Looking back at the 2025 HUMANIST-VCE Conference in Chemnitz 🤓

With more than 90 participants from 12 countries, including Germany, Finland, Denmark, the UK, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Austria, and South Africa, this year’s conference once again proved to be an inspiring platform for exchange on innovative and intelligent mobility solutions for diverse user groups.

We were delighted to contribute to the program: On the first day, during Session 1: Mobility by Public Transport and Infrastructure Planning chaired by Andrew Morris (Loughborough University), Marc Schwarzkopf presented his paper “Let’s build the Urban Future together: An Approach towards User-Centered Digital Support Methods for Urban Planning.”

The day concluded with a great keynote from Carmelo D'Agostino (Lund University) on “Human Error in Traffic: Understanding Failures Beyond Accidents with AI.”

On the second day, Adelina Berkemeier presented her work “Towards Virtual Reality Supported Participatory Infrastructure Planning Processes: Assessing the Safety of Pedestrian Choices” in Session 5: Mobility from the Perspective of Pedestrians chaired by Josephine Halama. This was followed by another inspiring keynote from Nicole Van Nes (Delft University of Technology ) on “Shaping our Future Mobility.”

The day ended with a wonderful conference dinner at Oberdeck in Chemnitz.

A very special moment for us was today, where two prizes were awarded, and to our great delight, Adelina Berkemeier received the Best Presentation Award 🎉. The jury, consisting of the Hashtag#HUMANIST Member Board Sonja Forward, Mette Møller and Andrew Morris, recognised her presentation, the slides and her contributions to the discussion.

Both presented papers were co-authored with Holger Hoffmann and Angelika C. Bullinger-Hoffmann.

We return with insights into current research, new connections, meaningful exchanges, and valuable feedback for the next steps in our work.

A warm thank you goes to Stefan Brandenburg, Ann-Christin Hensch and the entire team for the excellent organization of this year’s conference.

We look forward to meeting again in two years 👋🏼!