It’s official now: My PhD gets awarded by the “SuMa-eV – Verein fuer freien Wissenszugang“!!! The SuMa-eV is a society with the central goal to assure free access to knowledge. In their doing they particularly focus on search engines, that have become central access points to the web and digital knowledge. Their ideology basically is to work towards a landscape of free, heterogeneous, and non-monopolistic search engines. More concretely, their goal is to raise awareness and information/ digital skills in the public and policy realm, but also to develop alternative technologies. You can get more information on SuMa technologies including a link to the SuMa blog here (in German, sorry for that).

In addition to these activities they anually award works dealing with the future of digital knowledge. And I’m really happy that I get one of these SuMa Awards this year!!! Besides my PhD “Mediated Knowledge” (download), the OpenGovernment search engine “NewsClub im Bundestag” and the online dictionary “Linguee” are awarded this year. The award ceremony takes place on the 6th of October in Berlin as part of the SuMa-eV conference. I’m really looking forward to this event, especially as it nicely fits to my new project on the social construction of search engines and their information political implications. I suppose it’s a good spot to get to know relevant people in the field and their perspectives on search technologies. I’m particularly looking forward to see Markus Beckedahl from Netzpolitik.org, a platform dedicated to freedom and openness in the digital age, and Lars Reppesgaard, journalist and author of the book “Das Google Imperium”. Futher, proponents from the policy realm and the commercial sector such as Microsoft and maybe Google will be there. Altogether I think it’s a good compilation of different actors and viewpoints to start off a discussion about civil society in the information/ digital age. Besides, there will also be a workshop how to install your own search engine. For more infos on the programme and registration please go to the conference website. Personally, I’m pleased to finally meet the director of SuMa-eV, Wolfgang Sander-Beuermann and Theo Röhle, who just published “Der Google Komplex” – with both of whom I only digitally corresponded so far ;). So I’m really excited about this upcoming event & keep you posted on all that.