The international landscape of higher education has changed significantly since the founding of HfG Karlsruhe. Digital technologies, media infrastructures, and interdisciplinary approaches have become integral to contemporary artistic and academic education.

HfG Karlsruhe understands this development not as the completion of a historical mission but as an ongoing challenge. Its aim remains to provide an education that responds to social, technological, and cultural transformations—critically, experimentally, and with a forward-looking perspective. The close collaboration with ZKM continues to be a defining element of the institution's identity and a central point of reference for its ongoing development.

Today, Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG Karlsruhe) is a vibrant environment for artistic, design-based, and academic inquiry, where research, teaching, and practice are closely intertwined. The university continues to combine artistic disciplines with technological, social, and theoretical perspectives, maintaining a profile that remains distinctive in an international context.

A defining aspect of this identity is its faculty. An international team of professors shapes the university through a wide range of perspectives, methodologies, and critical discourses. Within an openly transdisciplinary framework, teaching extends beyond traditional artistic and design practices to address their broader social, media, and political contexts.

In Communication Design, for example, Professor Paul Bailey and Professor Line-Gry Hørup work at the intersection of visual communication, research, and narrative practices, encouraging a critical engagement with visual culture and communication in contemporary society. Professor Isabel Seiffert contributes her research on Visual Literacy, focusing on visual knowledge production and the ways meaning is generated through media. Professor Tereza Ruller places digital practices at the center of her teaching and research, engaging students with digital cultures and emerging forms of production.

In Media Arts and time-based practices, professors such as Filipa César, Diana McCarty, and Charlotte Eifler expand conventional artistic genres through performative, cinematic, and mixed-reality approaches. Their teaching addresses questions of archiving, movement, storytelling, and the social significance of filmic and performative practices within contemporary media technologies. This spectrum is complemented by Professor Susanne Kriemann, who teaches Code & Image in the field of Media Art. Her work focuses on photography, forensic image practices, and ecological questions within contemporary media art.

The Department of Exhibition Design and Scenography is shaped by Professor Céline Condorelli and Professor Constanze Fischbeck, who develop conceptual, spatial, and curatorial strategies for presenting knowledge and artistic practice. Their work frequently evolves through collaborations with institutions such as ZKM, the Badisches Staatstheater, and other cultural partners, reinforcing HfG Karlsruhe's role as an institutional laboratory for experimental exhibition formats.

Theoretical inquiry forms an integral part of the university's academic profile. Professor Dr. Matthias Bruhn bridges art history and media theory, with research focusing on the history and methodology of visual knowledge production and the role of images in scientific, technological, and cultural contexts.

Professor Dr. Simon Sheikh specializes in critical theory and media philosophy. His research explores institutional critique, artistic research, and the political dimensions of aesthetic practice within the dynamics of public space and power.

Professor Dr. Sami Khatib contributes perspectives from political and social aesthetics, fostering critical reflection on culture and society. His work focuses particularly on ideology critique, image politics, and the aesthetic forms of political movements in a global context.

Professor Nina Zschocke further strengthens the university's engagement with digital aesthetics within art history and theory. Her research investigates the transformation of visual cultures in digital environments and examines the relationship between technological developments, perception, and aesthetic theory. Embedded within international debates on media, power, and social change, her teaching reinforces the theoretical foundations of artistic and design practice at HfG Karlsruhe.

In Product Design, Professor Wieki Somers and Professor Valentina Karga encourage approaches that connect materiality, everyday experience, and social needs, continuing the tradition of critically engaged and conceptually driven design practice.

Professor Wieki Somers is internationally renowned for her poetic and reflective object designs, which renegotiate the relationship between functionality and narrative. Her teaching and research open new possibilities for experimental thinking through materials while examining how design shapes concepts of use, identity, and emotion.

Professor Valentina Karga works at the intersection of design, art, and social reflection, engaging with social, technological, and ecopoetic questions. Her research is particularly concerned with how designed forms of experience influence social practices and how design can contribute to collective processes of transformation.

This diverse teaching environment makes HfG Karlsruhe a university that does not separate artistic, design-based, and theoretical approaches but instead places them in productive dialogue. In doing so, it enables students to develop collaborative, experimental, and socially engaged practices of their own.

Looking ahead, HfG Karlsruhe continues to strengthen its role as a platform for critical reflection and innovative practice. Collaborations with partner institutions such as ZKM, international research projects, transdisciplinary study formats, and experimental approaches to teaching shape the university's strategic development—all with the aim of providing students with an open environment for research, design, and active participation in society.