by Elisabeth Steindl

The Department of Digitalisation and Innovation in Law is well-connected and active within the digital law community. However, solving many issues of today’s society takes more than the wisdom of one single discipline. Therefore, the Department has increased its endeavours to work closer with scholars form other Departments at the University of Vienna and has become (founding) member of the newly launched Research Platform Governance of Digital Practices (DigiGov). Together with our DigiGov colleagues, we have now conducted the first DigiGov Winter School!

Interdisciplinarity is woven into the very structure and the concept of the Research Platform Governance of Digital Practices (DigiGov). DigiGov is located at the intersection of three out of the 15 Faculties at the University of Vienna, namely the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Business, Economics and Statistics. This interdisciplinarity has been reflected by the programme of the DigiGov Winter School as well as the composition of its speakers and participants.

United in diversity, three of the departments that are gathered in DigiGov have conceptualized, planned and prepared this year’s Winter School: DigiGov affiliates from the Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law, the Department of Political Science, and the Department of Science and Technology Studies have contributed together with their guests to a multifaceted programme.

The Department of Innovation and Digitalisation helped shaping the Winter School in multiple ways. Whereas Prof Nikolaus Forgó gave the kick-off lecture on the first day and moderated various other sessions, Dr Elisabeth Steindl was responsible for the overall coordination and realisation of the Winter School. Both are core members of the Research Platform. In addition, DigiGov was able to win two of our team members, Theresa Henne, LLM and Mag Filip Paspalj, to contribute to one of the interactive slots during the Winter School.

Topic of this year’s Winter School was the “Taming the iMonster: Regulating digital platforms”. Platforms have become a place where essential parts of our lives are happening. They have developed into a basic technical and social infrastructure to communicate with one another, to purchase and sell goods, or to access information. Alas, the right way of regulating these infrastructures is still a conundrum.

The invited external speakers included Dr Alex Hanna (Distributed AI Research Insitute), Prof Klaus Hoeyer (University of Copenhagen), Prof Gerda Falkner (eif), Prof Matthias C. Kettemann (University of Innsbruck), Dr Susanne Lackner (KommAustria), Dr Heta Tarkkala (University of Helsinki), and Prof Sandra Wachter (University of Oxford). Their approaches varied according to their academic discipline, their practical experience and their fields of research. Their presentations gave insights into legal expectations and perspectives of platform regulation, the role of the State, strategies for accountability and trustworthiness of AI, the potential of hard and soft law, polycentric governance and last not least information structures in healthcare and prompted lively discussions.

Highlight on the evening before the closing of the Winter School was a Public Round Table on Public Interest Research with distinguished panellists such as John Albert (AlgorithmWatch), Wolfie Christl (Cracked Labs, Vienna)  Dr Jonathan Gray (King’s College London & Public Data Lab), ), Prof Jürgen Pfeffer (Technical University Munich), and Dr Theresa Züger (Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society).

The DigiGov Winter School was held over the course of two weeks, from 14^th to 25^th February 2022. About 30 participants, many of them PhD candidates and early career academics working on topic-related projects, have tried to tame the iMonster together with our esteemed guest speakers and the affiliates of DigiGov.

Participation at the Winter School was free of charge but places were limited and admission was competitive. Although the Winter School was designed as a non-public event, the participants agreed on three keynotes to be shared with the public: The Presentations by Prof. Nikolaus Forgó, Prof Matthias C. Kettemann, and Dr Heta Tarkkala can be watched on the DigiGov Winter School website. Moreover, you find there a selection of blogposts from participants themselves on the Winter School and a recording of the Public Round table.

*The slightly condensed original form of this text can be found on the DigiGov website.