Press release
New Chair of the Ethics Committee elected
At its meeting on the 5th of April 2023, the Senate of the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam unanimously elected Prof. Dr. Ulrich Richtmeyer, Professor of Media Culture Work at the Department of CITY | BUILDING| CULTURE, as Chair of the Ethics Committee. Anna-Sophie Barbutev, research assistant in the project "Female Scientists in the Media", is deputy chairperson. The term of office is four years.
In research, it has become a matter of course to obtain an ethics vote when acquiring new projects, which is often explicitly required by third-party funding organisations. The Ethics Committee negotiates the scientific and ethical discourse at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. It advises scientists on ethical issues and, if necessary, deals with the ethical justifiability of objectives and procedures. From April 2023, the Ethics Committee will support planned research projects with a written vote upon application and with a lead time of at least six weeks.
"In its philosophical origins, ethics was initially only concerned with the simple question of how people can lead a right and good life. Today, this right and good life must take into account vulnerable groups, animal and non-human existences as well as the limited resources of our planet, the environment and the climate. It must deal with rules for the collection, collation and provision of data and reflect on the use of technology as a whole, as is currently being done, for example, in the EU's ethical guidelines on the use of AI technology. Ethical recommendations for action are not identical to legal, social science or psychological expertise, although these and many other specialist disciplines must be taken into account in the ethics committee's votes.
I am curious about this interdisciplinary and challenging task and look forward to working with the new Ethics Committee," said Prof. Dr. Ulrich Richtmeyer on assuming the chairmanship.
About the people
Ulrich Richtmeyer studied Fine Arts at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (1993-1998) and Philosophy at the Humboldt University Berlin (1998–2003), where he received his doctorate in Philosophy in 2006. As a postdoctoral researcher at the National Centre of Competence in Research Eikones in Basel and as a research fellow at the International College for Cultural Technology Research and Media Philosophy (IKKM) Weimar, he held the professorship for Visual Thinking and Perception at the University of Potsdam from 2013 to 2015. There he completed his habilitation in philosophy/philosophy of media in 2016 with a thesis on "Wittgenstein's pictorial thinking". Since 2017, Ulrich Richtmeyer has held the professorship for Media Culture Work in the degree programme Arts Management and Cultural Work.
Anna-Sophie Barbutev is an academic assistant in the BMBF project "WIM Female Scientists in the Media". She studied Cultural Studies at Maastricht University and Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. After training as a journalist at the Reutlingen Reportage School, she worked as a social media journalist for the online magazine Krautreporter and freelanced for media outlets such as ZEIT and SZ. As part of the WIM project, she is doing her doctorate on Hate Speech against female scientists.
Ethics guidelines
The Ethics Committee of the FH Potsdam acts in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the German Psychological Society (DGP) and the Professional Association of German Psychologists (BDP).
Further details on the tasks and principles of the Ethics Committee of the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam can be found in the Ethics Committee Regulations.