In early 2022, the interactive sound artwork 'The Noise Gap' was exhibited at the Science Park Campus. An initiative by lecturer Mieke de Roo and four students from the Bèta-gamma programme: Cile van Marken, Annabel Zwarts, Hilal Demirel, and Simone Flipse. With this interactive artwork, the group aims to raise awareness about gender bias among all students and employees of the university and to initiate dialogue.

Future Planet Studies students were challenged in the 'Reflexive Design Project' course to come up with a sustainable solution to one of the pressing food issues we face: from better soil management to a fairer distribution of yields in the food chain, from the development of food forests to a plea for a vegan lifestyle. Each project team designed an intervention aimed at improving in the existing situation.

Frontiers of Forensic Science (FFS) is a unique lecture series in the Netherlands, initiated by the Co van Ledden Hulsebosch Centre (CLHC) and the Master's programme in Forensic Science. Several times a year, all students of the programme and other interested parties come together to examine a particular theme. In June, the theme was "Death in Paradise: How to solve a forensic mystery?" with a number of special guest speakers: Carry Knoops (Knoops' Advocaten, Knoops' Innocence Project), Gerard de Haas (Former Attorney-General of the Public Prosecution Office of the Netherlands), Jan Rooijakker (former Dutch Police Commissioner for the Caribbean) and Geert-Jan Knoops (Knoops' Advocaten, Knoops' Innocence Project, University of Amsterdam).

The 2022 edition of 'Special Topic in Cognitive Science' (STiCS), a first-year course of the Research Master Brain and Cognitive Sciences (MBCS), was successfully concluded with the so-called Dragon's Den. In a five-minute pitch, students presented their interdisciplinary interventions for 'wicked problems' related to neuroscience.

In the Netherlands, we have no tradition of fantasy stories, although we can learn a lot from escaping to and thinking about fantasy worlds. Indeed, fantasy could well be the key to a better society and the flexible policymakers who have to make it. That is why the IIS launched the honours module 'World Building for Storytellers & Changemakers', with lectures through the accompanying public podcast series 'Fantasy Worlds', in Dutch: 'Fantasiewerelden'.

In the IIS honours module 'National Park Amsterdam: the ecology of the city', students delved into the theory and practice of urban nature. As a final project, the students wrote a - green - future vision for the city of Amsterdam in 2037. They presented their booklet to Ton Denters, ecological strategist at the Municipality of Amsterdam, at a very apt location: Anna's Tuin & Ruigte, located on the Science Park campus. A good example of how nature can be interwoven in an urban environment.

A course with the aim of better understanding the urban, social transformation of the past (decades) in Amsterdam. Why and how did this happen? How can social changes in a neighbourhood also lead to more inequality in various forms?

Equal opportunities in education is a topic that was clearly portrayed by the documentary series 'Klassen', created by the broadcasting company HUMAN and shown on Dutch television in late 2020 and early 2021. The praised series followed several eighth-graders just before their final advice for a high school in Amsterdam. The documentary series revealed interpersonal differences and approaches. Sociologist Thijs Bol has been researching inequality for years and, in this second semester, he teaches the new IIS elective course ‘Klassen’ - which translates to ‘Classes’ in English - about equal opportunities in education, which looks at this subject from different perspectives and deals with the causes. The central question is: what can be done to reduce inequality of opportunity? Thijs Bol talks about the set-up of the course and what he wants to teach the students.

Academic writing is part of almost every university degree programme and most students soon master its art. But can a wider audience understand these scientific articles? Do students know how to inform others about their field of study in a fun and understandable way, without using terminology or complex language? In the IIS honours module 'Uit de ivoren toren!' - which translates to 'Out of the ivory tower!' in English - , students of the UvA, AUC and VU learn to recognise the news value of scientific research and 'translate' the research for a wider audience. In this way, they can contribute to both the scientific and the social debate.

How do we see ourselves? How can we grow as human beings? How do we use science and technology to answer these ancient questions? Over time, our answers to these questions change and our perspectives shift. Max van der Linden, a cognitive neuroscientist and science sociologist, developed the interdisciplinary elective course 'The Eternal Pursuit of Happiness' for the IIS in 2019, which highlights the dynamics between the human perspective, science, technology and society.

In November 2020, Thijs Rebel and Matthijs de Gooijer won the UvA Create a Course Challenge with their idea for an interdisciplinary course on digital warfare, now and in the future. In February 2022, 'Digital Warfare: The Future of Cyberthreats in the Twenty-first Century' was launched with Prof. Paul Ducheine, with whom the students have further developed the course together with the educational developers of the IIS, as the core lecturer. A course in which students learn to give context to everything that is occurring in the digital world, such as the hacking of encrypted networks by the police, Brexit, the manipulation of the American elections, the sabotage of the uranium enrichment plant in Iran and the current war in Ukraine.

Take a remote seat in the lecture hall of the IIS elective 'The Next Big Thing'. An interdisciplinary series in which prominent scientists give a glimpse of the future of science. Because we want to share this knowledge, a podcast episode has been made of each lecture. All episodes can be found on Spotify.