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Maastricht, Netherlands is hosting 600 refugees, in a camp that used to be Netherlands first prison built on the basis of the Prisoners Act, focusing on rehabilitation. A grey building, located behind a tall brick wall with steel window frames.

In a time where religious motives seem to form a base for terror, I was deeply touched by the virgil of peace organised by Maastricht University’s student chaplaincy. Several days after the attacks in Paris, Christians, Jews and Muslims gathered here to pray for peace.

We occasionally receive letters here at Maastricht University telling us we are ruining the Dutch language by only offering education in English.

A while ago, I discussed the requirements that subsidy providers have set regarding intellectual property... This blog is only available in Dutch.

In the past few days, we’ve commemorated the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Seventy years! We used to call that a lifetime. While most of us were born after the war, that same war has affected our lives in one way or another, even though we may not realise it.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandfather. Exactly one hundred years ago, at the age of fourteen, he went to work in a metal factory. There were ten children at home, none with more than a primary school education.

Christmas markets in the region were hard to miss in December. The one in Maastricht, called ‘Magisch Maastricht’, was on my way home from work, so I both literally and figuratively couldn’t miss it.

‘Everything valuable is vulnerable’, wrote one of the greatest Dutch poets, Lucebert, in 1974.

Do you remember where you were on 9 November 1989? Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—a crucial moment in the German and European history of the twentieth century. 

Soon I will host a champagne toast in honour of our employees who have given 25 or 40 years of service. These are the happy days in the life of an administrator, you see. It has only been since last year that we’ve been able to honour people who have served 40 years.