Last year I authored an article with two esteemed colleagues on the method we had developed for producing language learning podcasts at Babbel. We developed a range of techniques and approaches with a pilot season of a podcast for German-speaking English learners, called Auf Sprachreise, which we called ‘Accessible, Authentic Audio for Beginners’. Our goal …
I’ve started my Chinese learning journey, and I’m collecting a list of free resources available to self-study Mandarin online here. I’ve focused on learning traditional characters, but many resources support simplified as well. For transparency, I work for Babbel but am writing this in a completely private capacity. Babbel does not offer Chinese as a …
In the Spring of 2013 I travelled to Iceland with a group of fellow Studienkolleg zu Berlin scholars to Iceland to investigate case studies of digital democracy. We interviewed a series of governmental and civil society actors on their attempts to develop radical (or not so radical) transparency strategies to influence democracy in Iceland and …
I wrote a short article for social science works, a think and do tank based in Potsdam, about how support for digitalisation and data literacy in civil society organisations should be structured- they need to be supported to integrate data into all facets of their work, more focus needs to be put on cooperation between …
A series of documentary TV shows from Adam Curtis focused on the disillusionment with revolution or even reform of society in the West in the 20th Century, leading to the adoption of grand narratives of humans as machines and machines as humans, existing in a cybernetic ecosystem, stable and resistent to change. Curtis’ criticism of …
In 2012 I wanted to travel to Iran by train with friends from Ankara, but my visa got rejected, so I went to Hatay, in Turkey on the border with Syria, on my own and this is what I ate…