Record attendance at the opening of the Year of Science
The Science Year 2024/25 on the topic of "Those up there, us down there" was opened at the HSZG on October 23. It was well received by both employees and external guests.
The Year of Science 2024 was launched at Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences on October 23. Under the theme “Those Up There, Us Down Here: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Society’s Minefields and Our Region’s Development Opportunities,” the event addressed pressing societal challenges. The event was good in terms of attendance, with over 90 guests. The organizers from the Research Office and the Saxony5 project team are pleased to have offered many colleagues, as well as external guests, an interesting afternoon through the topic and the event format.
The program was rich and varied, ranging from reflections on Max Weber’s concept of domination and its relevance to our current political situation in democracies, to insights into early-career research, and to an exploration of commonalities and differences in interdisciplinary collaboration. Jan Schaller, a researcher at the TRAWOS Institute, took the recent publication of the anthology he helped compile—*Distant Elites: The Underrepresentation of East Germans and People with a Migration Background*—as an opportunity to present a comprehensive overview of the current statistics. In response to a question from the audience about whether people in East Germany simply have to accept this underrepresentation, he offered some insights into where potential levers for change might be found.
In the subsequent panel discussion: "On the minefield? Opportunities, barriers and scope for local players", Markus Will moderated the discussion between participants and the audience with his usual aplomb. Using the example of municipal heat planning, but also the participation processes in structural change, the possibilities and impossibilities in the current political space of experience were measured with political actors, researchers and citizens.
The accompanying poster exhibition provided an overview of current Saxon-funded research projects from various subject areas. Over a snack, participants were able to exchange ideas about their own research.
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