“The effects of advancing digitalisation have become tangible, not least through artificial intelligence and its numerous possible applications. Together with the team at CAIS, I would like to continue to find evidence-based solutions to current problems and seek dialogue with politics, business and citizens,” says Eilders.
At CAIS, Christiane Eilders will conduct her own research on the causes and consequences of polarisation and initiate research partnerships with academia and practitioners. Previously, she was Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf since 2011. Her expertise is in the field of online participation, online deliberation and public opinion formation in digital environments. During her professional career, Christiane Eilders conducted research as a professor at the University of Augsburg and as a research associate at the Hans Bredow Institute in Hamburg and the Science Centre Berlin. This year, she was appointed director at CAIS after a joint selection process with the University of Düsseldorf.
In addition to Christiane Eilders, the future board of directors is composed of a computer science professor, who has yet to be filled, and the commercial director Tim Pfenner: “With the dual leadership in the board of directors, we want to unite interdisciplinary perspectives, especially between social science and computer science, for digitisation research at the highest level” explains Tim Pfenner.
Prof. Dr. Michael Baurmann, the founding director of CAIS, will retire at the end of 2023. His vision and commitment have been instrumental in the development of CAIS from a research college in 2017 to a renowned research institution. “I am delighted that we have been able to gain a valued colleague and expert in Christiane Eilders. I am sure that she will successfully further develop CAIS as a discursive place of excellent and socially relevant digitisation research.”
About CAIS:
The state of North Rhine-Westphalia has been providing long-term funding to the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum as a central institute for digitisation research since April 2021. By proposing evidence-based solutions, the CAIS contributes to shaping the digital transformation in the interest of the people. The CAIS was founded as a research college at the beginning of 2017 and has since been awarding fellowships to national and international guest researchers in the field of digitalisation research. The first research programme “Digital Democratic Innovations” started in October 2021, the second research programme “Educational Technologies and Artificial Intelligence” has been running since mid-2022. The third research programme on “Designing trustworthy artificial intelligence” will follow in April 2024. The research programmes interlink the disciplinary worlds of social sciences, humanities and computer science and test research results in practice. For more information about the CAIS, please visit www.cais-research.de.