The Department of Digital Design and Information Studies is one of the strongest academic IT environments in Europe and attracts visiting scholars and PhD students from all over the world. We focus on information technology as a feature of people’s everyday lives and futures. As a result, we have a strong connection between theory and practice and play a role in a great number of national and international collaborations.
The department is structured around three research units: Science and Technology Studies, Interactive Design, and Digital Aesthetics and Culture. These are cross-disciplinary fields involving research in organisations, communication, IT, design, society and technology; with research topics covering areas such as health IT, interaction processes, systems development, interface culture, surveillance, IT in urban spaces, and IT and business.
Our degree programmes in digital design and information studies are deeply anchored in research in the department, and enthusiastic students have the opportunity of getting involved in research projects and student jobs. Our degree programmes are based at Katrinebjerg and form part of a wider, dynamic IT community with neighbours such as Google and B&O.
You can learn more about the content of our degree programmes in the study guide.
Digital Design
Information Studies
You can also visit the study portal for enrolled students
1975-1985-1995-2005 — the decennial Aarhus conferences have traditionally been instrumental for setting new agendas for critically engaged thinking about information technology. The fifth decennial Aarhus conference, Critical Alternatives, aims to set new agendas for theory and practice in computing for quality of human life.
The conference series is fundamentally interdisciplinary and emphasizes thinking that is firmly anchored in action, intervention, and scholarly critical practice. With the title Critical Computing – between sense and sensibility, the 2005 edition of the conference marked that computing was rapidly seeping into everyday life. In 2015, we see critical alternatives in alignment with utopian principles—that is, the hope that things might not only be different but also radically better. At the same time, radically better alternatives don’t emerge out of nowhere: they emerged from contested analyses of the mundane present and demand both commitment and labor to work towards them. Critical alternatives matter and make people reflect.
APRJA is an open-access research journal that addresses the ever-shifting thematic frameworks of digital culture. APRJA stands for “A Peer-Reviewed Journal About” and invites the addition of a research topic to address what is considered to be key aspects of contemporary digital art and culture.
Read the New issue: Datafied Research Volume 4, Issue 1, 2015.
At the Department of Digital Design and Information Studies we help our students to meet the business community and find out what it’s like to be an entrepreneur.
For instance, once a year our students are challenged to compose a design that solves a social problem. During this process they gain contact with interest groups, have prototypes developed at design companies, and test the resulting products on a test panel. Finally, they present their designs at a trade fair which is evaluated by experts in entrepreneurship.
Read more about the latest trade fair: Design Expo 2015 (in Danish only)
Researchers at the Department of Digital Design and Information Studies work on the interaction between people and IT, which is why they have been included in Aarhus University’s new focus area: an interdisciplinary telemedicine research network. The main idea of the network is that it should be open and inclusive to ensure that everyone with an interest in telemedicinal solutions can take part – including not only people at Aarhus University, but also companies and other external stakeholders.
The researchers at the Department of Digital Design and Information Studies are often involved in external collaboration. For instance, they added an interactive dimension to Moesgaard Museum’s exhibition about the terracotta warriors.
To illustrate the fact that the terracotta warriors of emperor Qin Shi Huangdi’s tomb were all painted, CAVI in collaboration with Moesgaard Museum made an interactive part of the temporary exhibition, “The First Emperor – China’s Terracotta Army”, which ran April 1 - September 30, 2015.
Read more about the exhibition and what the researchers have done.
