Luca Mast came home from South Africa and found his views on society profoundly changed. As a Bachelor student in English language and literature, he has a good ear for languages. In this interview, he explains why he chose to learn isiXhosa and Afrikaans, two of the many languages spoken in South Africa and how his interactions with lecturers were different from what he was used to in Switzerland.
Image: Lizé Myburgh
During the summer holidays, students from all over the world come to Bern to attend the university’s international summer schools. Lizé Myburgh is one of them. She gives us an insight into her experience at the Summer School on Climate Change and talks about the most precarious climate change issues facing her Rainbow Nation.
Too many cystic fibrosis patients in Africa die young and often without ever having been diagnosed. In many African countries there are too few test devices that could diagnose the disease. Nada and Michèle, two doctoral students at the University of Bern, launched a crowdfunding campaign to buy a test device and were overwhelmed by the result.
The University of Bern is a member of the European university alliance ENLIGHT. In this interview, Rector Christian Leumann explains why the University of Bern joined ENLIGHT and what it means for students and staff at the University of Bern.
Uppsala is a bustling university town that lies about an hour north of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. The university was founded in 1477 and is the oldest university in the Nordic countries.
There is a place in Europe where the climate is chilly, people are patriotic, and the mellow scent of freshly baked pies lingers in the air. Jule Ksinsik, political science student at the University of Bern, tells us about her exchange experience at the University of Tartu and explains why she advises all political science students to visit Estonia.
Last year, Tibo, a master’s student in biomedical engineering, decided to trade the Belgian flatlands for the Swiss Alps. Tibo has many stories to tell about his experience as an exchange student: from navigating Swiss bureaucracy to taking freezing-cold swims in the river Aare!
The University of Bern offers a program for refugees with an academic background to guide them towards admission as fully enrolled students. Ann-Seline Fankhauser, project leader of Compass-UniBE, and her colleague Solvej Sörensen explain why this programme complements the open lecture hall and what lessons were learned from the preparation year for Ukrainian school leavers.
This semester we welcomed more exchange students than ever before. A record number of 219 attendees joined our introduction events, organised by UniBE International. They benefited from an improved welcome offer. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the team at UniBE International turned the challenges of the pandemic into a project to improve the student experience by leveraging technology and introducing modular events.
The University of Bern welcomed the Vice Presidents of The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities. They are decision-makers on the level of Vice Rectors from all 21 member universities of The Guild. Martina Hirayama, head of the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), joined to discuss the relationship between Switzerland and the EU.