Publications 

How much do you actually know about Black people? In an ideal world, asking this question would not be necessary. But as targets of systemic discrimination, microaggressions, outright racist hatred and victims of stereotyping, many Black people, including myself, wonder how it is possible that being Black remains a foreign reality. In non-Black spaces, the knowledge about Blackness is limited to the entertainment industry or the occasional fact about slavery. While one can ar

Songs, trends, and aesthetics from that year are resurfacing as people try to channel the vibes of that era. But the more I see people romanticizing 2016, the more inauthentic and rehearsed it all feels. This collective nostalgia we are feeling isn’t for the sounds and colors of 2016.  What we are actually yearning for is a time when social media was actually social.  Nowadays, every post on social media feels like it's trying to sell you something. Sometimes it’s a product,

Submitting my column has turned into a sacred ritual that starts with loafing, excused as naturalistic research, and ends with a cordial 23:59 email. Somewhere between, I Google “economics”, a sad hail-mary, fruitless – until today. Nestled between tired headlines on tariffs and trade deals, a subtle trend emerged. Titles with “economist” fell into two categories: “Economists say you should (...)” and “Economists were wrong about (...)”. To gauge public opinion, I turned to R

For every student that loves live music, it’s gonna be a very expensive year, because we’re living in the hay-day of concerts in the Netherlands. If you just take a look at the Ziggo Dome’s agenda for 2026, you can see how incredibly full of big artists it is. It just came off of a full start of the year, with five comeback concerts of the Dutch hip hop collective New Wave, and an impressive show by Dave. The coming month, there are legendary performances coming up by Hans Zi

“I’ll never be happy again.” Maybe you have whispered this as you anxiously walked through Wilhemina at 16:30 – everything already dark. Maybe you screamed this as you strenuously biked through the freezing rain that’s clamping onto your already cold and pale skin. Maybe you thought this as you prepare your typical pasta pesto… for yourself… on Valentine’s day. Wintertime in the Netherlands is dark and stormy and not in the “fun rum and ginger beer” way. The cold, lack of sun

I hate  scary movies. I have never understood their appeal. In my mind, it makes no sense why people would willingly sit through two hours of jump scares and underlying tension just for everything to end (usually) well. For you to go back to your normal life — a relatively boring one in which (hopefully) no serial killer with a ghost mask is chasing you, and no clown is hiding in the gutters to kidnap your brother. And to do this for fun!? Incomprehensible. Alas, isn’t this w

During my first year, when the war in Gaza had just begun, I ditched studying for an awfully scary midterm to protest Utrecht University’s ties with Israel. I was charged with a need to scream for justice, for what is right. And at dinner, this feeling carried itself into the conversation between my unitmate and me. She told me that student protests were fruitless, and went on to say that the Israeli-Palestinian “conflict” would not be solved by a mildly recognized university

Fostering diversity is a truly aspirational goal, one that UCU seeks to strive for as its highest value. Diversity helps us understand different perspectives and consider those that were previously unheard before, or are marginalized in spaces of academia. In order to encourage a better understanding of often-silenced voices on the UCU campus, it is important to gain awareness of the challenges facing straight cisgender men in the Liberal Arts and Sciences, due to the recent

Running can suck. But it can also feel fantastic. And it’s almost always both. The positive effects of running make it impactful, not just in theory, but also on campus. Current first-year student at UCU, Camille Grenot, has been running for two years.  “I got into it a few years ago, and I’ve been hooked to the progress that you see,” Camille explained to me. It can take weeks for a less active person to get into running shape, but even for someone with a strong aerobic base

In a sea of UCU committee events, I am an undercover committee event hater. This is controversial, coming from someone who nearly sweated through all their clothes going to their own committee interview, but I stand by it. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the occasional post from UCU Confessions and the random UCU horses account that just popped up, but I sometimes find the rest to be a little performative. By the rest, I mean committees that are going through World War 3 wit

