The initiative is inspired by Minisjangs kæmpestore sprogkasse (Minisjang's Giant Language Toolkit), which was co-developed by Dorthe Bleses, Professor of Linguistics at the School of Communication and Culture and TrygFonden's Centre for Child Research.

The language toolkit is a physical box filled with language-learning materials from DR's Minisjang universe. It has been distributed to all daycare centres in Denmark to support and strengthen their work with young children's language development.

Dorthe Bleses says that far too many children start school without the language skills they need to thrive and learn.

- Against this backdrop, it is particularly encouraging to see an investment that so strongly supports and strengthens the content of the Minisjang language toolkits. The new books and the language toolkits create a strong synergy that, together, strengthens children's language skills. While the books introduce new stories, imagination and a rich vocabulary into daycare settings, the language toolkit provides concrete educational tools that help bring the stories to life at the children's level, she says.

Research by Dorthe Bleses shows that when early childhood educators are given the right tools and a clear, systematic approach, language-based conversations and interactions increase significantly.

- And this has a real impact on children's development. Frequent and meaningful conversations at the children's level are what really make a difference to their vocabulary and well-being, says Dorthe Bleses.

Facts

Read more about Minisjang's Giant Language Toolkit

The language toolkit is developed in collaboration with TrygFonden's Centre for Child Research (TrygFondens Børneforskningscenter), Danish public libraries and DR.

Contact

Dorthe Bleses
Professor of Linguistics
School of Communication and Culture and TrygFondens Børneforskningscenter
Mail: Bleses@cc.au
Phone: 93508354

The project, The Digital Product Passport: From End-User Perspectives to Competitive Advantage, has received funding from AU Connect+, a programme that supports researchers at Aarhus University in expanding collaborations with private and public-sector partners. The project brings together researchers, the consultancy IMPACT Commerce A/S, business clusters and several companies that are already developing Digital Product Passport pilot projects.

The first phase of the project used qualitative methods to investigate how consumers interact with Digital Product Passports, for example when purchasing a pair of shoes. The newly funded second phase will take a broader, data-driven approach.

The research team will build a comprehensive database of European companies that have already begun implementing Digital Product Passports.

- We will carry out a systematic mapping of user interfaces to examine the types of information companies include in their Digital Product Passports and how they present it, says Jonas Frich. 

- This will provide valuable inspiration for companies that are about to develop their own solutions. It could involve a QR code or an NFC chip that directs consumers to a mobile-friendly website containing information about the product, he says.

Supporting more sustainable choices

The database will allow the researchers to document emerging industry practices and identify current design trends. In doing so, the project aims to provide knowledge that can help shape the future design of Digital Product Passports across Europe.

Jonas Frich hopes that companies will view the Digital Product Passport as more than a regulatory obligation.

- The final legislation has not yet been completed, so it will be interesting to see how the Digital Product Passport develops. It is important that it creates value for businesses as well as for consumers. We need user interfaces that are intuitive and accessible, so they can support people in making more sustainable choices, he says.

The project has received DKK 249,000 from AU Connect+ and will run until June 2027.

AU Connect+ is available only to researchers who have previously received funding from AU Connect to establish a collaboration and are now seeking to continue and further develop it.

Facts: The Digital Product Passport

• The Digital Product Passport (DPP) is a digital record containing information about a product, such as its origin, materials, manufacturing process, environmental footprint, repair options and user instructions.
• The DPP is a key element of the EU's efforts to promote a circular economy by ensuring that products are designed and manufactured with their entire life cycle in mind.
• The EU's technical standards for the Digital Product Passport are expected to be adopted in 2026.
• Product-specific DPP requirements are expected to be introduced gradually from 2027 across a range of sectors through to 2030. 

Read more about the first phase of the Digital Product Passport project.

 Contact

Jonas Frich
Associate Professor at the Department of Digital Design and Information Studies
School of Communication and Culture
Aarhus University
Email: frich@cc.au.dk

The project will develop methods and practical tools to help schools and libraries create reading activities and partnerships designed in collaboration with children themselves. By involving children in shaping literary experiences, the researchers aim to ensure that activities reflect children's own perspectives, interests and wishes.

