Hi Sophie, thank you for taking the time to talk to us about your work at HTW Berlin and your participation within the European University Alliance EUonAIR! First of all, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Hi! I am Sophie. I studied Applied Computer Science at HTW and now work as a research assistant in the Computer Science and Society research group under the direction of Prof. Dr. Katharina Simbeck. At the same time, I am doing my PhD jointly at HTW and Humboldt University in Berlin.

I conduct research on AI in higher education, with a focus on culture and design. I am interested in the use of modern technologies in the cultural and creative sectors.

When finishing my bachelor's degree, I started working as a student assistant in another research group at HTW. This experience made me even more interested in the topic. At the time, we had various projects with cultural partners, including the Konzerthaus Berlin and the Museumsverband Brandenburg.
 

Being part of EUonAIR, on which topics are you working within the alliance? Do you have any concrete examples of what has resulted from this international cooperation?

Yes, I have been part of EUonAIR since early 2025. This Alliance creates open educational resources on the subject of AI for a specially developed course platform. My topic is "Ethical challenges of AI in culture and design".

In addition to the exciting project work, EUonAIR has also brought some great opportunities for me. For example, in September 2025 I attended the Higher Education Institutes Conference (HEIC) in Dubrovnik, which is organized by our EUonAIR partner ZSEM. Dubrovnik is not only a really great city, I was finally able to meet many EUonAIR colleagues there in person.

This resulted in a research project with the partner university CEU Abat Oliba in Barcelona, which was carried out from February to April 2026. Experiencing the campus day-to-day in Spain for a few months was a great experience for me. This is exactly what excites me about working in an international project.

From this research stay, a colleague and I wrote a paper together on the subject of AI and career orientation among students. We presented this at the FUTURES Conference at the Luxembourg School of Business, also part of EUonAIR, and were awarded the Best PhD Paper Award for this.
 

In your work, you combine computer science and cultural studies. Why is it important to think of these disciplines together, and what would you like to teach students in this context?

As already touched on briefly: While I was writing my bachelor's thesis, my work in the INKA ⁠research group at HTW also began. In my first project there, I developed web augmented reality applications with the Museumsverband Brandenburg. Shortly thereafter, my first transnational project with university and cultural partners from Berlin, Florence and Lviv followed.

In this project, we have digitized and auralized concert halls, which means that we have also recreated the sound environment in a realistic way. The rooms could then be explored in the 3D space using virtual reality glasses, where you could also experience music in the sound of the real room.

These projects and especially the work in interdisciplinary and international teams have shaped me a lot and have shown me where my research interest lies: technologies that open up new ways to experience art and culture.

In the meantime, my focus has shifted from augmented and virtual reality to artificial intelligence. AI has been playing an increasingly important role in museums and cultural institutions for several years. The new opportunities also come with numerous challenges.

I would like to integrate this technology in higher education, i.e. with students from cultural studies and design courses. AI offers many opportunities to redesign cultural and creative work, but at the same time a conscious and above all critical approach to it is crucial, I would like to convey that!
 

Can you introduce us to a specific project from your work, for example your collaboration with the Museum Schwerin? 

A concrete example from recent years is the project "AI in the Museum", which I implemented with students of the Communication Design course at the HTW and the Staatliches Museum Schwerin. The aim was to develop an interactive digital station for an exhibit. The museum initially approached us with the desire to develop appropriate concepts.

As part of a short-term project in the Communication Design degree programme, three different approaches were presented to the museum. One of these concepts was so positively received that we decided to further develop it with the student contributors Max Beyer and Timon Gemmer, the volunteer Patricia Parravano from the museum and myself and implement it as a functioning application.
The result is an app that allows visitors to have a virtual conversation with Duke Johann Albrecht I, the client of a Renaissance altar. Voice, animations, videos and parts of the texts were generated with the help of AI, of course under the close professional supervision of the curators.

Since the reopening of the museum in October 2025, the application is there to be used on site in the Staatliches Museum Schwerin. To visit the exhibition opening and experience our application in action was a very special moment for me. We have achieved our goal of making the altar and its biblical scenes accessible and tangible to a wide audience.
 

Looking ahead, what do you still want to implement or achieve in your work, especially within EUonAIR? What role do you think EUonAIR can play in research and teaching in the future?

In particular, I would like to complete my course "Ethical Challenges of AI in Culture and Design" and make it available to students and teachers. I would also be happy to offer workshops on the subject. For example, this year and last year I offered an excerpt from the course on stereotypes in AI-generated images at the Long Night of the Sciences. If possible, I would also like to complete another research stay with one of the other EUonAIR partners and get to know their campuses and everyday work. In general, I am happy about any international cooperation that arises. 

At the end of September, I will be involved in a BIP (Blended Intensive Programme) of my professor Katharina Simbeck, where students from four different EUonAIR partners will come to Berlin. I believe that these encounters offer great potential for research and teaching: when different universities and perspectives come together, new ideas emerge for how we can jointly work on and communicate future topics such as AI. It is precisely this exchange that is one of EUonAIR's greatest strengths for me.

You are at a conference and have three sentences to explain EUonAIR and your role in it to another person. What would you say? 

EUonAIR is a university alliance of 10 partners in which we develop open educational resources on the subject of AI for students and teachers, among other things. The aim is to provide high-quality, freely accessible learning opportunities that convey both technical fundamentals and ethical aspects of AI. My role is primarily in the research and development of these educational offerings for the fields of culture and design, with a particular focus on questions related to AI literacy, the creative use of generative AI, and the impact of AI on cultural practice and design processes.