As part of the Salzburg University Week 2023 on the theme REDUCTION! WHY WE NEED MORE LESS
the SHW Directorate is putting out the Audience Award for Science Communication for the eighteenth time. Graduate researchers from all disciplines and fields born in 1988 or later are warmly invited to apply.

The Salzburg University Weeks are the summer university of the University of Salzburg and take place this year from 31 July to 6 August. They are dedicated to the general theme Reduction! Why We Need More Less.

Higher, faster, further – more! This attitude has shaped our collective sense of society for decades. Even though we owe a great deal of progress to it, there's growing unease about it at the moment: we all notice that blindly following this path leads to dead ends – the ecological exploitation of the planet is bound up with it, as is the overwhelming of our social safety nets and states of individual exhaustion. Even if it's hard to deny that the imperative of constant growth unleashes harmful dynamics, we struggle to leave the logic of more behind: stagnation is seen as regression, "negative growth" as a no-go.

All these observations are reason enough to explore different perspectives. Reduction appears as both a magic word and a key challenge in one: how do we manage to not just invoke a "less is more" rhetorically, but actually live it? How could it be designed in a socially equitable way? Which reductions actually make sense – and where is the rhetoric of doing without simply out of place? How does one manage, institutionally, to let go of cherished things and bring them to a good end? How does one personally shed the baggage one carries around – and what can we not leave behind, because it will remain indispensable in the future: in our lives, our societies, our churches?

Questions like these call for fresh voices, from right across all academic disciplines. Those are exactly the voices we want to invite to Salzburg.
1st prize: €1,000
2nd prize: €500
3rd prize: €300

Download information on the call

Further information and enquiries at:
Telephone: +43/662 / 8044-2523
office-shw@plus.ac.at
www.salzburger-hochschulwochen.at
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