Geesteswetenschappen

Every 122 years, Venus crosses the Sun as a black and fleeting teardrop, kindling the awe of all those who dare to know

- by Ananya Palivela

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In an ingenious restoration project, the humble oyster shell is transformed into a powerful tool to halt coastal erosion

- by Aeon Video

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While Vienna’s coffeehouses bred modernism, in Belgrade’s kafanas grew conspiracy and rage. Their clash consumed Europe

- by Anton Cebalo

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What does it mean to make art in the age of inexhaustible AIs? An animator ponders his purpose and reclaims some control

- by Aeon Video

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Tech titans claim the genre inspired them. But all they’ve done is graft their politics onto stories of a better future

- by Ali Rıza Taşkale

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CD – Futura Resistenza

Suzana Lașcu, Robert Kroos and Reinier van Houdt have worked on recordings of old pinball machines – largely from the museum in Rotterdam dedicated to this pre-Internet hobby – transforming them into various musical textures. It →

Stephanie Rentschler employs speculative design and interdisciplinary research to connect the social, ecological, and technological. Her outstanding SlimeMoldCrypt exemplifies this approach. It uses Physarum polycephalum, a slime mould capable of modifying its network of tendrils in response to stimuli, creating →

CD – UNRec

Anouck Genthon and Lionel Marchetti develop with Suite blanche a composition that puts space at the center of its structure, understood not as a simple sound container but as an active element of the musical process. The →

Spector Books, book, ISBN 978-3959058933, English, 240 pages, 2025, Germany

There is a growing cultural interest in the non-visual, in stark contrast to the endless screens that convey the past and present at →

Arvida Byström (author of Inflated Fiction) is a model and artist who uses her physical and digital body as artistic territory. In Biblically Accurate Babe, she utilises an AI-powered website to artificially undress her own body, discovering how realistic the →

Exclusive: Prof Evelyn Welch, vice-chancellor of Bristol University, believes her daughter’s success shows value of arts education

One of Britain’s leading university vice-chancellors has described sweeping cuts to arts and humanities across the sector as “absolutely tragic”, citing her famous daughter as an example of the value of a creative arts education.

Prof Evelyn Welch, the vice-chancellor of Bristol University and incoming chair of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, is the mother of Florence Welch, the singer-songwriter from Florence + the Machine.

Exclusive: Experts fear rise in education ‘cold spots’ and social immobility as 4,000 academic posts lost in one year

Thousands of university job cuts in humanities and social sciences are creating widespread cold spots for languages, classics and theology degrees, the British Academy has warned.

Universities’ finances are so precarious that redundancies are also occurring in business studies, law and English – subjects considered strategically important and traditionally popular courses.

Sara Robertson, Raisa McNab and John Worne fear that Britain risks becoming a monolingual island in a multilingual world. Plus letters from Dr Darren Paffey, Janet Fraser and Ilona Marchant

News that the University of Exeter is planning to cut 150 jobs (Fury over Exeter University plan to scrap dozens of humanities posts, 1 July), with a disproportionate threat to the teaching of humanities, is only the latest in a series of blows to the teaching of modern languages in the UK.

When universities close language departments, they reduce the pipeline of teachers, which further reduces school provision, leading to fewer students being able to study languages at university. Plus, regional closures disproportionately affect students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are more likely to study locally.

Rowan Williams and Mark Kermode join campaign against proposed cuts for arts and social sciences

Leading writers, broadcasters, academics and theologians have thrown their weight behind a campaign to save 150 jobs at the University of Exeter, amid growing outrage at a sector-wide hollowing out of the humanities.

In excess of 21,000 people – and counting – have signed a petition railing against the proposed redundancies at Exeter, which are expected to disproportionately fall on the humanities, arts and social sciences for which the highly ranked Russell Group university is famed.

Open letter urges Labor to reverse JRG scheme, introduced by Coalition in 2021, as cost of humanities degrees reaches more than $50,000

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Tim Winton knows what it’s like to be the first in a family to go to university – “what a breakthrough that is, the kind of opportunities it provides”.

It was at the Western Australian Institute of Technology, studying arts, that he wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer, launching a four-decade writing career.