The Summer University 2021 continues until October!

The 24th Informatica Feminale, the International Summer University for Women in Computing at Bremen University, Germany, has started in the middle of July 2021. We will continue until the middle of October.
Until to the end of September, more than 50 courses from the broad field of Computer Science, ICT, and Informatics have been offered to women students in computing studies as well as to practitioners in the field. Students from other subjects get basic ICT and interdisciplinary course topics. Course offerings are in German and in English! All courses are online, this year.

>> go to course list and registration

The women´s network Informatica Feminale is a place to exchange about technical and social developments, which we meet in our every-day life and which are designed by ourselves as technical experts. The Summer University wants to give space and time for critical reflections and highly welcomes experimental debates on the relations of technological knowledge and developments in societies. We especially offer teaching, which deal with applications of technical know-how in spaces for work and life (for example within care, education, health, food, household, mobility, social networking, publicity, sports, militarization, etc.) from feminist perspectives.

All, who want to receive information about the Summer University 2021, are invited to subscribe to our mailing list. Please send an email to if@informatica-feminale.de.

Companies with gender sensible organizational concepts and successful personal management strategies to promote women engineers to a broad spectrum of leading positions are invited to present their best practices to the participants of Informatica Feminale. There will be plenty of other opportunities to sponsor.

International Summer Courses for Women in Computing

For the Summer University Informatica Feminale 2021 we cordially invite women students from all types of universities and colleges as well as women professionals interested in further training from all over the world! You will experience three months of professional studies and establish a network with women having manifold backgrounds in a friendly and stimulating environment at the University of Bremen.

Every year the Informatica Feminale offers compact teachings in computing and ICT.

Entering higher education, developing a student career, transition into labour market and lifelong academic learning are equally in the field of vision. Inter/national lecturers and students meet at the Informatica Feminale in Bremen, Germany to exchange.

Since 1998 the Summer University Informatica Feminale is part of the regular course program of Bremen University and organized by the Fachbereich Mathematik und Informatik (Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science) and the Kompetenzzentrum Frauen in Naturwissenschaft und Technik der Universität Bremen (Center of Excellence Women in Science and Technology).

Funding comes predominately from the Professorinnenprogramm (joint initiatives of the German federal state and the Länder), the University of Bremen and from the Faculty.

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A place for experimentation in teaching

In 1998 the University of Bremen started the first summer university for women in computing: Informatica Feminale is a place for experimentation and professional exchange, with the intention to develop and imply new impulses in Computer Science and Informatics.

The concept of Informatica Feminale was developed at Bremen University and has been transfered several times to national and international places. Informatica Feminale is organized at Bremen on a yearly basis. Every summer 200-250 students participate in some 50 courses.

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Review of the Online Summer Courses 2020

Dear Participants, Lecturers, and Friends of the Summer Universities 2020,

we look back on exciting months full of new intensive experiences: The 23rd Informatica Feminale went online! From July to Oktober 2020 some 50 courses got lots of applaus from student participants nearby and far away.

The International Summer University for Women in Computer Science at Bremen University switched to flexible online teaching in 2020 and the echos of participants were enormous. More than 230 students took part in courses, and were happy about online exchange, talks and discussions.

Our thanks…
As organizing team we thank our fantastic lecturers – the new as well as the familiar – for the exciting, personal and compact teaching.

Many thanks also to all the participants for active participation, discussions, comments and criticism, networking and collegiality. A big ‘Thanks’ goes to those, who for different reasons, would never have been able to travel to Bremen; but they sent us their joy about this online opportunities. We will now think about future ways to combine online and physical teaching in Bremen.

We are MUCH aware that online teaching is not at all comparable to the common, wonderful contacts between lecturers and students we all wish for every summer university. Not to be able to see you in person, to join you during lunch break, to go to excursions or to party together was a great pity and we were missing all of this and more.

Last but not least we warmly thank our student assistants team. It was good to have you as the only students in place at the University during the summer.

Our Review
Our focus 2020 brought some unexpected topicality:

“Boundaries of the Body” 
(Women’s) Bodies are sites of technological developments. Boundaries and limits become increasingly blurred: either through the optimization of health parameters, or the digital and technical enhancement of the body, up to unregulated collection of body-related data, and the bodies suffering the consequences of technology-based warfare. The Summer University 2020 wanted to give space and time for critical reflections and welcomed experimental debates on the relations of technological knowledge and developments in societies. We saw that several online courses integrated these topics.

Our motivation is to present the topics about gender diversity and feminist perspectives on teaching and society as cross-cutting issues, to integrate these into teaching and prevent these from “staying aside” of courses in separate courses.

Our Outlook…
We are curious to read your evaluations and to receive you suggestions. These will be taken into the planning of the next summer university year 2021.

The next upcoming online period will be a good moment to improve teaching methods. But we hope that at least a short version of summer university offers at Bremen will be possible.

We invite you all to partcipate and look forward to welcoming you next summer!

Greetings from Bremen,
Henrike Illig and Veronika Oechtering