Amidst the present era’s seemingly constant availability of knowledge, science communication that is comprehensible, credible, and dialogue-oriented has become more important than ever before. It allows the public to experience our university’s mission in a very concrete way, forging a connection between research fields and society.
In this issue’s Special, we invite you to get to know science communication at the mdw from a whole range of different perspectives. For our science communication work here includes far more than just presenting research findings to the public: it lives from exchange, from artistic approaches, and from the willingness to speak about complex themes in a way that’s simultaneously understandable and nuanced. And it’s precisely at a university like ours, which unites art, research, and the training of pedagogues, that diverse forms of dialogue can arise along with innovative ways of enabling research to be seen and experienced.
An evening full of energy, variety, and musical discoveries was served up by the première edition of the new format Alle Neun in Contest, which brought outstanding up-and-coming talents from Austria’s nine university-level institutions of musical training to the mdw Campus.
You can also read in this issue about entirely new approaches to directorial work among young directing students at the Max Reinhardt Seminar as well as about how young film professionals from Film Academy Vienna made waves in Cannes with a miniseries.
And finally, Antonio Salieri’s recently premièred operatic swan song La bella Selvaggia (1802) has now also been given its first-ever performance in Austria over two centuries after it was composed. We tell you more about this extraordinary coproduction of the mdw’s Antonio Salieri Department of Vocal Studies and Vocal Research in Music Education with Spain’s International University of La Rioja (UNIR) and Fundación EME.
I wish you a stimulating read!
