60 Years OeAD: 10 years of “Welt im Ohr” (“World in your Ear”). Science and research for development
For more than a decade the radio and podcast series “Welt im Ohr” has enabled people to hear about global inequality and interrelationships issues.
3 min read
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13. December 2021
The one-hour contributions on Ö1 Campus radio are based on the APPEAR projects funded by the Austrian Development Cooperation (OEZA) and on topics relevant to development cooperation. In the context of the 10th anniversary we have produced an “audio show” with 10 anniversary programmes.
“Voices from the South”, for example, gives 10 researchers and students from the global South from 10 years of APPEAR cooperation a chance to speak. About alternative and sustainable energy in Senegal's largest urban district, about queer and human rights or the importance of medical anthropology for culturally different concepts of disease and health or about what “soft” tourism means for global development.
There is hardly anything in the world of science that researchers do not get to the bottom of. The closer one listens the clearer the global interconnections become, for example the complex interaction between water and soil for energy use and nutrition. Climate change, population dynamics, migration and the related land use are all reflected in these changes. Another example is the impact of the historic United Nations negotiations to protect ecological and marine biodiversity on life under and above water, or the history of women's movements, their efforts for equality, for a future without role constraints and without patriarchal power and violence relations. Emancipatory advances that are now embedded in DC practice.
Making the political, economic and social framework conditions in a complex globalised world understandable and tangible for other people, also always with a view to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, is part of the Education and Research for Development Cooperation team’s public relations work. “Welt im Ohr” aims to deepen understanding of this and make responsible science in development policy contexts accessible to a broad public. The radio programmes and podcasts convey transcultural experiences in education, science and research and are an open forum for transnational discourse and reflection.
Knowledge that transcends, unites and transforms historical, geographical, academic and cultural boundaries is something we have often dealt with in the past decade. Knowledge as an instrument of power and superiority has always had to and continues to have to be viewed critically in the context of “development”. Reflecting on the genesis of the concept of development is essential in the young discipline of development research. As is the seemingly utopian desire to apply and make real all knowledge for a world worth living in for all.
“Welt im Ohr” takes its listeners into the vastness of development policy issues. In our studio committed people who are using their knowledge jointly to make the world a little bit better have their say.
“Welt im Ohr” is the OeAD radio broadcast series in cooperation with ORF Ö1 Campus and the largest audio archive in German language on topics of development research and development policy. For the past two years “Welt im Ohr” programmes on other educational topics of the OeAD have also been created and broadcast.
