CURRENT PROJECTS
The below course projects and course-based internships mark the first, pilot semester of the OSUN Science Shop. Following info-sessions targeting the university community, we collected course offerings from faculty members who were open to take in community requests and work on them with their students during the semester.
With this offer, we launched the Call for NGOs in Fall 2021 to find Austrian and international civil society organizations with questions and requests that fit in the various course designs. The interest was high from all sides, and we found "matches" for both the winter and fall semesters of 2022.
COURSE PROJECT 1. | |
Course |
Misperforming World Politics This course develops a ‘performance’ lens of contemporary issues of world politics at the intersections of critical theory, performance studies, art-based research and critical pedagogy. It looks at how familiar notions are performed and acted out in everyday practices and situations – such as statehood, sovereignty, identity, gender, citizenship or labour under global capitalism – and the ways in which roles, scripts and modes of staging generate structures of recognizability and corresponding subject positions. Expectations, rituals and routines, however, simultaneously give rise to misperformances that carry the potential for encounters that are incidental, spontaneous and yet-unknown. The course brings together philosophy, case studies, artistic interventions and offers practical exercises in reflecting on and transforming our normalized and habitual practices of sense-making. |
Faculty | Erzsebet Strausz |
Community partner |
SEEK Network SEEK is a research network based in the Netherlands. Our mission is to promote a culture of research collaboration and initiatives with diverse populations, particularly the refugees and migrants, to advocate for the inclusion of their voices in public perception and public policy. We endeavour reimagining the current migration research, narrative and scholarship by bringing migrant “knowledges” and “perspectives” into the nexus of the current migration policy discourses to provide evidence-based public policy. Our research is based on principles of co-creation of knowledge with the people and communities. |
Contact person | Umbreen Salim, Sumbal Bashir |
Project request |
SEEK is piloting a project “Portraits of Power” with the support of Mamma Cash. This four week (online) storytelling retreat will meaningfully engage with young migrant/refugee women through workshops and mentorship sessions, in which they will be encouraged to reflect on ideas which are otherwise considered taboo in their communities (e.g. gender-based violence, body policing). Each group would build on specific themes, with a focus on narratives and creative art to encourage critical reflections and self-expressions. The outputs, “Power Portraits”, would be auto-ethnographic accounts in the form of written works (stories, poems, non-fictional writing) and art forms, which will be compiled and made available as a digital collective on the SEEK website and disseminated with relevant networks to inform activist campaigns and policy briefs/ initiatives that affect women. We aim to seek support for following questions:
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COURSE PROJECT 2. | |
Course |
Educational Development in Practice (Practicum) This blended course allows course participants to learn about the practice of educational development experientially, through engagement in applied research, programming, or advocacy roles in communities where OSUN institutions operate. Course participants will work in campus-based teams of 3-5, contributing to the work of local government, NGO, development organizations, or private sector organizations over a focused period of 12 weeks (January-March). |
Faculty | Kata Orosz |
Community partner | Amnesty International Hungary |
Contact person | Adam Beothy, Annamaria Landy |
Project request | Amnesty International Hungary (henceforth AIHU) is a non-profit organization working in the field of human rights advocacy in Hungary. Its staff and volunteers implement various initiatives aimed at ensuring that human rights are respected and protected. As part of its initiatives, AIHU runs a human rights education program. The goal of AIHU’s human rights education program is to help children, parents, and educators to raise new generations who are open-minded and who respect human rights.
The primary purpose of this research is to develop a rigorous but practical impact assessment methodology that will enable AIHU staff to assess the impact of their workshops and their free methodological guides. The objectives of the project are to:
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COURSE PROJECT 3. | |
Course | Civic engagement
The course educates students for civic and social responsibility, prepare them for lives of engaged citizenship, with the motivation and capacity to think critically, discuss and act. Student co-design engagement projects with partner NGOs in the winter semester, and implement them during the spring. |
Faculty | Chrys Margaritidis, Flora Laszlo |
Community partner | Teach for Austria
We work towards education equality. Our vision is that all children have euqal opportunities, regardless of the socio-economic background of their parents. Our core activity is a fellowship program: graduates from all academic backgrounds are trained to work for two years in disadvantages schools and kindergarten. |
Contact person | Elisabeth Witzani |
Project request | Currently, many of our partner schools, kindergartens and organisations are located in Favoriten. We would like to connect more with the local community and work towards lowering the NEET rate (not in employment, education or training) within the next 10 years, by connecting various organisations and initiatives.
When it comes to local youth and their parents, we would like to find out:
Our goal is to establish Favoriten as an "Showcase-District" where the collective impact of everyone who works towards educational equality becomes visible. |
COURSE PROJECT 4. | |
Course | Civic engagement
The course educates students for civic and social responsibility, prepare them for lives of engaged citizenship, with the motivation and capacity to think critically, discuss and act. Student co-design engagement projects with partner NGOs in the winter semester, and implement them during the spring. |
Faculty | Chrys Margaritidis, Flora Laszlo |
Community partner | Volkshilfe The organisation is one of the main social service providers in the field of mobile health care, social work and labor market inclusion in the city of Vienna. |
Contact person | Lilli Gneisz, Philip Maier |
Project request | We have launched an initiative in the first half of 2021(“Gemeinsam statt Einsam”) that, together with our partner organisations, aims at addressing the topic of loneliness in society. We have already launched a first project and aspire to launch others, however, further insights into (and data related to) this topic would greatly help us to better align projects to the actual needs of people in Vienna who are affected by loneliness. More specifically, we would like to have a look at the target groups of elderly citizens, as well as members of migrant communities. Our goals would be to learn more about: the differences in cultural perceptions of the phenomenon of loneliness among migrant communities (and its implications for designing interventions) current coping strategies that the above mentioned target groups use in order to overcome loneliness, and in how far coping strategies vary depending on the cultural background of the person being affected the target groups’ perception of main impediments to overcome loneliness the digital behaviour and digital competencies of these target groups, also with respect to different cultural backgrounds. |
COURSE PROJECT 5. | |
Course | Field Research and Qualitative Data Analysis
Students can conduct ca. 30 interviews or make focus group sessions (incl. writing interview questionnaire, transcript, preparing the analysis) that you can use for your purposes, e.g. checking the acceptance or perception of your programme by the target group, analyse a campaign, etc. |
Faculty | Inna Melnykovska |
Community partner | Amnesty International Austria The organisation is one of the main social service providers in the field of mobile health care, social work and labor market inclusion in the city of Vienna. |
Contact person | Daniel Schier |
Project request | We are highly interested in how to engage young people in human rights activities. Here are some more details questions we would like to answer: What kind of activism does attract young people? What role do they wanna play within human rights activism with Amnesty? What are the intersections btw. "youth" and human rights" in regards of communication, engagement and topics? |
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