Professor Katharina Hoelzle joins UTS

The head of the Institute of Human Factors and Technology Management at the University of Stuttgart and the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering, Professor Hoelzle is internationally acclaimed for her work on digitalisation, emerging technologies and the interplay between humans and machines. 

You’re an innovation researcher and an expert in digitalisation and disruptive technologies. What does that involve, and how does your work contribute to solving the global challenges facing the world today?

I’m an innovation researcher by heart and training. I was always focused on what people need to be more creative and more innovative. Since taking up my appointment at the University of Stuttgart, my work has shifted even more to include human factors in engineering and technology management. Now, I’m working at the intersection of the human and the machine and the integration of these two things. My current research is on the human industrial metaverse – how do we take all these different virtual and extended reality technologies and make sure there’s still a human in the equation?

You’ve been associated with UTS since 2017. How did your partnership with UTS begin?

I spent my research sabbatical at UTS in 2017 and met with several people who helped establish the TD School. I felt this was something I had been looking for a long time. When I came to Sydney last October, I met with Professor Martin Tomitsch, the Head of the TD School, and it immediately felt as though there are many things we should be doing together. 

Why do we need to keep people at the centre of new technologies, and how does this work relate to your interests in transdisciplinarity? 

If we don’t keep humans front and centre of technological development and everything that people and organisations do, we risk creating a world that none of us would like to live in. At the same time, we need that human element to be truly diverse and for knowledge to come from lots of different places. Every discipline is rooted in a body of knowledge that creates particular perspectives on the world. If we bring all those perspectives together in a transdisciplinary way, we gain a much more comprehensive picture of the challenges and opportunities we face, which very often leads to realising and creating something new. 

Building on these ideas, what are you hoping to achieve in your role at UTS? 

I strongly believe that transdisciplinary learning is the only approach we should be taking at a university, and we should be doing it in both our teaching and research. For me, this appointment is about learning about the TD School approach. I hope to bring my expertise from my previous role at the School of Design Thinking at the Hasso-Platner Institut in Potsdam and the work I’m doing at Stuttgart. Teaching courses jointly, doing joint research, learning from each other, and building this transdisciplinarity and transcultural exchange is tremendously helpful and rewarding for students, academics, and institutions alike. 

What will you be working on?

Martin and I have identified two initial streams at the TD School where we would like to collaborate. I’ve done many years of teaching and research in corporate foresight; in the Futures stream, we’re planning to take an applied research approach to investigate strategic foresight, design thinking and strategy to help companies upskill in futures literacy. In the Technology and Humanity stream, we want to look at the ethical aspects of technology in the contexts of humans. 

You’re a researcher, but you’re also a very passionate teacher. How will UTS students benefit from your engagement with the TD School?

In my early years, my career was about enabling students and trying to uplift them. At UTS, I aspire to teach into one of the courses or microcredentials or contribute to the development of a new course. I am also very motivated to co-supervise PhD students or offer a PhD seminar if I can. It’s something that gives me so much energy and makes me so happy.

You’re also very engaged in the world beyond academia – you advise companies on technology and innovation management and lead the #shetransformsit initiative to encourage more women into digitalisation. You’re also currently the Technology Advisor to the Baden Württemberg Ministry of Economic Affairs. What ties all these versions of you together? 

Being a role model for what a professor can be outside of the academic environment – defining impact and creating a different picture of what impact is. I’ve realised that I can take my learnings and my experiences from teaching and research and reflect them to politicians and to companies working in and around the digitisation space. I want to be a critical voice to policymaking and to organisations to tell them, ‘This is what the research says. This is the data we’ve collected, and this is what the brightest minds in research say; let me translate it for you.’ 

You also have big plans to build stronger networks between Australia and Germany – what can you tell us about those?

Something very close to my heart is building bridges between people – between the students and faculty at UTS and hopefully beyond. It’d so important to have people who share similar values to join forces and reflect on the world we want to live in. I see there are so many things that we in Germany can learn from you in Australia and vice versa, and I am interested in how, together, we can address the grand challenges of today and tomorrow.