Programme

Soon available!

The Digital Humanism Conference takes place from 24 to 26 June 2026 in Vienna. On the evening of Wednesday, 24 June, we’re opening the conference with a screening of Valerie Veatch’s documentary Ghost in the Machine (2026) at Gartenbaukino. The two main conference days follow on 25 and 26 June at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Additional side events will take place throughout the week.

Please note that some content and timings are still subject to change.

Tuesday, 23 June

Side events

Wednesday, 24 June

Opening and film screening

Valerie Veatch: Ghost in the Machine (2026)

Thursday, 25 June

1^st conference day

The future of intelligence

Rumman Chowdhury

Founder of Humane Intelligence

Orientation in turbulent times

Katja Mayer

Senior Scientist at the Centre for Social Innovation ZSI

Erich Prem

Chief RTI Strategy Advisor and CEO of eutema GmbH

Coffee

Digital Humanism and the human mind

Chair:

Eva Wittenberg

Director of the Language Comprehension Lab at Central European University

Stefan Woltran

Chair of the steering committee of the Digital Humanism Initiative (dighum.org)

Rumman Chowdhury

Founder of Humane Intelligence

Tim Crane

Professor of Philosophy at the Central European University (CEU)

Stefan Szeider

Professor at the Faculty of Informatics at TU Wien

Digital labour

Wolfie Christl

Executive Director and Research Lead at Cracked Labs

Adio-Adet Dinika

Political Scientist and AI Governance Researcher, Research Fellow at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)

Camilla Salim Wagner

Research intern at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)

Good digital investment

A framework for guiding investments in Digital Humanism

Chair:

Erich Prem

Chief RTI Strategy Advisor and CEO of eutema GmbH

Georg Krause

CEO of msg Plaut

Art Min

Director of Engineering at Waymo

Barbara Prainsack

Professor at the University of Vienna and Co-Director of the Vienna Centre for Advanced Studies

Raúl Tabarés

Senior Researcher at TECNALIA

Lunch

Coffee

Economies of AI

Where is the value?

Cecilia Rikap

Associate Professor in Economics and the Head of Research at University College London (UCL)

The AI web

Moshe Y. Vardi

University Professor and the George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice University

Hannes Werthner

Former Dean of Informatics at TU Wien, initiator of the Digital Humanism Initiative at TU Wien and the Manifest

Social media regulation

Thomas Lohninger

Executive Director at epicenter.works

Oliver Scheibenbogen

Head of the Department of Creativity and Life Design at Anton Proksch Institut

Judith Simon

Professor of Ethics in Information Technology at the University of Hamburg

Laura Wiesböck

Head of the junior research group Digitalization and Social Transformation at IHS

Digital democracy and freedom of speech

Platforms, power, and the future of democratic debate

Chair:

Matthias Pfeffer

Founding Director at the Council for European Public Space

Julia Haas

Adviser to the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media

David Passarelli

Director of UN University’s Center for Policy Research

Clemens Pig

Chief Executive Officer at APA

Geopolitics of AI

Chair:

George Metakides

Honorary President of the Digital Enlightenment Forum

Joanna J. Bryson

Professor of Ethics and Technology at Hertie School

Dario Guarascio

Associate Professor of Economic Policy at the Sapienza University of Rome

Francis Saa-Dittoh

Computer Scientist and ICT4D Researcher at the University for Development Studies

Social digital innovation

Chair:

Astrid Mager

Senior Academy Scientist at the Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW)

Payal Arora

Professor at Utrecht University and Founder of Inclusive AI Lab

Juliane Jarke

Professor of Digital Societies at the University of Graz

Gilberto Vieira

Researcher at PUCPR and Co-Founder of data_labe

Towards a Digital Humanism industry

How to cooperate productively

Chair:

Peter Biegelbauer

Head of AIT AI Ethics Lab and Deputy Head AIT AI Taskforce

Cornelia Reiter

Scientist at the Center for Innovation Systems and Policy at the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT)

Björn Fanta

Managing Director at Fabasoft Research

Marie-Louise Lackner

PostDoc Researcher at the research Unit Databases and Artificial Intelligence at TU Wien

Mathias Nöbauer

CEO of Exoscale

Rania Wazir

Co-founder and CTO of leiwand.ai

Friday, 26 June

2^nd conference day

Digital security in turbulent times

Bruce Schneier

Security Technologist, Author and Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt

Coffee

Digital sovereignty in practice

Learning from those who build, implement and maintain it

Chair:

Misha Glenny

Journalist, Presenter of In Our Time at BBC radio 4, former Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM)

Nicole Beckendorf

Head of Open Source Program Office Schleswig-Holstein

Cristina Caffarra

Founder and Chair, EuroStack Initiative Foundation

Nicolas Stocker

The Austrian Armed Forces

Paul Timmers

Professor at KU Leuven and European University Cyprus

Measuring Digital Humanism

Designing indicators for Digital Humanism

Chair:

Erich Prem

Chief RTI Strategy Advisor and CEO of eutema GmbH

Ferdinand Ferroli

Director of Policy & Research at IDENTITY Valley

Sophie Woodville

Digital Program Manager at Bordeaux Metropole

Urban digital participation

Chair:

Katja Bühler

Scientific Director, Head of Biomedical Image Informatics Group at VRVis

Jan Maly

Assistant Professor at the Institute for Data, Process, and Knowledge Management at WU Wien

Elisabeth Unterfrauner

Scientific Director of the Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI)

Milena Vuckovic

Head of Participatory Visual Systems at VRVis

Alexander Wrabetz

AI Commissioner for Media at the City of Vienna, former Director-General at ORF

Lunch

Responsible AI science

Chair:

Christoph Bock

Principal Investigator & Head of the Biomedical Sequencing Facility at CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine

Agata Ciabattoni

Full Professor at TU Wien Informatics

Brigitte Krenn

Deputy Director of the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OFAI)

Karl Kugler

Head of AI Factory Austria (AI:AT)

Karin Tausz

Managing Director of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG

Empowering public institutions

Klemens Himpele

CIO of the City of Vienna

Beth Simone Noveck

Professor and Director at the Burnes Center for Social Change and TheGovLab at Northeastern University

Ursula Rosenbichler

Head of the Austrian School of Government (ASG)

Mirko Tobias Schäfer

Co-founder and the Sciences Lead of the Data School at Utrecht University

On Personal Power

Chair:

Alexander Schmölz

Professor of Digital Humanism at the University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna and Managing Director of the Austrian Institute for Vocational Training Research