- We hope that both children and adults will gain new ways of engaging in conversations across generations and professional boundaries. In doing so, the project may also help strengthen childrens opportunities to move out of vulnerable positions, says Nina Christensen.

Pilot project points to stronger social connections

The research team has previously collaborated on the pilot project Small Voices Great Stories, which provided encouraging indications that reading communities can make a meaningful difference.

- Our pilot project showed that children in vulnerable situations benefit from coming together around stories. We saw signs that shared activities such as reading, writing and drawing stories strengthened both their social relationships and their sense of agency, says Nina Christensen.

The pilot project also suggested that the library can provide a valuable space between school and home where these communities can flourish.

- The library offers an 'in-between space' that combines freedom with a shared creative purpose built around reading, writing and drawing. This creates unique opportunities for children to choose to participate in a community. Together with the children, researchers and practitioners will explore more closely what these activities make possible, she says.

Supporting participation and inclusion

The project addresses a broader societal challenge: around one in five children leave school without functional reading skills, increasing their risk of exclusion from both social communities and democratic participation.

- We hope that the children who take part in the project will experience becoming part of supportive communities that strengthen their opportunities for participationnot only in reading activities, but more broadly in social life, says Nina Christensen.

The project is funded through the VELUX FONDENs HUMpraxis programme, which supports collaborations between research and professional practice.

Read more:

Shared Stories builds on the pilot project Small Voices Great Stories

The project is also discussed in the anthology Alliances: Children, Adults, Literature and Media, edited by Nina Christensen and Ayoe Quist Henkel. The volume includes contributions on the pilot project, including articles on reading culture and co-creation between authors, illustrators and children in library settings.

Contact

Nina Christensen
Professor of children's literature
Department of Comparative Literature and Rhetoric
School of Communication and Culture
Aarhus University
Phone: +45 21 65 38 59
Email: nc@cc.au.dk

The African continent is becoming an increasingly important geopolitical partner for Europe. This also has implications for universities, as many of the global challenges addressed through research require close collaboration with researchers across the continent. This includes areas such as climate change, food security and sustainable development.

AI and hydroponic growing tents

For almost ten years, Rachel Charlotte Smith has collaborated with the Namibia University of Science and Technology. Together, they explore alternative approaches to researching and designing new technologies with local communities in ways that are meaningful and relevant to the people who will use them.

"We should not come in and tell people in the Global South how they should use AI and digital technologies. We need more voices involved in shaping technology and in understanding what these technologies mean for the people who use them," says Rachel Charlotte Smith.

In the research project Participatory AI for Alternative Sustainable Futures, Smith works with researchers, students and local communities to explore how small-scale AI systems connected to specially designed hydroponic growing tents can support food production in places where water, electricity and food resources are scarce.

 The hydroponic tents, developed by researchers at Varsity College Durban in South Africa, make it possible to grow crops without soil and using only small amounts of water. Combined with small AI systems and automated technologies that regulate nutrients, air and water, the tents create favourable growing conditions for crops, enabling communities to produce food for both people and livestock despite increasingly extreme weather conditions.

"Together with rural communities in Namibia, we are exploring how these tents can become part of everyday life in environments characterised by intense sunlight, prolonged drought and limited access to electricity. We are investigating how knowledge of the technology, crop cultivation and the local socio-cultural context together shape the potential of these technologies in different settings," says Rachel Charlotte Smith.

The project also points towards a broader vision for the future.

"Our collaboration has shown that adapting digital technologies to local needs is a sustainable path forward. That is why we need to continue developing alternatives to one-size-fits-all Big Tech solutions," she says.

Expanding collaboration with African partners

The Africa Collaboration conference is an AU initiative organised by the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS) and the Faculty of Arts.

According to Søren Michael Sindbæk, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Africa has become an increasingly important partner for universities.

"When we reviewed AU's international collaborations last year, it was striking to see how many partnerships with African universities have emerged across all faculties. Many of these collaborations are still relatively new, and there is a clear need to bring people together to exchange experiences. By coordinating and highlighting these activities across the university, we hope to strengthen the new opportunities they create for research, education and innovation," he says.

