On May 26th, Charles University in Prague was privileged to host a fascinating and innovative five day research conference and two day international workshop Jews and Gentiles in East-Central Europe in the Twentieth Century under the Faculty of Social Sciences, organised by internal and external professors and various scholars, graduates and enthusiasts presenting their work.

The month of February has for many years in the USA been dedicated to the celebration of African American history. Known sometimes as ‘Black-history month’ it can trace its origins back to the 1920s, when it was felt that more should be done to draw attention to the then under-appreciated history of African Americans.

Charles University’s online magazine iForum has won the national round of the Charlemagne Prize for Young Europeans 2014. Every year the winner is selected by a jury from projects that support a shared feeling for the creation of a European identity and integration amongst young people. The overall winner will be announced on 10 April.

Charles University hosted a topical discussion on the effectiveness of representative democracy on February 27th.  The central concepts were focused on the on-going crisis in which world political systems are facing in retaining core values of participation and active representation.

2014 will see the birth of the next stage in the European Union’s Erasmus programme, one that is the most comprehensive and ambitious yet. Succeeding the Lifelong Learning Programme, which ran from 2007 to 2014, will be the Erasmus Plus programme, and like all previous Erasmus programmes, will last 7 years ending in 2020.

On Friday April 4, Charles University in Prague hosted a lecture by the General Secretary of the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki-moon. The lecture, entitled "The Czech Republic and the United Nations: Peace, Development and Human Rights in a Changing World", was held in the Magna Aula of the Carolinum, the hall used for Charles University's official ceremonies and graduations.

On the 19th of March a lecture entitled “Classical Learning and the Insular World” was presented by Dr Máire Ní Mhaonaigh of Cambridge University in the library of the Centre for Medieval Studies of Charles University.

On an uncharacteristically snowy April 14th, Sacha Prechal, a judge of the Court of Justice of the EU, came to the Faculty of Law to lecture on the cooperation between the national courts and the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). Prechal, who assumed her role as judge with the CJEU in 2010, immediately began discussing the core topics that emerge when considering the interaction between the courts of member states and their EU counterpart.

On Thursday, the 10th of April, the Common Law Society at the Charles University Faculty of Law hosted a lecture in the company of Assistant Professor Arndt Künnecke of the Okan University in Istanbul. A native of Hannover in Germany, but now living in Istanbul, selected a very appropriate title of his lecture “Turkey and the EU”, a discussion on Turkey’s relationship with the European Union.

Despite being one of the most secular countries in the world, the Czech Republic's Easter traditions remain strong. Egg painting, singing and gatherings all seem to be in store for this spring celebration, but no church? I went along to a Czech Easter afternoon at the Faculty of Arts to find out if this was true.