"Through our teaching and research activities, our scientists continuously connect the past, present and future."
Mira Maletic Managing Director Faculty of Humanities
It is with great pleasure that I present the summer edition of our alumni magazine idea, a special edition in which scientists, PhD students, students and alumni present teaching and research activities of our faculty.
We live in a time where enormous progress has been made because of technological developments. The younger generation has embraced these developments and is acquiring knowledge in a different way than the generation that left university lecture halls and school desks thirty years ago. In addition to unquestionable advantages, these developments have led to new societal challenges. A decline in reading among youth is one of them.
At the same time, we also live in a time of deterioration. No one could have predicted that after the civil war in Yugoslavia, a new war would rage on the European continent, the current war in Ukraine. The Jewish-Russian writer Isaak Babel, born in Odessa (at the time, part of the Russian Empire; now Ukraine), immortalised life in the Jewish working-class neighbourhood Moldavanka in Odessa in his stories, but also described anti-Semitism, the atrocities of war, the revolution and the suffering of the common man.
"Can we understand current events without a thorough knowledge of the culture, literature and history of the region?"
In the context of current events in Ukraine, does Babel remain a Russian writer? Or is he also a Ukrainian writer, as some journalists from leading Dutch newspapers state? Can we understand current events without a thorough knowledge of the culture, literature and history of the region?
The above examples – the decline in reading among young people or the consequences of a war on public opinion – are the societal questions to which scholars in the humanities can provide answers from their various disciplines. Through our teaching and research activities, our scientists continuously connect the past, present and future.
The broad profile of our faculty, the interdisciplinary way of working in which various approaches are applied to complex issues, is called Humanities+.
Enjoy the magazine!
magazine for humanities alumni june 2023