News

Laity, in the Middle Ages, tends to be seen as ‘the other’. When we encounter the term in our sources it often draws attention to what someone is not: ordained, Latinate, educated.

However, no one would suggest that only clerics shaped medieval culture and partook in its expressions. This workshop will explore ‘the other culture’ and ask about the agents, forms and impulses that it incorporated.

Papers address the culture(s) of the lay elites from the 12th century until the end of the medieval period, covering political culture, devotional practice, and literary culture. The workshop will bring scholars from different medieval disciplines into dialogue with one another and create a space for exchange and a test ground for new approaches.

The keynote lecture on Friday evening will be held by Sabrina Corbellini (Groningen) on "Crossing the Lay-Religious Divide: Spatial Approaches to Religious Literacies in Late Medieval Europe".

Download the workshop poster (.pdf)

This year’s "Hadron Collider Physics Summer School - HASCO 2019" took place from 21 July to 26 July 2019 in Göttingen, Germany.

Founded in 2012, this is the eigth consecutive year that this dynamic, international school, primarily aimed at Master's students, has been offered.

This year, 46 undergraduate students from 18 different institutes in fourteen countries came together for a full week to learn about hadron collider physics. The institutes involved include: Bologna, Pisa in Italy; Ghent in Belgium; Eindhoven in the Netherlands; Bonn, Freiburg, Siegen and Göttingen in Germany; Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Manchester in the UK; Bucharest in Romania; Santiago de Compostela in Spain; Prague in the Czech Republic; Geneva in Switzerland; Bergen in Norway; Stockholm and Uppsala in Sweden; Beijing in China; Ohio in the USA; Johannesburg in South Africa.

With the support of the U4Society partners the Göttingen Green Office has developed a video concept that highlights the sustainable engagement of Göttingen's scientists on a world-wide scale and the general contribution of universities in conveying the importance of sustainable development.

The video 'Dream Job: International Research Career' illustrates the societal role universities and scientists play for a sustainable future. Furthermore, the video raises questions such as 'Which challenges do scientists face nowadays?', 'What opportunities do young scientists have?' and 'What personal aspects are important for a career in research?'.

The workshop 'The Influences of Motivation and Emotion on Visual Processing' brought together junior and senior researchers in cognitive psychology and neuroscience from Göttingen (host), Groningen and Ghent, as well as a number of external speakers and PhD students from six other universities world-wide.

The two-day workshop was focused on the work-in-progress of PhD students and Postdocs who presented and discussed their findings, in order to get further input by their peers and the participating senior scientists. 

Since 2018 members of the U4Society network have been working together on intensifying the cooperation with higher education institutions in Africa, and subsequently established the U4Society Africa Initiative in the course of 2019 with the aim of enhancing the joint collaboration with African HEIs. 

On on June 5, 2019 staff members of Ghent, Göttingen and Groningen have met together with African PhD students from the participating institutions in the framework of a workshop on African-European Cooperation on occasion of the Groningen lustrum conference. Ms. Beth Yoder (University of Groningen), expert on intercultural relations, prepared a tailored-made workshop addressing themes such as 'what is cultural identity', 'how to visualize culture' and 'how to build trust in an international, intercultural setting'.