Dirk Schreiber: Coming from the Siegerland

As a young professor at a young university

H-BRS was a young university at the time, and so was the newly appointed professor. As a result, he decided to appear in a tie so that everyone could see: ‘Here comes the lecturer’. In return, he knew the music of that generation of students and, as he likes to say, the ‘cocktail mixers’. Looking back today, Schreiber says that working with the students kept him ‘young and fit’. And it's easy to believe it when you hear him talk about digitalisation, project management, his new book or the annual summer football match between lecturers and students at the Department of Economics. The professor looks back on the more than 200 theses he has supervised over the past 15 years with a ‘bit of melancholy’ and a certain pride, which he recently cleared off the shelf when he moved out of the department head's office. ‘There are hours of conversations in there,’ he says, ’and it is the materialisation of intellectual work. We don't always realise immediately what we produce.’ And it comes as no surprise that supervising Bachelor's and Master's theses almost seems like a hobby to him and that he is looking forward to the ‘next 200 theses’. He finds theses that don't exactly correspond to his specialism particularly interesting: ‘Because I can learn a lot for myself here.’

People at the centre of information technology

Schreiber also attributes the fact that his work has kept him young and fit to his specialism - business informatics. For him, it is fortunate to be able to participate in such a comprehensive development as digitalisation. He compares the ever-advancing digitalisation to the industrial revolution and thinks it's ‘great to be able to participate a little bit’. He also recognises the downsides, but above all he is always ‘amazed at what is possible.’ Schreiber's approach is to put people at the centre of things. In his view, digital technologies are only ever as good as the interaction with the people using them. It is precisely this question that is the focus of the Institute for Consumer Informatics, which Schreiber founded together with Alexander Boden and Gunnar Stevens in 2021. The institute is investigating how digital technologies are already shaping our everyday lives and how they will influence society in the future. The focus is on questions of digital consumption, consumer protection and digital sovereignty. The combination of computer science and consumer science is unique in Germany.

One certainly very welcome side effect of the institute is that there is close cooperation with the University of Siegen. For all the eccentricity that Schreiber admits to the Siegerland and himself, he feels that he is in good hands there. He appreciates being able to walk to the forest in fifteen minutes and praises the local beer as being above average. It was only football that took the sports enthusiast from Siegerland to Borussia Mönchengladbach (something he has in common with H-BRS President Marion Halfmann). Although he himself admits that it is ‘not so easy’ with this favourite team here.  On the other hand, the dean's colleagues gave him the big Borussia Mönchengladbach chronicle as a farewell gift, which touched him very much. But why the love for this club on the other side of the Rhine, in a completely different corner of NRW? It's best if he tells us himself. He's happy to do it and does it well, but there's no such thing as being taciturn and boisterous.

Text: Martin J. Schulz