The digital age - a human rights perspective

January 15, 2025, 2 p.m. University of Art and Design Linz, Domgasse 1, Lecture Room

Interface Cultures invites you to a guest lecture by Walter Suntinger as part of Critical Data.

While the digital age holds the potential of offering opportunities for a better protection and promotion of human rights, datafication of society in the way that it is currently being used brings serious (risks of) violations of human rights. This lecture introduces students to a human rights-based approach to the challenges and possibilities that living in the digital age entails. It invites to explore which shape the basic functions of human rights – creating the conditions of a free, just and peaceful society, protecting persons’ dignity against abuse of power and discrimination – will take under the rapidly changing conditions of today. It looks into the broader structural issues that are of influence and asks how an interdisciplinary approach, composed of law, (social) sciences and the arts, can contribute to better understand the situation as well as to identify creative strategies for the better implementation of human rights. 

Walter Suntinger is a human rights consultant, trainer and university lecturer. Since 2021, he is a Senior Lecturer and the Academic Programme Manager of the Vienna Master of Arts in Applied Human Rights at the University of Applied Arts. He holds a law degree from the University of Graz (1990), with a specialization in human rights law, and a certificate in systemic change management from the Steinbeis University/Berlin (2019). His areas of specialization of human rights work are:  preventing monitoring of places of detention, human rights reform and training in the police and the criminal justice system, human rights and business, arts and human rights. 

His training and consulting journey took him i.a. to South Africa, Kosovo, Armenia, Brazil, Turkey, Tunisia, Mauritania, Morocco and other countries. He is currently a lecturer at: University of Applied Arts, FH Campus Wien, the University of Vienna. Previous teaching assignments were at: the John Hopkins University – Bologna Center, the University of Oregon (study abroad program in Vienna), the European Peace University in Stadschlaining and the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt (Security Studies).