On Monday, 30 June 2025, 4.15–6.30 pm, Prof. Dr. Ludger Jansen (Brixen) will give his Fellow Lecture on the topic “Zugang FAIR gestalten: Was sind und was können Referenzontologien?” (“Making access FAIR: What are reference ontologies and what can they do?”) (in German) (room 201, 2nd floor of the Philosophikum, Domplatz 23):

Anyone who works with digital data often experiences a Babylonian confusion of languages. Different file formats or differently coded descriptions mean that data is often incomprehensible or cannot be used (jointly). Instead of a vast ocean of knowledge to draw from, we are faced with ‘data silos’. Furthermore, data in itself is a meaningless syntactic structure. Reference ontologies offer a solution to the silo problem and the meaning problem. They can give data semantics and are a reliable means of making data access FAIR – i.e. findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.

Prof. Dr. Ludger Jansen is Cusanus Professor of Philosophy at the Philosophical-Theological College of Brixen/Bressanone and Adjunct Professor at the University of Rostock, where he heads a DFG project on the philosophy of bionics. His research focuses on the interface between metaphysics and philosophy of science. In particular, he works on the question of how structures of classical Aristotelian metaphysics can help to make research data, scientific knowledge or digitised cultural assets more accessible and linkable today.