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Young teens wearing baggy jeans. Listening to Nirvana. On a Walkman. Have you fallen through a time portal? This 90s revival reminds us that inklings of alternative futures can already be found in the recent past – often in unexpected trends and among unlikely people.

Verklaring over Academische Vrijheid van alle rectoren van de Nederlandse universiteiten.

Members of the organizing team of the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development Special Interest Group on Futures speak out against violence used against our students and staff.

Statement by Transforming Cities team on violence against students and staff.

Blog by Ilse van Liempt- film review L’histoire de Soulemanye by Boris Lojkine

The core team of the Contesting Governance Platform releases a statement concerning the police violence of May 19.

While Europe is investing billions in digital infrastructure, we must not forget that technology also requires people who can work with it.

The core team of the Contesting Governance Platform releases a statement in support of the student encampment at Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ��.

The concept of utopia has a dark colonial past that lives on through overgrown dreams that leave little space for other possible futures. The Utopia*Art*Politics Collection explores the alternative potential of utopia—not as an elite blueprint of predefined ends—but as a radically collective method for justice.

In this open letter José van Dijck en Albert Meijer express their concern about Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ��’s increasing reliance on services from Big Tech companies.

Henk Kummeling has been Rector Magnificus of Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ�� since 2018. As he will be stepping down as Rector Magnificus on March 26, 2025, he wrote a column for Illuster.

Lacking visions of better possible futures, many have been drawn towards imagining rosy stolen pasts. Yet, we are not witnessing an isolated disease of the imagination in the form of populist nostalgia. There is a broader dynamic at play—namely, the projection of certainty into the future in ways that diminish our collective ability to remake the present. This wider disease of the imagination extends beyond populist nostalgia and includes several strains with divergent political roots.

"What benefits the climate does not always benefit nature." This dilemma was central to the discussions at the 16th United Nations Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP16), held in Cali, Colombia.

In the summer of 2022, 100 Dutch farmers parked their tractors outside of the Asylum Seekers’ Centre in Ter Apel, on the Netherlands’ north-eastern border with Germany to protest that they “no longer feel welcome” in the Netherlands. With right-ring populists being elected across the world, the action offers lessons that progressive environmentalists sorely need to hear.

On International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Salvatore Nicolosi and Türkan Ertuna Lagrand point to groundbreaking rulings in asylum and refugee law.

November 6. The morning after polls close in America...is Trump just the unspoken desires of a global north elite that never really wanted to give up power? Very few of us are truly ready for the societal transformations required to achieve climate justice on a global scale.

What if the university would be a meeting place? A place for spontaneous and informal encounter between science and society? Blog by Lisette van Beek

Academics, frustrated by limited impact on the ecological crisis, are turning to scholar-activism. Embracing this could foster new knowledge, networks, and social change. Blog by Lisette van Beek

For the opening keynote for the 16th Nordic Environmental Social Sciences Conference, Josie Chambers chose not to focus on the dominant ways people have been co-producing knowledge and action for sustainability. But rather, to take stock of the field and ask: what exactly are we co-producing? Are we producing knowledge that reinforces how the world is? Or are we imagining and prefiguring explorations of how the world can be otherwise?

The means we use to reduce the carbon footprint result in a gold rush for minerals. A focus on a material footprint could connect the climate issue to resource extraction and justice issues, four UU scholars argue.

Last weekend, I cried at an academic conference. It’s not normal for me. I look back with part gratitude, part embarrassment. The experience has triggered me to transform how I carry myself in professional spaces. It started off pretty run-of-the-mill…

Perhaps it requires a radically different approach to education to empower students to become ‘agents of change’? Blog by Lisette van Beek

Ecocide in Indigenous conceptualizations is not only one crime, but it comprises multiple crimes simultaneously.

Art-science collaborations are on the rise everywhere. Yet, what these relations constitute in practice is less clear. The very term “art-science” is itself limiting. Many collaborations seek to go beyond this simple binary, exploring the potential that exists at the intersection of artistic and research practices.

From most people’s gut perspective, belonging is rooted in a kind of from-ness. Like a tree, you are rooted in a place. Though it’s not easily admitted in liberal society, one’s rootedness is usually detected by skin colour and facial features. Even amongst the most welcoming of insiders, there is an unspoken assumption that those here first get to decide how things ought to be. On a secondary level, cultural behaviour confers belonging. “Okay, their grandparents aren’t from here, but at least they get our way of life.”​​​​​​​ But what is this “our” anyway?​​​​​​​