The New Mace and Ceremonial Gown exhibit held from the 19th January until 20th February 2018 in the Cloister of the Karolinum, the central point of Charles University nestled in the centre of Prague, showcased the Faculty of Social Sciences new ceremonial mace and gown. The ceremonial mace plays an important role in the graduation and matriculation of Charles University students; students lay their fingers on the mace to honour their commitment and loyalty to the University.

Visit a popular historical site this summer and it’s likely you’ll encounter someone in historical dress from centuries past, re-living an older period, whether it’ll be Roman times or World War II, and undertaking activities such as giving guided tours, and making 18th century cakes amongst other things. Such people are historical re-enactors, and being one myself I can say that we may be a group of people who might bemuse many, but who are just like you… in period dress that is… possibly carrying a sword.

As soon as the news that a large meteorite had fallen near the town of Chelyabinsk started spreading around the world on February 15, Dr. Gunther Kletetschka, Ph.D., from the CU Faculty of Science, started organising an expedition to Russia. Together with his student Ladislav Nábělek and Darja Kawasumi, a specialist in international relations, they were the first foreign researchers to carry out field research in the area where the meteorite fell. One of the things they are searching for is, for example, whether some hitherto unknown organism didn’t fall to Earth with the meteorite.

University of Udine (Italy) belongs to universities with a well-known study programme in Czech language. Students from this university visit Charles University frequently, mainly through the Erasmus programme.

Charles University invites you to a honorary degree ceremony in which the title of doctor of medical sciences, honoris causa,

will be awarded to Prof. Erling NORRBY, M.D., Ph.D., Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, in the Great Hall of Carolinum at Ovocný trh 3, Prague 1, on Wensday, January 30, 2013 at 16:00pm.

Within the cloister of Karolinum, the main seat of “Universitas Carolina” in the heart of Prague’s Old Town, hangs a large yet modest, heavy grey curtain. Behind it sits a wonderous trove of paintings, engravings, chronicles, reliquaries and treasures of a bygone age. Huge canvases adorn the walls, depicting ancient battles and gatherings, all with a central, noble figure: Charles IV.

To mark the forty-year anniversary of the 1973 Chilean Coup d’état, the Faculty of Arts hosted expert speakers on the matter of non-democratic regimes. Perspectives from three continents were present as designed to share and discuss examples and research into non-democratic regimes.

In the final of a series of lectures on approaches to ‘Classical Hollywood’, Prof. Richard Maltby focussed on the production, distribution and exhibition of entertainment films on an industrial scale. During the lecture Warner Bros film, Jezebel (1938, Director William Wyler), was showed as an example of the role of ‘star vehicles’ in Classical Hollywood’s system.

About 30km away from Hradec Králové (135km from Prague) lies a small village that spans both sides of the river Elbe. As you approach by bus the first thing you will notice is the large palatial looking building sitting proudly atop a hill. This is Kuks Hospital, which is also home to the Czech Museum of Pharmacy, owned by Charles University.

Writing an article on the election for a head of state is something of a novelty for me. Coming from Scotland, we have Queen Elizabeth as our head of state. We have elections to Westminster, to the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, but none for our highest representative of state.

An academic who has conducted research on topics ranging from wages in McDonalds to the effect of weather on wine was on the 15th of January awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Charles University in Prague. But it was not for his wine equation, as useful a discovery as it may be that Professor Orley Clark Ashenfelter, the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics at Princeton University, was awarded the doctorate by Charles University.

On March 3, 2011, the Institute of Czech Literature and Literary Studies organized an event to promote the book “Dějiny nové moderny. Česká literatura v letech 1905–1923” (The History of New Modernism. Czech Literature 1905–1923). Co-organized by the Students’ Council of the Charles University Faculty of Arts, the event took place in a lecture hall on the faculty’s premises on náměstí Jana Palacha.

Award-winning Hungarian film Son of Saul – directed by László Nemes and co-written by Nemes and Clara Royer – was recently screened at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts. Son of Saul premiered at the 68th Cannes Film Festival in 2015 – where it won the Grand Prix – and went on to scoop many other prestigious awards, including Best Foreign Language Film at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards or the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film for the year 2015.

Charles University, the city of Prague as well as the whole of the Czech Republic remembers the 700th anniversary of the birth of the Bohemian King and Roman Emperor, Charles IV in the year 2016. Charles IV, son of the last Bohemian princess of the domestic Přemyslid dynasty, Elisabeth of Bohemia, and John of Luxembourg, the first of the Luxembourg line on the Bohemian throne, was the biggest ruler in the Czech (or Bohemian) middle-ages, the founder of Charles University, the New Town of Prague, Charles Bridge and many castles around the country.

The excavation season 2015 took place between the 15th of June and 10th of July (20 days), followed by three weeks of finds processing. One of our main aims during the season was to shed light on stone foundations of the house we uncovered during the first excavation season conducted in 2014. Their surroundings were destroyed by treasure hunters and as such hindered any clear interpretation on the first place.

Almost four times the size of France, but with a population three times smaller than that of the city of Plzeň, Greenland is not a country that often makes the headlines. On Tuesday, the 19th November the Scandinavian Section of the Department of Germanistic Studies at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University hosted a talk with Ms Tove Sovndahl Gant, head of the Greenland Representation in Copenhagen.

In the second half of November, the first Czech cooking class was organised by the Erasmus Club of Faculty of Arts here at Charles University in Prague. The Erasmus students who attended the event learned to make the most traditional Czech side dish, Czech dumplings.

‘Technological symbolism in Putin's Russia: is there a continuity with Soviet icons?' This is the question Paul Josephson (Colby College, Maine) posed to us as he began his lecture in the Faculty of Arts on the 12th November.

In the following interview, the main organizer of the Colloquium Biblicum, doc. ThDr. Martin Prudký, Charles University Prorector for Student Affairs and head of the Department of Old Testament Studies at the Protestant Theological Faculty, talks about this year’s symposium whose theme focused on the linguistic and rhetorical aspects of the “monotheistic” concept of god in Biblical and related traditions.

How do we achieve the most beneficial and educational system for university students? I attended a talk hosted by the Faculty of Education at Charles University in Prague to look in to assessment methods in higher education, specifically focusing on Mathematics, and to find some answers concerning the current state and future of our marking systems, approaches, lecturing styles and learning by framing the state and effectiveness of our current educational models.