Transdisciplinary Field Research Training

Fading Facates: Revitalizing Untere Landstraße Vacant Storefront Spaces

Anna Weber, Aisyah Taqwim, Maria Vernanda Vega, Mariana Gil Golmenares, John Warren Tamor; Mag. Ilja Steffelbauer.

Who are we, and why this whitepaper you may ask? We are a group of 5 students in the Erasmus Mundus Master on Transition, Innovation & Sustainability Environments (TISE). And this is our biggest group project, titled “Transdisciplinary Field Research Project” (TFRT). For this project, we got the opportunity to explore a realworld case in the town of our lastsemester: Krems an der Donau, in Lower Austria. Read more

Your feed, my identity: the politics of gendered narratives in the online space

Andrea Forero Cañizares, Dawit Gebresilassie, Jenny Jiyeon Kim, Kaela van der Vaart, Roberta Ramos

This report explores how social media, particularly X (formerly Twitter), is used to shape gender-based political discourse, and how this contributes to ideological polarization in the context of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election. Using a transdisciplinary approach, we triangulated data from desk research, a qualitative survey of voters’ experiences, social media scraping of hashtags (#MAGA, #TradWife, #YourBodyMyChoice), and expert interviews from fields including computational social science, social media research, and online extremism. Our findings reveal that gender serves as a powerful ideological anchor around which political identities form, where social media can act as an accelerant to these processes, albeit not a causal relationship. We identify specific themes around which this relationship is explored, including the employment of ‘traditional roles’, the spectrum of feminism being redefined, the collapse of boundaries between online and offline spaces, the predominantly emotional nature of gen er-based political discourse as well as the mechanisms through which platform architectures can influence polarization. The report concludes with evidence-based intervention pathways addressing platform and algorithm design, human moderation, and community-based digital literacy approaches to mitigate harmful polarization while preserving emocratic deliberation. Read more

AI-Driven Conversational Systems’s Adoption in the Irish Public Sector

Andreea Comer, Ayesha Zulfiqar, Eduardo Schlemm, Nirisha Manandhar, Diego Santos ; Marguerite Barry

The technological revolution we live through drastically alters how we interact, work, and live. Over the past few years, the start of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has been a topic of extensive discussion and investigation (World Economic Forum, 2016); among the various innovations, artificial intelligence (AI) stands out for its profound impact and mass adoption in its short existence. The changes this revolution entails have already necessitated the need for constant revision and understanding as this space evolves. Read more

Green Compliance and Economic Resilience

Abednego Brandy Opey, Alexander Ryusandi Pratama, Jan Carlo Castro, Luan Ferreira, Washim Ansari; Prof. Maciej Pietrzykowski

This study explores the space where sustainability policy meets business adaptation. It investigates how FMCG SMEs in Greater Poland navigate evolving environmental regulations, and what enables some to respond more effectively than others. We focus on the interaction between regulatory pressure, market forces, supply chain demands, and firm-specific capacities particularly in digital and green transformation. 3
Considering this, the guiding question of the project is:
How do intersecting regulatory demands, digital and green innovation, and stakeholder dynamics shape the environmental compliance strategies and sustainability performance of FMCG SMEs in Greater Poland? Read more

Digitizing Mental Health: Entrepreneurial Pathways for AI Chatbots in the Irish Care Ecosystem

Sabira Ataibekova, Shivam Shumsher, Lucy Namakula, David Vuth, Safaa Zaki; Dr. Liliya Satalkina

The study explores how digital entrepreneurship can advance AI-powered mental health (DMH) chatbots for youth in Ireland, where rising mental health needs intersect with increasing demand for mental health services. While chatbots offer scalable, stigma-free support, their effective deployment requires ethical design, sustainable business models, and integration into care systems—highlighting the need for implementation science and active stakeholder involvement to navigate this complex landscape. Ireland’s high youth mental health burden and growing digital health sector make it a highly relevant context for examining such innovations. Read more

VOTA LISBOA: Exploring fragmentation and Polarization through Digital Media: Portugal citizens’ perceptions on political communication strategies and informed vote – Handbook

Andrea Nieto, Eleonora González, Gulzar Muratalyieva, Valenttina Cardozo and Ximena Tapia; Dr. Jorge Martins Rosa and Dr. Marisa Torres da Silva.

The overall objective of the project is to implement a transdisciplinary approach to identify the threats of polarization through social network sites considering the involvement of affected communities and opportunities to counteract its effects in collaboration with citizens as stakeholders. As a result, we created Vota Lisboa, a creative participative process in which citizens in Portugal had the opportunity to engage in activities and conversation around the political communicative strategies deployed by the current Portuguese political parties, before and after the elections of March 10th 2024. Read more

Digitisation and Automation of Public Services: Vulnerability Analysis of Self-Check-Out-Stores

Asmita Singh, Ayman Abbas, Giovanni Baccani, Kamila Akhmetova, Stefano Zaniboni; Dr. Marguerite Barry and Dr. Günther Schreder 

“Europeans spend between 17 and 35 minutes per day on shopping and personal services”. According to Eurostat, the time Europeans spend on shopping and personal services (like visiting a doctor or a hairdresser) ranges from 17 minutes per day in Romania to 35 minutes in Germany, according to a survey carried out in 15 EU countries between 2008 and 2015. As urban lives become hectic and population concentration in cities has been at the highest levels in history, there is an obvious inclination towards solving associated problems for consumers and improving the shopping experience. Read more

