Features

Campus23 August 2022

The Essential 8

Need a break from staring at your laptop or test tubes all day? The VU campus offers plenty of diversions. Check out these 8 can’t-miss hotspots: from a hidden rooftop terrace to an authentic Dutch pub.

Housing19 August 2022

Wanted: young female flatmate who cooks and cleans

What do you do when you’re desperate for accommodation and a homeowner asks you to get into his car? And would you be willing to cook or clean for someone if that means you can get a roof over your head? VU Amsterdam students speak about their struggles with creepy and inappropriate behavior as they navigate the precarious Dutch housing market.

Students23 June 2022

‘We have the right to study here’

How does VU Amsterdam treat people with disabilities? We put the University to the test with two students: one blind, the other a wheelchair user.

Campus22 June 2022

‘I have learned how not to belong’

Writer in Residence Babs Gons recognised a recurring theme in her conversations with students: belonging, being yourself, and feeling at home. Did VU Amsterdam make her feel at home? A look back at the past year.

Campus20 June 2022

‘For real diversity you need to go far beyond political correctness’

Myra Colis is an immigrant from the Philippines and a student mother in her forties. She is a bit of a ‘strange duck’ on the student council, where she helps VU Amsterdam define what exactly diversity means, and how to make students feel like they belong.

Campus14 June 2022

‘I am an easy target for aggression’

Bee Scherer is often addressed as male at the local bakery, but the professor Buddhism does insist on being addressed in a non-binary form at the university.

Society02 June 2022

‘Young people should be the last group to target with restrictions’

The number of people with mental issues has increased considerably in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, VU research shows. ‘But too few people have access to the help they need.’

Students18 May 2022

‘I want to represent minorities in the council’

With her independent party Light Storm, first-year student Valerie Delauney Felipe (19) hopes to take the paralyzing emphasis off of getting good grades and represent the black and female community.

Science13 May 2022

NWO president Marcel Levi: ‘Give your NWO grant back if you’re getting European funding as well’

LONGREAD - The high workload, the brutal stampede for research funding, and the difference between researchers in STEM and in other fields: Marcel Levi of the Dutch Research Council NWO has an opinion on everything.

Society12 May 2022

From Kyiv to Amsterdam: ‘My brain is working overtime’

LONGREAD - They fled Kyiv in order to finish their study programmes in peace. But is that even possible while the safety of your family and the future of your home country is uncertain? How are the Ukrainian students that HR teacher Kilian Wawoe brought to VU Amsterdam coping?