Monday 27th October, the Institute of Political Science at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University was pleased to host the City University of Hong Kong's Professor Joseph Cheng. Professor Cheng, in association with the International Documentary Film Festival Jihlava, presented information regarding Hong Kong's current tense struggle with China to regain political autonomy and invited discussion with the audience.

It is a nice tradition of the EAIE, European Association for International Education, to open its annual conferences with several Campus Tours at the premises of the universities in the city or region which hosts the EAIE conference that particular year. In September 2014 the EAIE conference with the title “Stepping into a New Era” took place in Prague, bringing to the city over 5000 higher educational professionals.

On October the 16th 2014, an open lecture was held at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University titled Hagiography and Historiography in Medieval Iceland; the main speaker being Professor Ásdís Egilsdóttir from the School of Humanities in the University of Iceland. The lecture proved to be an interesting insight into the medieval era while successfully outlining the limitations as well as the benefits of the hagiography and historiography when applied to this particular period.

On Thursday afternoon, 23 April 2015, the American Center of the U.S. Embassy in Malá Strana hosted a variety of delegates including embassy officials, students and scholars. This event, co-hosted by the Prague Security Studies Institute and the Institute of Political Studies of Charles University, aimed to answer one question, “what does space security in the 21st century entail?”

On November the 6th through to November the 7th, a series of lectures was held at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, titled “The First Decades of the Prague University: Transforming Intellectual Space in 14th-century Central Europe.”

Room number J1034, the biggest lecture room in Jinonice, is one I have never entered before the audience with the US ambassador Mr. Andrew H. Schapiro but it was full by the time he and his bodyguard entered followed by a little train of politics club members who had set up the event.

As a politics student, the relentless coverage of the forthcoming elections in the United Kingdom have caught much of my attention as it looks to be one of the country’s most tightly contested and difficult to predict elections in recent times. To shed light on the subject, last month Charles University was visited by a guest lecturer, Mr Stephen D. Fisher, a professor in political sociology from Oxford University. The topic of the lecture was the role of election forecasting in the UK, with insights given to the current constant polling culture in the country, as well as some predictions from Mr Fisher himself.

Master Jan Hus is a person tightly linked to several places: Husinec, Constance, Bethlehem Chapel, and, to a great extent, also the Charles University. That’s why we wanted to present this important link to the public. Master Jan Hus was the rector of the university in Prague, and his bronze sculpture by Karel Lidický is therefore rightfully built in the internal yard of the Carolinum.

On Wednesday afternoon, 29 April 2015, Charles University’s Faculty of Law, hosted a lecture which questioned whether the European Court of Human Rights (EUCHR) could act as a Constitutional Court for Europe. Professor Geir Ulfstein, who lecturers at the University of Oslo at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, has massively contributed to the field of European law through his numerous academic publications. For this reason, the event was attended by numerous European legal scholars in order to hear what the Professor had to say about the possibility of supranational European Constitutional entity.

Are you planning to attend the exhibition Expo Milano 2015? CU Centre for Information, Counseling and Social Services presents you with an option to purchase a reduced entry ticket. As CU students, you will only pay 10 €!

Czechoslovakia 38-89: Assassination simulation game, developed by experts from the Charles University Faculty of Arts and Faculty of mathematics and Physics in cooperation with the Institute of Contemporary History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic has won first prize at the prestigious Games Learning Society Showcase 2015, held in Madison, USA.

As European citizens we can count ourselves lucky to live in one of the most stable, developed regions on the planet. However with their consistent placing at the top of every index, table and graph out there, from quality of living to longest life expectancy, to happiest people, there is one group of countries that always reign supreme. The five golden boys of Europe – Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark – or the Nordic countries as they are also known, can seemingly do no wrong.

The second Summer School of Experimental Surgery was organized under the auspices of the Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen, Charles University in Prague. The course lasted two weeks from 6th of July to 17th of July 2015 and aimed not only to demonstrate experimental surgery in practical exercises, but also introduced students to the possibilities, limits and boundaries of the field.

On a typically-British, grey September morning in 1978, Bulgarian Cold War defector Georgi Markov was poisoned in a mysterious attack which would eventually claim his life. On March 24th 2015 in the Faculty of Law of Charles University, Markov's presiding physician Dr. Bernard Riley explored the details behind the assassination of the well-known Bulgarian dissident writer.

This informative talk on the past decade of Lithuania’s membership in the European Union given by Mr. Mindaugas Stanys, the Second Secretary of the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania to the Czech Republic was an intimate affair with the people in attendance clearly very interested in the topic at hand.

When I first arrived into the closed poetry evening on the transnational migration of form with Jahan Ramazani, I didn’t quite know what to expect. A group of around twenty of us gathered into the classroom, decorated with bookshelves all along the walls. However, the moment Mr. Ramazani began to speak, I knew that I had the privilege of listening to one of the academic greats of our generation.

I must admit, before attending this ceremonial meeting in the Karolinum on the 8th of December, I had never heard of the Templeton Prize. A rudimentary bit of research prior to attending had me blown away. The award has an incredibly rich history of remarkable recipients, among them the very first Templeton Prize winner, Mother Teresa in 1973, and 2013 winner Desmond Tutu.

The Novembers exhibition of CU (Karolinum, 17. 11. 2014 – 28. 2. 2015) explored the crucial date of the 17^th of November whilst simultaneously exploring the power and manipulation of history; as the introduction to the exhibition stated “this is a story of a myth, political kitsch and calculated propaganda.”

From the 19th to 22nd February the Law Faculty of Charles University hosted a number of participants and judges from various countries for the Prague Regional Finals of the European Law Moot Court Competition (ELMC).

It can be in no doubt that Christmas concerts are a staple of Czech festive traditions, with music playing a centre role in Czech culture. On the 17th of December at 7 pm the Charles University Choir and the chamber orchestra Orchestra Camerata Carolina under the conductor Jakub Zícha performed a Christmas concert in the Karolinum building of Charles University.