On Thursday, 11 December 2025, the event “Reading Artists’ Books: Problems for Computers” will take place (1:30–5:00 pm, Witten/Herdecke University and via Zoom). The fourth edition of the series “Reading Artists’ Books” presents publications that, since the 1960s, have critically reflected on computational thinking—that is, ways of thinking shaped by computer-based and algorithmic processes—or that have relied on computer technologies in their making. The program brings together artists, theorists, publishers, and curators who will introduce selected publications in short presentations. The event is a cooperation of the Chair for Digital Arts and Cultural Communication at the WittenLab.Future Laboratory Studium Fundamentale at the University of Witten/Herdecke, the Office & Network for Media Art and Digital Culture medienwerk.nrw and the Centre for Advanced Study “Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change”.

On Monday, 1 December 2025, 4:15–6:30 pm, Dr. Pavel Zahrádka (Olomouc/ Czech Republic) will give his Fellow Lecture on the topic of “Philosophie des Urheberrechts und das Problem der Sperrung des grenzüberschreitenden Zugangs zu Filmwerken” (Philosophy of Copyright and the Problem of Blocking Cross-Border Access to Film Works) (venue: Room 201, Philosophikum, Domplatz 23, 48143 Münster). The lecture will address the philosophical and legal foundations of copyright and their implications for the issue of geographical blocking of online access to film works. Zahrádka will argue that restrictions lose their legitimacy when they neither protect the actual exercise of copyright nor are effective after a certain period of time. The lecture therefore proposes that copyright should be understood not only as protection for the author, but also as an obligation to treat cultural content responsibly in the interests of society.

On Monday, 17 November 2025, 4.15–6.30 pm,  Dr. Stefan Heßbrüggen-Walter (Münster) will give a guest lecture on the topic of “Metadaten, ‚forschende Erschließung‘ und die Konstitution kultureller Gegenstände” (“Metadata, ‘research-based indexing’ and the constitution of cultural objects”) (venue: Room 201, Philosophikum, Domplatz 23, 48143 Münster): Access to cultural goods has always been facilitated by indexing: exhibit labels in museums, catalogue cards in libraries, finding aids in archives. When cultural goods become data, they must also be indexed, in this case through ‘data about data’: metadata. The value of collection portals or digital libraries is largely determined by the quality of this metadata. What cannot be found cannot be received. However, metadata is also itself the subject of research in the digital humanities, and its analysis becomes part of ‘research-based indexing’ (Lina Franken). The lecture explores this interrelationship using three short case studies between art and science, museums and libraries. The aim is to show that metadata constitutes cultural artefacts in the digital space.

On Monday, 3 November 2025, 4:15–6:30 pm, Prof. Dr. Siegfried Saerberg will give his Fellow Lecture on the topic of “Der behinderte Zugang zu Kultur – Über Barrierefreiheit und mehr” (“Impaired Access to Culture – On Accessibility and Beyond”) (venue: Room 201, Philosophikum, Domplatz 23, 48143 Münster). Against the backdrop of the still inadequate implementation of inclusion and participation in the museum context – a context that often embodies the idea of ableism by presuming a ‘normal’ body – on some of the exhibitions and projects he has curated and that sought to link quasi-technical aspects of barrier-free design to valuable moments of participation by potential and actual groups of actors. Finally, he attempts to imagine a digital heterotopia in Foucault's sense, in which access as a common cultural asset takes place in a multifaceted process of translation. Can digitalisation lead to a transformation of long-established bodily and mental practices, or does ableism merely duplicate itself digitally?

On Monday, 20 October 2025, Prof. Dr. Keisuke Takayasu (Osaka/Japan) gave his Fellow Lecture on the topic “How Nonprofits Are Using NFTs to Foster Cultural Democracy”. In his lecture, he discussed how non fungible tokens (NFTs) can create new spaces for minority self-expression and acting as platforms of recognition that bridge communities both within and beyond those directly involved. Drawing on examples from nonprofit initiatives in Japan, the lecture explored how cultural democracy can be advanced through the expansion of cultural participation via digital technologies, and considered the potential of NFTs to contribute to a form of digital welfare.

On 19 October 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study welcomed Prof. Dr. Keisuke Takayasu as new Senior Fellow. Keisuke Takayasu is a professor of aesthetics at the Graduate School of Humanities at Osaka University (Japan), specialising in aesthetic and ethical issues in various fields of design, from architecture to visual communication. One of his research areas is ‘social’ design with the aim of redefining design history while capturing the transformations in contemporary design practice.

