Institute Digital Communication Environments HGK Basel FHNW

Please join us on Thursday April 30 for the next lecture of this semester’s lecture series ‘Return’ with Philip Burton.

Philip Burton, is professor emeritus and founding chair of the graphic design program in the School of Design in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts at the University of Illinois Chicago. Professor Burton has practiced and taught design for forty years, having held full-time faculty positions at the University of Houston, William Marsh Rice University and Yale University. He has coordinated and taught at the Yale-Brissago Program for more than 20 years. He served on the MDes faculty, the joined program between University of Illinois Chicago and the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Basel, Switzerland. He is also a consultant to Chicago-based, Morningstar, Inc., a global financial investment research company. In 2003 he was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and was awarded the Julius Adams Stratton Prize for Intercultural Achievement by the Friends of Switzerland/Boston in 2016.

5.30 pm, Freilager-Platz 1, Münchenstein, Open to public.

Please join us on Wednesday, April 15, for the third lecture of this semester’s lecture series, ‘Return,’ with Max Frischknecht.

Max is a designer whose work and research is situated within the fields of Digital Humanities, Critical Data Studies, Generative Media and Data Visualisation.
He is interested in how data and algorithmic forces shape societal, cultural and political discourse and influence human interpretation. To explore a plurality of perspectives on data and critically interrogate it, he utilises generative design and creative coding. His research touches on topics such as the relation between data, social equality and oppression, digital sovereignty and resilience, sociotechnical imaginaries and questions of epistemology as well as counter data and data activism.
He is lecturer for Data Cultures + Technology in the Data Design + Art program at Lucerne School of Design, Film and Art​, holds a PhD in Digital Humanities from the University of Bern (2025) and a Master in Design from the University of the Arts Bern (2019). In 2023 he was a visiting PhD Student at the Institute for Comparative Media Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and part of the MIT Active Archives Initiative. As a member of the Digitale Gesellschaft, he is committed to digital sustainability and privacy.

In this series, we have invited seven alumni to return to the Institute Digital Communication Environments (IDCE) and speak about their professional development since graduating from our BA, MA, or MDes programs. Active internationally across diverse fields — from professional practice and research to academia and curatorial work — the speakers will share insights into their career paths and experiences since completing their studies in Basel.

5.15 pm, Freilager-Platz 1, Münchenstein, Open to public.