Green and Digital Transformation: Touristic Competitiveness and Business Enhancement in São Miguel, Azores

Armando Carias-Henriquez, Mariana Couto, Fenja Freiin, Grote Richmond, Yeboah Marc Oppermann, Tiara Neysa Amadea; Dr. Maciej Pietrzykowski and Dr. Liliya Satalkina

The Azores archipelago, situated in the heart of the Atlantic Ocean, boasts a unique blend of natural beauty and cultural richness. São Miguel, the largest island in this Portuguese autonomous region, stands as a testament to this allure, captivating adventurers and explorers alike with its diverse landscapes and attractions (Guerreiro, 2019). Amidst this backdrop of natural splendor, the island has emerged as a burgeoning hub for adventure tourism, drawing attention from renowned international publications such as Bloomberg, BBC, and Forbes (Ponte et al., 2018). Read more

Opportunities and challenges of healthcare digital entrepreneurship focused on AI systems in enhancing health equity: Final report

Amal Ashraf, Mais Hassan, Ines Ilollari, Ashish Maheshwari, Nicolás Uribe Salazar; Dr. Liliya Satalkina

Advances in technological development are ever-increasing at all times; consequently, a rapid increase and changes in digital technology have revolutionized healthcare delivery globally (Mohammed-Nasir et al., 2023). Digital health through artificial Intelligence, telemedicine, genomics, robotics and many other innovative technologies, is already changing in many ways how medicine is being practiced around the world. Read more

Organisational Improvisation in Polycrises: How do organisations deal with continuously disruptive events?

Alan Dill, Boris Stamenov, Elissa Tokusato, Jonathan Tertsunen, Nino Samsonidze; Associate Prof. Mag. Dr. Lukas Zenk

The 21st century has borne witness to the increasing prevalence of polycrises, instances “…where disparate crises interact such that the overall impact far exceeds the sum of each part”, as defined in the World Economic Forum’s 2023 World Risk Report (WRR) (WEF World Risk Report, 2023, p. 9). While such crises also existed in the past, the contemporary, complex, globalised, industrialised and digitalized world has provided ample opportunity for myriad interconnected and -dependent polycrises to form. Read more

Sustainable Resilient Communities: The Case of Langau, Austria

Yee Thu Aung, Pouya Janghorban, Roza Mahmood,Thandiwe Majama, Felita Viegas, Marianne Beau Goldy Yanch; Dr. Ilja Steffelbauer.

There is ample availability of research and studies that focus on sustainability in cities and urban policies that is also directed by UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, number 11 aiming at sustainable cities and communities. This report shifts this dominant focus by attempting to add to the body of research that highlights the need and strategies for sustainability in small towns and rural areas. This research applies a condensed version of the Transdisciplinarity Field Research Training to the case of Langau, a town of 700 people situated on the border of Austria to Czech Republic. Read more

Vulnerability Space: Vulnerability Meeting Industry in Austria

Anna Pruttseva, Miguel Lucea, Mobin Uddin, Muhammad Ahmad Qamar, Nur Okta Milatina; Associate Prof. Mag. Dr. Lukas Zenk

The meeting industry is related to the core of any organization, business, community, or workplace which helps them interact, coordinate, met and solve problems. Within the context of Europe, Austria is of utmost significance when it comes to being a cultural center of the continent that innately propels tourism potential. It further has good accessibility for having a central location in Europe that makes it suitable for having a massive infrastructure of the meeting industry that is quite visible both in Vienna and in other cities. Read more

Intelligent systems in providing political information/news: How to prevent the destruction of democracy in Austria caused by Intelligent Systems

Allena Arnold, Larissa Gehlen, Yasmine Jhabli, Ilya Lavrov, Nowai Linn; Dr. Cornelia Sindermann, Mag. Günther Schreder

Austria, a nation with a rich democratic tradition and a strong commitment to democratic values, undoubtedly recognizes the importance of preserving the democratic process and ensuring its citizens have access to unbiased and accurate political news and information. However, as the integration of Intelligent Systems is becoming increasingly prevalent in the dissemination of political news and information to the public, concerns have arisen about the potential for these systems to undermine democratic capabilities, particularly in the context of electoral events. Read more

Appification of the Vienna International Airport

Yudai Aoyagi, Yi Meng E, Steven Go, Nia Makatsaria, Shuvro Sen; Mag. Nicole Hynek, Mag. Günther Schreder

What can the airport offer as a ‘traveler app/ applification’ that provides travelers with an integrated, and personalized information and guidance system that makes their stay pleasant, safe, enjoyable, and meets their needs in a special way to be a competitive hub. Read more

The Role of Data Analytics and Big Data for Austrian MedTech SMEs : A project performed as part of the Transdisciplinary Field Research Training under the TISE Program

Kamilya Issaliyeva, Chiara Miozzo, Ngan Pham, Diana Ruiz, Franziska Schranz; Dr. Liliya Satalkina, Christiane Ulbrich

Small and Medium Enterprises are a fundamental part of the Austrian economy, constituting almost 99.6% of all the national companies in 2020, with an added value of 134 billion euros („SME DATA“, o. J.). However, in relation to digital technologies, Austrian SMEs are overall less advanced than the European average. These companies are using Big Data comparatively less than their European counterparts, 8% compared to 14% of SMEs EU-wide (Bundesministerium für Digitalisierung und Wirtschaftsstandort, 2022). Read more