After dozens of tentative introductions and polite small talk during the first semester, phrases like “What’s your name?” and “Where are you from?” remain engraved in my mind. Had they not already guessed from my accent, I would smile and respond: Australia. Almost invariably, the next question would follow: “Why would you leave?” The Australia in people’s minds is idyllic – perfect, even. A never-ending Summer of scorching beach days, crackling campfires, and the smell of si

In February 2025, the Trump administration made the decision to cut roughly 90% of USAID’s current contracts and programmes, amounting to around 60 billion dollars. The main argument that Donald Trump and, at the time, Elon Musk, used to justify the cuts was that helping other nations in need was not the priority of the United States, asserting Trump’s “America First” nationalist policy. A study now reports that the impact of the administration’s decision might lead to 14 mil

‘So, you have acne? Maybe you should try washing your face sometime, or drink more water, or buy an unaffordable skincare product!’ Maybe you’ve also heard this annoying type of advice before. This may be because the quality of our skin has become increasingly important in recent years. The skincare industry has skyrocketed, make-up styles have become more simplistic, and the ‘clean girl,’ with natural, effortless beauty has become the new ideal. Perfect skin is another entry

In early January 2026, heavy snowfall and icy conditions affected large parts of the Netherlands, prompting weather alerts across several provinces. The snow brought widespread disruption: long traffic tailbacks, hazardous road conditions, and hundreds of cancelled or delayed flights at Schiphol Airport. I woke up on the morning of January 4th to an email informing me that my flight had been delayed by an hour. Still, my parents insisted on taking me to the airport early, war

My friends (and at least one professor) could all attest to the fact that I’m rather fascinated by the history of the American Civil War. Not the war itself, though. While the history is definitely striking, what I find most compelling are the years which followed its closure: they have the most to tell us about the disturbing times we now find ourselves in.  Those years, from 1865 till 1877, are known as the Reconstruction Period. For more than a decade, the United States ex

One thing that is synonymous with spring is sex. In Dutch, we have a word for the romantic juices that start to flow as spring emerges: lente kriebels ,   literally, “spring tickles”. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call them a biological instinct; the postcard-perfect baby lambs skipping around the meadow had to come from somewhere. But as the peacocks fan their feathers and the birds flash their luxurious plumage, I started to think: why, in the natural world, do the males dres

Yesterday, I watched a piece of visual media, and it was utter beauty. Its deep and rich colour palettes stood out to me. Nauseous and psychedelic purples merged reminiscently into those green geometric patterns I see behind my eyes whenever I rub them too hard, dripping into a deep, saturated, and grainy red that gave it all this dream-like aesthetic - accompanied by these gorgeous Bossa Nova vibes and song. Of spotted ladybug, ephemeral smoke tiger next to waterfalls, the v

Have you been dying to experience the Oscar-nominated film Marty Supreme  (2025) on the big screen? Well, good news, it’s out now! After dodging spoilers and reading reviews in the 55 days between the U.S. release date on December 25, 2025, and February 18, 2026, you can finally put your frustrations to rest. The staggering delays for non-American A24 followers may feel like a disappointing pattern, but the reasons behind them are strategic and more financially involved than

I have a receding hairline, and I’m concerned about it. It’s 2:00 am, and I am staring at the mirror, holding back my hair with my fingers. As I crane my neck to get a better look at my temples, I can feel the cool, hard porcelain basin trying to hold me in place. The shelf below my mirror is crowded with a wide variety of solutions meant to stop my hairline from receding; there’s one with silver and potassium promising to stop miniaturisation, another contains Pyrodoxine, Th

As the stereotypical Italian that I am, family is everything to me. I was raised by my parentsjust as much as by my grandparents, and every (mildly) relevant celebration is always worth a full-extended-family, midday-to-dusk, four-course meal. A significant part of my family, however, does not utter a single word of English. For the 17 years I spent living in the same provincial town of 3000 souls, this never seemed like much of a problem, but ever since moving to the kaleido