Read more about the Africa Collaboration conference

The Namibia University of Science and Technology hosts the UNESCO Chair in Digital Technology Design with Indigenous People. Learn more about Rachel Charlotte Smith's collaboration with a chief from an Indigenous Namibian community.

Aarhus University is a member of the Africa-Europe Clusters of Research Excellence, a network that brings together African and European universities to foster long-term research partnerships and shared knowledge development. 

Contact 

Rachel Charlotte Smith
Associate Professor
Department of Digital Design and Information Studies
School of Communication and Culture
Aarhus University
Phone: +45 26 17 18 40
Email:rsmith@cc.au.dk

"Ive loved punk music and punk fashion since I was a teenager. I was born in 1980, and those formative years between the ages of around 13 and 18 were shaped by grunge and the Riot Grrrl movement. That was my gateway into punk. When I was 19, I moved to Berlin, where I studied art history at Freie Universität. There, I began to notice how much Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus, and punk had in common. That observation eventually became the subject of my PhD, which was later published as the book Punk Art History (Intellect Books, UK)."

What is your postdoctoral research project about?

"In short, its about the body in punk. The project builds on and expands one of the key themes from my PhD. I wanted to explore the connections between punk as a form of youth rebellion and as an underground art movement, and to examine how resistance is embodied. The project focuses on punk in the 1970s and 1980s, when punks appearance and physical expression genuinely shocked mainstream society. From an art historical perspective, I was interested both in the movements physical, material, and aesthetic forms of expression, and in analysing how they relate to earlier avant-garde movements."

How has your research informed your work as curator of the exhibition?

"Above all, the postdoctoral framework gave me something that curators rarely have: time. I had the opportunity to spend extensive periods conducting research and working in archives. Thats how, for example, I discovered the filmUNDERDOGS, which is featured in the exhibition. It documents the bands Sods and Billedstofteatret in 1980 and had been preserved on 16mm film in cold storage at the Danish Film Institute, unseen for decades. Even the filmmakers themselves believed it had been lost. The exhibition catalogue, which includes nine essays by international scholars as well as two interviews, also reflects the benefit of having had the time to develop it thoroughly. Id also like to mention that this autumn we will be hosting a symposium in connection with the exhibition. Its called Noise & Vision, and the call for papers is currently open."

What has it been like to curate the exhibition, and is this your first experience as a curator?

"Ive worked with exhibitions for many years. While I was a student, I worked as a student assistant at Gropius Bau. Ive curated numerous smaller exhibitions, and for a period I co-ran an independent exhibition space in Berlin together with my friend Valeska Hageney. Over the past four years, Ive worked as a research associate at the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin, where I curated an exhibition on avant-garde knitwear designer Claudia Skoda and the West Berlin subculture from the 1970s and 1980s. If, as with Ulydig, I have the opportunity to combine research and curating, thats what I enjoy most."

The exhibition "Ulydig Kroppen i punk" is on view from 27 June to 13 December 2026.

Read more about the exhibition here.

The three-year research project is funded by the New Carlsberg Foundation.

Contact

Marie Arleth Skov
Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Art History, Aesthetics & Culture and Museology
School of Communication and Culture
Aarhus University
Phone: +45 61904857
Email: mask@aros.dk

A few weeks ago, I attended Folkemødet on the island of Bornholm. The sun was shining, the town was buzzing with debates, music, conversations and, of course, plenty of coffee and beer. Most importantly, it was full of people meeting other people.

On the long ferry ride home, I found myself reflecting on what had stayed with me. What had really made an impression.

This year, we brought a group of our students with us. On the final day, we asked them what they had found most inspiring, provocative or memorable.

One student mentioned a conversation about formative reading, where audience members shared stories about the books that had shaped who they had become. Another said that the most interesting moments were those where they encountered viewpoints completely different from their own while the least interesting were the panels where everyone already agreed. A third reflected that the best conversations were those held with people rather than about people.

Their reflections captured something fundamental about the work we do every day.

