Margarita Osipova

Why are you researching or studying at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar?

My academic area of interest within the Human-Computer Interaction field lies within advanced methods of research that allow making emerging technology human-friendly. As my main research agenda covers preliminary such topics as Smart Cities, Feminist HCI and Interaction Design for Emerging Tech, the opportunities for the multidisciplinary research given by Bauhaus University allow me to grow my expertise in all of this areas without the necessity to limit my interests to one-topic only. Here not only am I surrounded by the great professionals in all fields and free to attend the courses from other faculties that overlap with my current agenda, but I am given a chance to be included in a great academic community even while being a student, to be supported by the professors on the research topics that I initiate myself and to influence the university environments through the student committee involvement.

What is special about your project? Why is it relevant?

My current project concerns women’s safety in the big cities and how Smart City technology can help to provide it. In the times of rapid urbanization and technological advancements in the urban landscape, the voices of women should be taken into account while designing such technological solutions. And my current research serves this purpose though investigating the needs and expectations of the Smart city innovation in the area of safety from the women’s perspective by the means of HCI research methods and approaches.

What characterises your voluntary commitment in Weimar?

For the last year I had been a chairperson of the Student Council Media of our university, where with a team of brilliant committed students we welcomed the newbies of the faculty during the Welcome Week, created a new information exchange medium (Discord server) for the students and collected the signatures supporting the request to solve the problem of the poor bus connection to the new faculty building. Since the legislation is over, I have joined the Diversity Guides and within this year I hope to make the university environment more inclusive and comfortable for all, because in my believe the concept of “inclusive” and “universal” design should and could be extrapolated on the academic environment too.

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