«Do you speak Digital?» Shaping digital transformation
Dr Susanne Schumacher, Zurich University of the Arts, Co-Chair Digital Council
As part of the Digital Council of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), internal experts have been actively contributing to the digital transformation of the university for five years. On the one hand, they develop digital strategies; on the other, they give form to digital culture at the ZHdK in projects, programmes and processes. It is characteristic of the ZHdK that this is designed to be low-threshold, experimental and tangible. With this attitude, the Digital Council is also involved in national and international networks: for example, the Digitalization Initiative of the Zurich Universities (DIZH), which promotes joint activities of the four cantonal universities in research, innovation and education for a period of ten years, or the European University Association (EUA), which supports universities in the digital transformation with a new working group.
The ZHdK Digital Council is particularly concerned about the cultural change that goes hand in hand with digitalisation. The lecture will use examples to show how this change is being implemented and experienced at different levels and will give an outlook on the coming focal points of this work.
Dr Susanne Schumacher is co-chair of the ZHdK’s Digital Council. She is an art historian and did her doctorate on data in art history at ETH Zurich. She has been committed for many years to digitalisation at universities in teaching, research and transformation projects.
At the ZHdK, she has been instrumental since 2018 in strategically leading measures for digital knowledge culture, the promotion of digital skills and digital working. Between 2018 and 2021, she was responsible for the transformation towards open science and publication services at the ZHdK.
Susanne Schumacher was actively involved in the conception and implementation of DIZH and currently contributes there as Chair of the Management Board. In addition, she is committed to the broad national and international networking of the ZHdK in the area of digitalisation in the sense of peer learning.