Another thing struck me during the festival. Across the many debates I attended, one recurring theme emerged: while regulation, policy and technology all matter, they are rarely enough on their own. Again and again, the conversations returned to something more fundamental: trust, community and human relationships.

A debate on AI and misinformation was not only about technology or regulation. It was also about trust how we know what to believe, who is speaking, and how information is produced.

A discussion about restricting screen time at Danish boarding schools was not simply about rules. It was about young people's everyday lives: about sleep, belonging, participation and creating environments where students feel both respected and included. The students themselves took part in the debate some confidently, others more hesitantly but all of them were listened to.

In another panel, the topic was dementia. Naturally, the discussion covered healthcare and care systems, but it also centred on dignity, empathy and what it means to meet one another as fellow human beings.

A moving quote from Majse Njord's podcast described how living with dementia might feel:

"Sometimes I think living with dementia must be like being very drunk all the time unable to remember or even find your keys. That must be deeply uncomfortable. It is we who need to change, because asking people with dementia to be different is like asking someone with two broken legs to simply get up and walk."

During the session, a local dementia choir joined us, and together we sang. Afterwards, members of the choir shared that they had rarely felt so seen, heard and included.

That moment stayed with me.

On the ferry home, I realised that while structures, policies and regulation are part of the answer to many of society's challenges, they are rarely the whole answer.

The stronger answer is our ability to build and sustain communities.

Communities strengthened by trustworthy journalism and equal access to knowledge. Communities where young people experience that their voices matter and that they can influence the world around them. Communities created through shared cultural experiences, like the moving moments we experienced through music that afternoon.

In many ways, this brought me back to what our students had reflected on.

The formative power of art, stories and culture.

Our ability to disagree constructively.

Our ability to speak with people rather than about them.

To me, these ideas capture the very essence of what we do at the School of Communication and Culture.

The questions we work with every day culture, language, media, technology, democracy, health, wellbeing and education are never only about systems, concepts or policies.

They are about people.

Your work matters. Not only to our School or to Aarhus University, but because the knowledge you create, the perspectives you offer and the graduates you educate make a genuine difference to society.

As we celebrate another academic year together, I hope you will enjoy each other's company this evening. We have tried to create an occasion where you can reconnect, challenge one another and simply enjoy being together.

And after tonight, I hope you all have the opportunity to spend time with the communities that matter most outside the university: your families, your friends and the people you care about.

Thank you for everything you have contributed this year.

Have a wonderful celebration, and I wish you all a very happy and restful summer. Cheers. 

On its website, SMiD writes the following about the motivation behind awarding the prize to Stine Liv Johansen:

Stines research demonstrates how digital platforms cannot simply be reduced to screen time, but must instead be understood as an integrated part of childrens and young peoples everyday lives, communities, learning, and participation. Over many years, she has contributed empirically grounded perspectives on how children and young people actively engage with media and how digital technologies can also create opportunities for participation for groups that are often marginalised.

Commenting on the award, Stine Liv Johansen says:

SMiDs Innovation Award is a peer-recognised award, and I am incredibly honoured and delighted to be part of a collegial community among Denmarks media and communication researchers. Moreover, it is a community that dares to say out loud that we support one another and stand by the importance of insisting on one of the cornerstones of Danish media research namely the perspectives of media users even when public debate becomes highly charged.

Read more about the background to the award here:
SMiD announcement

Contact

Stine Liv Johansen
Associate Professor, Childrens Literature
Department of Communication and Culture
Aarhus Universitet
Phone: +45 8716 2029
Email: stineliv@cc.au.dk

Fukuyama: Well, I think the United States had created a liberal world order after 1945 that involved free trade alliances like the NATO alliance, general rules about freedom of navigation, wanting an open economic order and a democratic political order around the world. And the United States is just under Donald Trump not interested in any of those things. It's turned protectionist. I think it is on its way to pulling out of NATO. And in general, it doesn't support global democracy. In fact, Trump has been eager to make friends with the world's autocrats like Putin and Xi Jinping. So, I think that's the major disturbance in world order that's occurred. And because of the role that the United States played previously, it's going to affect very many other countries.

What challenges does this pose for future generations?

