The full program of this year's Vienna Humanities Festival under the overarching theme ON EDGE/UNBEHAGEN is now available online. On the last weekend of September, with over 20 events, professors from the world's leading universities as well as independent researchers, activists, writers and journalists will once again turn Vienna into an international center for critical debates on the enormous changes our world is undergoing. Discussions will take place on September 27 and 28 at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with renowned panelists as well as with the audience, who is warmly invited to actively participate. Four keynotes at the Volkstheater, Radiokulturhaus and Wien Museum lead up to the festival weekend.
Life-changing technological innovation is advancing at an often unpredictable pace. Liberalism is under sustained attack, as is faith in basic scientific principles. Compassion seems to be going out of fashion, supplanted by brutal transactional values. Can humanity remain human under such strenuous circumstances? The political, economic, and social changes have been so swift that there is a temptation to surrender to a complexity that is hard to untangle. Yet this emotional labyrinth also challenges us to find a way out, by facing uncomfortable realities, unpicking intricacies, and standing up for a better tomorrow. In a series of enlightening discussions with some of the greatest thinkers of our time, the Vienna Humanities Festival will explore the political, ecological, technological, economic, psychological, and philosophical dilemmas now facing us—dilemmas that may seem overwhelming but which perhaps contain the seeds of renewal and change.
This year's keynotes in the festival week from September 24, with the philosopher and sociologist Didier Eribon, the philosopher Federica Gregoratto and the two historians Lyndal Roper and Natasha Wheateley, promise to be the highlights of Vienna's cultural autumn.
On the weekend at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, visitors can—among numerous other topics—look forward to panels on the power and future of technology, European consciousness and conscience, China's role in global politics or AI and it's influence on art with Naomi Alderman, Perry Anderson, Jens Beckert, Lydia Cacho, Julián Casanova, Gary Gerstle, Tobias Haberl, Leonie Haiden, Michal Hvorecký, Catrin Misselhorn, Yascha Mounk, Esra Özyürek, Maria Todorova, Sergey Radchenko, Markus Reisner, Rob Riemen, Tomáš Sedláček, Kai Strittmatter, Andrea Tompa and Ayşe Zarakol.
A closing panel with psychiatrist and psychologist Victor Blüml and historian Hannah Zeavin on September 28 will shed light on the effects of the complex, rapid and far-reaching social transformations on the human psyche itself.
The festival will be held in English and German. Admission to the weekend events is free. All sessions at the Academy will be translated live. Earphones will be provided at the venue.
For more information and the entire program, visit humanitiesfestival.at. For interview requests, please contact iwm-pr@iwm.at.
In 2025, the festival will be organized by the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) and Time To Talk (TTT) in cooperation with ERSTE Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the City of Vienna, Ö1 Intro, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, the Wien Museum, and the Volkstheater.
