News Annual Assembly Explores Autonomy in Machines, Living Beings, Society and Art

Share page

Autonomy plays a crucial role in many fields of research, whether in the social sciences, natural sciences, engineering or life sciences. Concepts of autonomy shape human behaviour, technology, markets, social structures, and the design of law and policy. At the same time, there are interactions between autonomy and societal constraints. This field of tension is the subject of this year’s Annual Assembly of the Leopoldina. In cooperation with the Saxony-Anhalt Art Foundation, the National Academy is also presenting works by an artists’ collective in the outdoor area of its headquarters and works by an individual artist inside the building. Both installations engage creatively with the theme of autonomy.

Related Links

The lectures at the Annual Assembly range from engineering topics such as automated driving (Christoph Stiller, Karlsruhe) to social-science questions concerning the autonomy of human decision-making (Ralph Hertwig, Berlin). The experts will discuss how the desire for autonomy can destroy democracies (Philipp Lepenies, Berlin), the perspective of fundamental and civil rights (Susanne Baer, Berlin), as well as autonomy, law and global markets (Ottmar Edenhofer, Potsdam).

Scientific coordination of the 2026 Annual Assembly has been undertaken by the Leopoldina members Alexandra Freund, Bernhard Hommel and Wilhelm Hofmann from the Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Section.

At the opening on Thursday, the philosopher Beate Rössler (Amsterdam, Netherlands) will deliver the keynote lecture on Autonomy in the Digital Society. The evening lecture, also on Thursday, will be given by the automation psychologist Linda Onnasch (Berlin) on Automation, Autonomy, AI? How We Perceive Technical Systems and Interact with Them.

As part of the Annual Assembly, the Commerzbank Foundation and the Leopoldina will once again jointly award the ZukunftsWissen Prize. This year marks the tenth presentation of the award.

The Leopoldina uses cookies

We use cookies on our website. Some of them are necessary (functional cookies), while others are not necessary but help us to improve our online offering and operate it economically.

You can consent to the use of non-essential cookies by clicking on the "Accept all" button or by clicking on individual settings and agreeing to them by clicking on "Accept selection".

You can access these settings at any time and deselect cookies at a later date.

Functional

These cookies are technically necessary in order to provide the following core functionalities of the website:

  • Display of the website
  • Anonymisation of IP addresses within log files
  • Status cookie consent
Comfort

In addition to necessary cookies, we also use cookies to make your use of the website more pleasant. If you accept these cookies, external media will be loaded without your further consent.

Tracking

With the help of statistics cookies, we can better customise the content and services of our website to your interests and needs. For statistics and analyses, we use the product Matomo for statistics and analyses.

External link warning

Die Nutzung dieses Teildienstes erfordert ihre Einwilligung in die Verarbeitung zusätzlicher personenbezogener Daten durch einen selbständigen Verantwortlichen: Matterport Inc., 352 E. Java Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94089, USA. Es gelten folgende Datenschutzhinweise: https://matterport.com/de/node/44. Mit der Einwilligung durch Klick auf „Ok“ kann auch eine Übermittlung von personenbezogenen Daten in ein Land außerhalb der Europäischen Union erfolgen. Die Einwilligung ist freiwillig. Eine Ablehnung führt zu keinen Nachteilen. Eine erteilte Einwilligung kann jederzeit mit Wirkung für die Zukunft widerrufen werden.

Ich bin damit einverstanden, dass bei Nutzung dieses Teildienstes zusätzliche personenbezogene Daten verarbeitet werden. Dabei verarbeitete Datenkategorien: technische Verbindungsdaten des Serverzugriffs (IP-Adresse, Datum, Uhrzeit, abgefragte Seite, Browser-Informationen), Daten zur Erstellung von Nutzungsstatistiken und Daten über die Nutzung der Website sowie die Protokollierung von Klicks auf einzelne Elemente. Zweck der Verarbeitung: Auslieferung von Inhalten, die von Dritten bereitgestellt werden. Rechtsgrundlage für die Verarbeitung: Ihre Einwilligung nach Art. 6 (1) a DSGVO, Art. 49 DSGVO. Verantwortlicher für die Datenverarbeitung Matterport Inc., 352 E. Java Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94089, USA. Es gilt die Datenschutzerklärung von Matterport Inc.: https://matterport.com/de/node/44.

Visit page ▸