Information Systems, Socio-Technical Systems Design (WISTS)
Awarded the Hamburg Teaching Prize for “Courageous and Cross-Border Teaching”
10 May 2025, by Marten Borchers
Photo: UHH
We, Anton Sefkow, Lukas Musumeci, and Marten Borchers, are delighted that our inter- and transdisciplinary teaching format Innovation by Legal Design Thinking has been awarded the Hamburg Teaching Award in the category “Courageous and Transgressive Teaching” by the Hamburg Center for University Teaching and Learning!
The course is jointly offered by the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences (MIN). It brings together students from diverse academic backgrounds and perspectives to tackle real-world challenges and rapidly create tangible value such as digital prototypes. We achieve this through agile, collaborative work at eye level, which fosters openness to uncertainty, experimentation with different solution paths, and thinking beyond disciplinary boundaries. By combining real-world relevance, iterative development, and shared responsibility, the format becomes a learning space for future-oriented skills such as data literacy, algorithmic thinking, and creative collaboration.
We’re also thrilled that our teaching project Data-driven Solutions for the Smart Hamburg, led by Chikaodi Uba, Jan Krause, Benjamin Klinkigt, and Marten Borchers at the MIN Faculty, was nominated and shortlisted for the Hamburg Teaching Award.
Each semester, students in this project develop practical, data- and AI-driven solutions to real challenges provided by Hamburger Hochbahn AG. The goal is to strengthen technical skills using real datasets and to spark innovation in public transport.
Our heartfelt thanks go to all students who helped shape and nominated our formats, as well as to the Digital and Data Literacy in Teaching Lab (DDLitLab), which paved the way for those two projects over three years ago. We also thank our partners — especially the Refugee Law Clinic Hamburg, the State Working Group of Volunteer Agencies in Hamburg (lagfa Hamburg), Caritas in Niedersachsen, and Hamburger Hochbahn AG — for their excellent collaboration.
This recognition is a great motivation for us to continue designing bold teaching formats, exploring new approaches, and bringing innovation into learning and teaching—together with students and external partners.
We look forward to the coming semesters and further exciting collaborations!
Further coverage:
- https://www.uni-hamburg.de/newsroom/presse/2025/pm17.html
- https://www.uni-hamburg.de/newsroom/campus/2025/0507-lehrpreis.html
More about the lecture formats:
