Filter

Campus Drie Eiken has recently gained a building, and what a building it is: the architecturally striking Building P houses a spacious food hall, two sports halls, and a state-of-the-art training hall for physiotherapy students. By all accounts, this place is set to become the new vibrant heart of the campus. A brief explanation from the three key figures behind the project. 

More and more students are facing financial difficulties. That’s why our university launched the ‘Students in Need’ initiative – to ensure that financial worries never become a barrier to earning a degree. Every year, the project provides a much-needed financial boost to numerous students. “For me, it made a world of difference,” says master’s student Rafal Mahan.

Rather than just a safe space, Professor Gert Van Hecken from the Institute of Development Policy (IOB) aims to create a “brave space” in his classes. “The goal is to allow different perspectives to be voiced, even those that clash with what we typically take for granted.” A conversation about active pluralism and how he translates this value into practice as a professor and lecturer.

In our country, professors and researchers have complete academic freedom, as shown in the Academic Freedom Index. This seems so self-explanatory that we sometimes forget how important it is. ‘As an academic, you have to have the freedom to challenge prevailing views,’ says Professor Tom Sauer of the Department of Political Science.

Every afternoon, around two thousand hungry staff members and students find their way to komida. ‘Strictly speaking, we are a mass-catering operation, but we make every effort not to be one’, notes the komida coordinator An Op de Beeck. Early one Monday morning, we donned an apron and hair cap and got to peek into the pots for half a day at komida Middelheim.