International Relations
The department has well-established international relations, due to its former "life". Some of them started twenty years ago, like the Inter-University Center of Post-Graduate Studies (IUC), a yearly post-gradual seminar founded and directed by Profs. Imre Hronszky in 1982 and continued up to 1991 when the IUC was destroyed in bomb attacks. The start of its renewed version - under the co-ordination of Pál Tamás and Profs. Imre Hronszky - was announced. Profs. Imre Hronszky was the president of the committee of IUHPS (International Union of History and Philosophy of Science) in 1983-84. It also gave rise to different relations.
Profs. Imre Hronszky was guest professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Karlsruhe in 1990, while at the University of Oviedo in 1996. He held lectures on Technology Assessment and History of Technology and Science. From the spring semester 1997, Profs. Imre Hronszky and Pál Tamás started a course named Introduction to Technology Policy at the University of Technology of Vienna. The language of the course was English and it endured for two years in each semester. Profs. Imre Hronszky was co-director of the course Social Responsibility for Technological Development at the Summer University of Basque University in 1993 and 1994.
Currently, our lecturers participate at short visiting lecturer programs, for instance within the program of Socrates, our Department has work relations with the Basque University, the University of Cottbus and the University of Potsdam. Three or our lecturers participate at this program.
Under the direction of Profs. Imre Hronszky, two TEMPUS projects were co-ordinated at the predecessor of the Department. These projects, executed in 1991-94 and 1996-98, aimed at the introduction of the basics of modern social sciences supporting technological development. The first project aimed to establish gradual courses like Technology Assessment and Risk Assessment, the second targeted a training of a supplementary degree in History of Technology and Science and a post gradual training in Expertise of Politics in Science, Technology and Environment.
The international relations were also capitalized by students on the gradual training of Technology Management and by Ph.D. students. A student spent a semester at the Institute on Advanced Studies on STS (IFZ), Graz, another had the chance to spend eight months on a research work at the Siemens company in Vienna. Further 3 students spent their half-year vocational training in Vienna, and another student studied in Vienna within the frame of the Leonardo program.