On 1 October 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study welcomed Prof. Dr. Annette Gilbert as a new Senior Fellow. Annette Gilbert is Academic Director at the Department of German and Comparative Literature at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. She is particularly interested in the mediality and materiality of literature, as well as its social and (infra)structural conditions. The focus is on avant-garde and experimental literature and art.

On 1 October 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study welcomed Dr. Hauke Behrendt. He is a lecturer (Akademischer Rat a. Z.) at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Stuttgart. His research focuses on applied ethics – in particular the ethics of digitalisation, medical ethics and diversity studies – as well as social and political philosophy. In this area, he works primarily on issues of inclusion and participation, discrimination and social justice.
 

On 1 October 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study welcomed Prof. Dr. Siegfried Saerberg as new Senior Fellow. He held the Chair of Disability Studies at the Evangelische Hochschule für Soziale Arbeit und Diakonie Rauhes Haus in Hamburg from February 2020 to September 2025. There he led the “Schattenbericht Hamburg” (Shadow Report Hamburg) project, an evaluation of the state action plan for the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. His research focuses on disability studies, participation and inclusion research, disability arts, sensory ethnography, and digitality and disability. Since 2017, he has been a member of the board of the Disability Studies in Deutschland e. V. association.

 

Since 1 October 2025, Prof. Dr. Arto K. Haapala has been a guest of the Centre for Advanced Study as an alumnus of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Helsinki (Finland) and President of the board of the International Institute of Applied Aesthetics based in Lahti and in Helsinki. Haapalas research topics include philosophy of literature, Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, environmental aesthetics, especially aesthetics of urban environments, and everyday aesthetics. His current research focuses on everyday urban aesthetics, taking inspiration from some of Heidegger’s concepts and ideas put forward in Sein und Zeit.

From 3 July to 5 September 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study presented the exhibition “case study #2: Re:Set: From Slide to Database – Media Change in Art History” – an exhibition by students of the Institute of Art History. It took media change in art history as its starting point to illuminate the historical, aesthetic, and epistemological dimensions of art-historical image practices. Among other things, poster presentations and an installation by artist Dr. Philipp Goldbach featuring historical glass slides were on display. On 27 August 2025, Georg Imdahl reported on the exhibition in the arts section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung under the headline “Glass behind glass – students in Münster exhibit the tools that art historians used to learn to see”.

On 25 August 2025, the book “Every Monument Will Fall: A Story of Remembering and Forgetting” was published. In it, Dan Hicks, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oxford and Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, takes a critical look at the origins of contemporary conflicts surrounding art, cultural heritage, memory and colonialism. On 4 September 2025, he presented some of the book’s main themes in his keynote lecture “Militarist Realism: Some Thoughts on Copies, Colonial Legacies, and Cultural Restitution” as part of the Centre for Advanced Study's workshop “Digital Restitution: Bridging Access, Conservation, and Ethical Challenges”. “Every Monument Will Fall” joins the dots between the building of statues, the founding of disciplines like archaeology and anthropology, and the acquisition of stolen art and ancestral human remains. The work traces a line from British country houses to Caribbean plantations and from the battlefields of the Crimean War to British colonial outposts in Ireland. Through the analysis of cultures of memory and historiography, a picture emerges of inheritance, loss, collective mourning, and the possibility of a reconciliation. The book calls for the fragments of history to be reassembled and to value life and humanity above material things – and to rebuild a new kind of memory culture.

From 3 to 5 September 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study held a workshop entitled “Digital Restitution: Bridging Access, Conservation, and Ethical Challenges.” The workshop engaged in rethinking restitution in the digital age—where heritage, ethics, technology, and sustainability converge to shape the future of cultural preservation. It brought together scholars, museum professionals, heritage practitioners, and digital technologists to participate in this interdisciplinary discourse on digital heritage preservation and the ethical dimensions of cultural digitization in the field of restitution policies.

Prof. Dr. Ossi Naukkarinen has been the new vice rector for research at the University of the Arts (Uniarts) Helsinki (Finland) since 1 September 2025. He was vice rector for research in 2018–2023 and the vice dean for the School of Arts, Design and Architecture in 2012–2018, both at Aalto University Helsinki. In his own research, Ossi Naukkarinen specializes in questions of everyday aesthetics, environmental aesthetics and the nature of aesthetics as an academic discipline. He has also written about visual arts, artification and aesthetic footprints. Currently, he is interested in the possibilities offered by digital humanities.