Emilija Stojmenova Duh, assistant Professor and FabLab Network Slovenia Coordinator from Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University of Ljubljana was one of the key speakers at the ACA-CMEPIUS Conference "The engaged university. Linking the global and the local."
The conference, co-organised by ACA and CMEPIUS, took place between 17th and 18th of October in Bled, Slovenia. The event draw an audience of 150 – 200, including central actors and decision-makers from universities and colleges, as well as practitioners and policy-makers from government departments, international institutions, non-governmental organizations and think tanks.
At one of this year's most exciting higher education conferences, dr. Stojmenova Duh spoke about the Smart digital transformation of villages in the Alpine Space, Interreg Erudite, Digital Regions, Interreg CARPEDIGEM, Liverur projects and FabLab Slovenia network. By addressing the issue of digitalization in Slovenia, especially within the rural-urban divide, dr. Stojmenova Duh's talk was much more about social innovation than about technology, being very much in line with her research work of focusing mainly on the fields of open innovation, co-creation, user-centered design and digitalization for development.
Dr. Stojmenova Duh finished her talk by stressing the importance of linking local with global in regard to digitalization. She also called for the creation of an environment of sharing, communication, sharing of knowledge to encourage trust and reciprocity, as, to quote dr. Stojmenova Duh: “/…/ if we are aware of the advantages of technology and make use of them as effectively as possible, while providing adequate protection against handicaps and risks, the results are excellent.”
