. Beck Award for Significant and Enduring Contributions to the Field of Cognitive Therapy by the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. His research focuses on the mechanism of treatment change, translating discoveries from neuroscience into clinical applications, emotion regulation, and cultural expressions of psychopathology. For more information, see: www.bostonanxiety.org. PANEL DISCUSSION Is psychotherapy just a collection of different approaches? Searching for the common ground for evidence-based psychotherapies

Vom MIT zum KIT: Der Teilchenphysiker Markus Klute erhält eine Humboldt-Professur und wechselt vom Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ans Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT). Dort will er mit seiner Arbeitsgruppe vor allem das Higgs-Teilchen weiter erforschen. Ralf Caspary im Gespräch mit Prof. Markus Klute vom Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT).

Assyrian Imperial Power and How to Oppose It by Karen Radner Alexander von Humboldt-Professor for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East, LMU Munich Honorary Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History, University College London In the early first millennium BC, the ancient kingdom of Assyria became the dominant power of the Middle East. Attitudes and preferences of the imperial center shaped the lives and lifestyles between the Nile and the Caspian Sea. What made the Assyrian Empire so successful? And was it possible to oppose this exemplary lowland predatory state? This audio recording was originally presented as an illustrated lecture on May 1, 2019. The video of this lecture is available on the OI YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/GnRNWyf1Rtw Our lectures are free and available to the public thanks to the generous support of our members. To become a member, please visit: bit.ly/2AWGgF7

Dr. Eric Sheppard is the Alexander von Humboldt Professor at UCLA (Los Angeles, CA, USA) in Geography. His research interests include uneven geographies of globalization, and urbanization in the global South. The blog post for this episode can be found at prof-talks.com.

Once again, a candidate nominated by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München has been awarded one of the coveted Alexander von Humboldt Professorships. The philosopher and mathematician Hannes Leitgeb, Professor of Mathematical Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics at the University of Bristol (UK), was selected to receive the accolade by an expert committee set up by the Humboldt Foundation. The prize, which is worth 5 million Euros, is financed by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, and is the most richly endowed award of its kind in Germany. Leitgeb is one of the leading proponents of an approach to problems in logic, philosophy and the foundations of the scientific method that exploits insights from both philosophical analyses and mathematical theories of provability. In effect, he formulates philosophical questions as precisely posed mathematical propositions, allowing him not only to come up with solutions, but also to explain them with the utmost clarity. Hannes Leitgeb becomes the LMU’s third Humboldt Professor, joining Ulrike Gaul (Systems Biology) and Georgi Dvali (Astrophysics). Leitgeb is one of the most prominent scholars worldwide who tackle analytical philosophy and cognitive sciences with the help of mathematical logic. This multi-pronged approach is motivated by the conviction that philosophical investigations can best be advanced if their fundamental assumptions can be recast as mathematical models that make them more transparent and simpler to describe. As a Humboldt Professor at LMU, Leitgeb will provide the basis for the planned Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Language and Cognition, in which postgraduate and postdoctoral students in the fields of Philosophy, Logic and Mathematics will work together on common problems. The new Center will also collaborate with the Munich Center for Neuroscience, Brain and Mind (MCN). This institution was established in 2007, as the result of an internal competition (LMUinnovativ) to identify innovative ways of tackling questions related to the mind-brain problem. Its members utilize the whole spectrum of disciplines relevant to the neurosciences, from molecular biology, through systemic neurobiology, psychology and neurology, to philosophy. By fostering cooperation between widely diverse areas of study, the two Centers hope to make internationally significant contributions to theoretical and empirical brain sciences. Hannes Leitgeb's interdisciplinary orientation will help further sharpen the profile of the LMU’s Faculty of Philosophy by renewing its long-standing focus on the intersection between philososphy, logic and foundations of science, which is closely associated with the work of Wolfgang Stegmuller. This focus will also be given a future-oriented and internationally apparent impetus. Leitgeb first forged a firm link between philosophical logic and the cognitive sciences in his book “Inference on the Low Level. An Investigation into Deduction, Nonmonotonic Reasoning, and the Philosophy of Cognition”. Here he showed that, under certain circumstances, state transitions in neural networks can be understood as simple ‘if ... then’ inferences. These in turn are known to follow laws governing the behaviour of logical systems that have emerged from studies in the philosophy of language and in theoretical computer science. Leitgeb is currently working on a monograph devoted to Rudolf Carnap’s “The Logical Structure of the World”. He hopes to give this classic text a new lease of life by highlighting the relevance of Carnap’s insights for modern scientific research. One of the aims of this latest endeavour is to discover how to transform theoretical scientific models into propositions framed in terms of our immediate sensory perceptions. To this end, Leitgeb is developing a theory of probability that permits valid inferences about systems which are themselves capable of generating statements about their own probability. Hannes Leitg...

Museums stage objects as testimonies of specific narratives. How do these museum things articulate the global order and supplant alternative narratives? What meanings do they adopt in the context of the dynamics of globalization and decolonization? At one of the last events at the Dahlem location of the Ethnologische Museum, Arjun Appadurai, Tony Bennett and Sharon Macdonald will explore the “thing”: its subtexts, its tenacity and its political dimension. Using selected objects from the collections, three experts probe the narrative styles of “things.” Arjun Appadurai, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, examines the migration of things and asks how they become legible as bearers of aesthetic knowledge. Tony Bennett, Research Professor in Social and Cultural Theory at Western Sydney University, presents the evolution of seeing in museums and the fixation on the viewer's perspective. The cultural anthropologist Sharon Macdonald, Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt-Universität, combines the two theoretical approaches with the latest developments in Berlin's museum landscape. How do things become signifiers in the museum space? How do societies handle problematic aspects of cultural heritage? What processes of learning and unlearning are necessary in order to decipher hegemonic narratives and geopolitics?

Stephan Hartmann is regarded as one of the leading scholars in the fields of formal epistemology and philosophy of science, and he became a member of the Faculty of Philosophy at LMU last October. Later today (8 May, 2013), at a ceremony in Berlin, Hartmann will officially receive Germany’s most generously endowed prize for distinguished contributions to research, the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship, that brought him back to the land of his birth. Hartmann now holds the Chair of Philosophy of Science at LMU‘s Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP) and, together with his colleague Hannes Leitgeb, who occupies the Chair of Logic and Philosophy of Language and also holds a Humboldt Professorship, he is actively engaged in extending the interdisciplinary reach of his subject in often surprising directions. The basic goal of the MCMP is to apply advanced mathematical methods to a range of complex philosophical problems. Born in 1968, Hartmann studied Philosophy and Physics, and has held professorships at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and, prior to his move to LMU, at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, where he served as Founding Director of the Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science. Hartmann is the fourth Humboldt Professor at LMU. The honor had previously been accorded to systems biologist Ulrike Gaul, astrophysicist Georgi Dvali and Hannes Leitgeb. The prestigious awards, administered by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and financed by the Federal Ministry for Research, are intended to enable internationally recognized scholars and scientists to carry out long-term, groundbreaking projects at research institutions and universities in Germany. (LMU press release, Munich, 8 May 2013)