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Award of Excellence for Helena Schmidt

Helena Schmidt, since this year university assistant (post-doc) at the Institute for Education in the Arts (IKL) - Department of Art and Education, was honored for her dissertation From poor image to poor images. Digital didactics in art education, supervised by Elke Krasny, received the Award for Excellence from the BMBWF.

The Award of Excellence from the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research has been presented annually to the up to 40 best dissertations at universities since the academic year of 2008/09. In 2023, Martin Polaschek, Federal Minister of Education, Science and Research, presented the award, which is endowed with 3,000 euros each, to 39 doctoral students from 21 universities in Austria and congratulated them warmly.

From poor image to poor images. Digital didactics in art education
With the advent of mobile devices with internet access, the high-quality, rich image has been transformed into a low-resolution, digital image copy that circulates, is edited and multiplied online. Based on the term "poor image", which was introduced by the artist Hito Steyerl in 2009, Helena Schmidt examines images of the post-digital present with regard to their use, reflection and potential in art education. The dissertation outlines the development of the poor image from 2009 to the present day from multiple perspectives and develops considerations for  future-oriented digital didactics in art education.
The thesis was supervised by Elke Krasny and will be published by transcript Verlag in 2024.