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Omnium

From rising global tensions… to open Omnium conversations… to student-led dialogue events… to a thriving UM community. 

Omnium was created in 2024 to provide a safe space for students and employees to discuss a wide variety of topics. Especially the rising tensions concerning the Israel-Palestinian conflict were an incentive to organise meaningful dialogue.

The idea is to exchange opinions, rather than it is to convince each other. Dialogue is a way of interacting that focuses on mutual respect, understanding and exchange of different views.

The aim of Omnium is to make students and employees organise their own events, so the topics of dialogue are brought to the table by them. In practice, this results in tight collaboration between us (being Omnium with support from Studium Generale) and individual students, employees, student associations and university departments.

What is Omnium?

Omnium (Latin for "belonging to all of us") is the UM dialogue platform that hosts events organised by the UM community to stimulate meaningful dialogues and debates. The centre invites students and staff to co-organise events and collaborate with the Omnium Team to bring these discussions to life.

Goals of Omnium:

  1. Build an engaged community: By hosting regular dialogues, we encourage our students and academic staff coming together to imagine the future. Extending the community’s commitment to civic engagement, intellectual growth, and democratic dialogue.
  2. Encourage collaborative knowledge exchange:  use dialogue to strengthen knowledge exchange, enabling the community to collectively work towards innovative solutions and progressive change.
  3. Inspire critical hope: We encourage a mind-set that balances a realistic understanding of challenges with an optimistic vision for positive change. We critically engage with the past and present while simultaneously thinking about how to collectively create an impact in our student community through dialogue.
  4. Encourage Critical Thinking: We aim to engage student and staff in debates that sharpen critical reflexivity. Participants learn to conduct effective communication, connect, and collaborate in the process of considering multiple viewpoints, which are essential skills for personal and professional development.
  5. Build Resilience: Working together we learn to consider potential conflict as learning moments in which we can develop (intercultural) conflict resolution skills and resilience.