RUSTlab Lectures

This winter term 25/26 we present to you our 14th round of RUSTlab Lectures. Come and join us for these exciting talks and discussions around this term’s guiding theme Power Play on four dates in the winter term – online and on site. The lectures take place 14 hrs German time.

With four fantastic guests, we’ll hear about new materialist perspectives on AI, digital platforms for collaborative ethnography, game-making for a world we can live in, and the energy future of computing.

The theme is Power Play. On the one hand, to remind us of the connections between energy and politics; on the other hand, to not forget that we should face these challenges with the playfulness of imagination, speculation, and the virtual. Let’s start the game and figure out the rules as we go!

List of the speakers for the winter term 25/26:

Thu 2025-11-13 14:00 – Tim Schütz (University of California): Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography: A digital analytics for qualitative research

Wed 2025-11-19 14:00 – Goda Klumbytė (Participatory IT Design, University of Kassel)
Matters of Explanation: Feminist and New Materialist Reorientations of Explainability in AI

Thu 2025-12-11 14:00 – Ruth Eggel (Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln)
Powering Games and Playing Futures: How Game-Makers Care for People and the Planet

Thu 2026-01-22 14:00 – Anne Pasek (Cultural Studies and the School of the Environment, Trent University)
An energy history and future of computing

Download this year’s poster as a PDF.

All lectures will be on-site at the RUSTlab as well as live on ZOOM.

Address: MB 4/165 Campus Ruhr University Bochum
Zoom Link for the meetings
Password: RUSTlab

Illustration by Babette Hinterleitner
Fonts Amiami & DINdong by https://typotheque.genderfluid.space