NSFW (Nikolaus' Song For the Week)

This week's song is Crossroad from Calvin Russel, who died in April 2011, 15 years ago, from liver cancer at the age of 62 (fuck cancer).

YouTube has a live version of the song

and a 30 years old live concert

Retrospect

#arsboni

One of Austria's leading media law lawyers, Michael Pilz, joined me in the #arsboni #laundry to debate a politically sensitive decision - whether it was OK to name Austria's most important research unit on right wing extremism (Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstands) a "pseudoscientific institution" (Spoiler: No, it's not OK).

Here's a YouTube-short on the matter.

Prof. Dr. Dietmar Jahnel talked about innnovations in RIDA - a leading legal information system invented and lead by him.

He introduced two major inventions - AI written, automatically updated article by article commentaries on Austrian laws, incorporating also the relevant case law - and an automated service on changes in the law.

DDr. Alexander Schall discussed what success in law means.

We were talking about the book he coauthored with Vera Molnar

He's not only one of Austria's most prominent banking lawyers and a psychoanalyst, but is also making music

with excerpts from a live concert on YouTube

LLP

The Vienna Legal Literacy Project did an episode with Mag. Mag. Elio Unterrainer, PhD on the freedom to assembly.

Conferences and Meetings

September is a typical month for meetings, conferences etc. in the life of academics. It was a quite social week for me too, therefore.

BBMRI-ERIC and BBMRI.at

BBMRI-ERIC is a large European Research Infrastructure for biobanking and biomolecular resources, established in 2013 under EU legislation.  An ERIC is a European Research Infrastructure Consortium , a specific legal form that facilitates the establishment and operation of Research Infrastructures with European interest. We are a proud partner via the Austrian node BBMRI.at.

Both institutions met at our department with the aim to further develop a draft for a model informed consent form that can be used by European biobanks when collecting material.

Catarina from the department organised this brilliantly, with Michael, Saskia, Theresa, Rodessa attending and Ciara Staunton and Anto Čartolovn leading the endevour. There's more on this on BBMRI.AT's and on our website and on Linkedin.

Periformance

We were the proud hosts of the Periformance general assemby and consortium meeting. The project  aims to ensure that cancer research and technological advances such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the European Health Data Space (EHDS) are applied in an ethical, equitable and transparent manner. It's therefore a lot about ethics, law and - most importantly - communication. Catarina from the department did, again, a terrific job in organising this and it was a pleasure to welcome so many brillant people, among them BBMRI's CEO Jens K. Habermann.

Chuo University

Yuki Harada, Taro Komukai and Mika Nakashima from Chuo University (Tokyo, Japan) visited the department to study European regulatory approaches to AI, platforms and data. Hannah from the department kindly took care of the organisation, we were joined (from left to right) by Pelin, Saskia, Selen and Julia.

Women in Law

The Women in Law conference takes place at the moment and I was proud to be on a panel about "male allies" after a keynote delivered by Ed Frauenheim.

If you'r reading this on Friday you might still want to go there and you would see Julia and Selen from the department on a panel about AI and the futue of work.

Prospect

I will be at Kyoto University, Kyushu University and in Tokyo next week, to meet old friends and colleagues, to participate in seminars and give a few presentations. I hope to bring some impressions with me to share next week.

Look and Feel

Die Neuen Zwanziger

This month's episode has a very interesting yet rather alarming 90 minutes analysis of drones in modern warfare and a very critical approach to Friedrich Merz and his public appearances that was recorded prior to the elections in Sachsen-Anhalt but might be even more relevant after them.

Roland Hanak

Roland Hanak has a very nice exhibition in central Vienna, at gallery twenty-six that I visited.

His paintings decorate, among others, the office of minister of justice Dr. Anna Sporrer.

Pusztagold, again

Last week's recommendation of Pusztagold triggered several positive reactions among readers and in my personal envioronment. My friend, role model and colleague Prof. Dr. Thomas Hoeren even provided a book review at the bottom of the page.

Have a wonderful week and take care of yourself!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)