Fukuyama: The obvious challenge for Europe is to somehow compensate for the loss of American support. I mean, I don't know that it's going to be permanently gone, but I don't think that it's wise for any European leader to assume that the United States is going to come to its assistance if it's attacked by Russia or, you know, their security, you know, threats coming from whatever source. So, that means that Europeans are going to have to be much more self-reliant.

In the same speech, you also mentioned how a liberal democracy and the ability to make political choices is a gift that needs to be nurtured and developed by every citizen. What role does humanities play in this regard on a societal level, if any?

Fukuyama: I think that people that live in a democracy need to understand a little bit about the theory behind democracy. You know, why popular choices is legitimate, why limited government is effective government. These are all things that, you know, come out of certain theories about how societies work. And I think that if you don't understand the, you know, the way in which these institutions develop, you're not going to appreciate them. And therefore, you're not going to act to protect them.

Thomsen: Some of the great dystopian novels of the twentieth century clearly show how independent thinking and the reading of books are among the first things to be suppressed. In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, people read William Shakespeare outside the boundaries of a tightly controlled society. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell imagines a world where language is manipulated to make free thought impossible, while in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, books are burned altogether. Across these stories, the ability to think critically and independently grounded in an understanding of history is portrayed as a fundamental value under attack. And that threat is not confined to fiction - in many parts of the world today, books are still being censored

Can you give an example of a piece of art or culture that in your opinion or perhaps from your personal experience cultivates you? 

Fukuyama: I think that the Federalist Papers that were written at the time of the ratification of the American Constitution are really basic treatises on how democratic government is supposed to work that define things like the separation of powers and the nature of a kind of regime that's characterized by the constitutional checks and balances. And I think if you appreciate those papers, you will understand, you know, the way that American government is supposed to work.

Thomsen: Historical novels are fascinating in the way they imagine social change and possible futures. Take Lykke-per by Henrik Pontoppidan, published in 1904. The novel explores power structures in society, ambitious attempts to reshape the landscape on a scale not entirely unlike todays Green Tripartite Agreement and even technological visions of travelling across the Atlantic in six hours or speaking to someone in China as if they were standing right beside you. It also raises the question of whether we have lost the capacity for utopian thinking. Perhaps the best future we can imagine today is simply one in which we avoid catastrophe as in The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Technological development and change in regards to AI are projected to change if it is not happening already, our labor market and society fundamentally. What challenges does this outlay for our democratic institutions?

Fukuyama: Well, I think the greatest fear is one of inequality, that AI is going to increase the gap between the winners and losers, you know, so a small number of people will become fabulously rich and other people may actually lose their livelihoods because they're being replaced by a machine. And that fear, I think, on an international level also, where countries that are at the forefront of AI will become much more powerful than countries that don't have it. I think what we have to do is, you know, wait and observe the effects that it has. You know, it's widely expected to eliminate a lot of service sector jobs and we need to see whether that's true or whether actually it complements the activities that people are already doing and in many ways makes them better off. We simply don't know.

Thomsen: Ideally, artificial intelligence should make it easier for people to educate themselves and take part more meaningfully in democratic debate. But judging from our experience with social media, that may be far too optimistic. We are also living through a period of uncertainty, as AI has the potential to bring about profound changes in many areas of society. Perhaps those changes will unfold more gradually and less dramatically than some fear, but it would be naive to claim that we already understand where this development is heading.

Background

Francis Fukuyama is one of the most influential political thinkers of our time and is particularly known for The End of History and the Last Man, published in 1992. As Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, his research focuses on democracy, international relations, state-building, and political development.

For decades, Fukuyama has shaped the global debate on liberalism, authoritarian tendencies, and the future of democracy. Most recently, he published Liberalism and Its Discontents in 2022. His forthcoming memoir, In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir, will be published this autumn by Profile Books. 

Contact

Mads Rosendahl Thomsen
Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of TEXT
School of Communication and Culture
Department of Comparative Literature and Rhetoric
Aarhus University
Email: madsrt@cc.au.dk
Phone: +45 3114 1419
Web: TEXT Aarhus University