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MAASTRICHT. In the latest Elsevier ranking, the best and the worst bachelor’s programmes in Maastricht are exactly the same as last year: University College and Psychology come out as best in the country and Medicine as one of the worst, just like Biomedical Sciences. The best UM master’s in the country are: Psychology, M...

What’s it like to be a home chef, to share your dishes with fellow Maastricht residents? Observant visited a Russian and an Indian student who present their creations on the online platform HomeHandi.

The “1970s living room” on the Bogaardenstraat was recently traded in for a hundred-year-old boilerhouse with style. But the new Lumière is not about to start showing James Bond films. Definitely not. What the cinema would like to do is cooperate in a more structural way with Maastricht University: “UM will have free use of Screen...

According to a note by the door, the doorbell to the Boschstraat 58c is broken. At the bottom of the note the occupant of 58b has written her phone number. It’s a considerate gesture. Before she picks up, however, three students with grocery bags cross the road to the flat. Yes, they are tonight’s chefs, they reply cheerfully, as Ischa ...

I have a violin! After regretting not bringing my violin from Maastricht I enquired in the music department about renting one. Rent? They were having none of that. After my audition on a friend’s violin I was whisked into a locked room full of instruments on hold for just such an occasion and presented with my (temporarily) very own violin fr...

The graphic novel is a genre often associated with lighthearted topics, shallow plotlines depicted in garish colors, and dialogue oriented more towards punchlines than introspection. Alison Bechdel subverts all this in her autobiographical novel, Fun Home. Even the title is already a subversion, an act of direct opposition towards the characteristi...

This Observant series gives a voice to refugees (and the children of refugees) who work and study at Maastricht University. They talk about leaving their home countries, their lives before and after their flight, the Netherlands, the refugee crisis and the public debate about refugees. This week we meet Deeba Shahidi from Afghanistan: &ld...

You know us: those annoying students blocking the door of your faculty and almost forcing an Observant into your hands. Sorry about that, but most people just don´t seem to know the Observant well enough to let the matter go around on its own. If you don´t want a newspaper, then don´t take it; it´s as simple as that. We c...

Statistics. That term alone is enough for most students and alumni to summon up memories of deep-seated traumas. From explanations of the theory that are often too quick to be understood to software that seems to be from another planet and intimidating mathematical formulas. It wasn’t all that difficult for UM alumnus, lecturer and writer Vin...

It takes a while for Professor Maria Jansen to find her way up to the students of Lux ad Mosam, who live above their clubhouse on the Bogaardenstraat. In the three years the students have lived there, the intercom has never worked. “That’s why we installed a normal bell”, says Nadine de Hoog. The problem is that it’s a black...