On November 15th, 2016, United States Ambassador to the Czech Republic Mr. Andrew Schapiro gave a lecture to a packed hall of students in the Charles University Law Building. The impressive turnout for the event was somewhat unsurprising, given that the main focus of the Ambassador's lecture was the recent US Presidential election.

Emma McCullough from the University of California, Santa Barbara is a scholarship holder of the Fulbright Commission. She is currently spending a research year at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague.

Charles University maintains its excellent reputation as one of Europe’s most exciting institutions for international and Erasmus students – for Thursday, the 20th of November, was an incredible evening enriched with knowledge and culture on the topic of Azerbaijan. 

One topic that is closely followed by ecologists is the spontaneous spread of non-native species in the countryside. Amongst the most well-known of these in the Czech Republic is the black locust tree or bush, which in some areas creates unbroken, impenetrable ‘forests’, destroying the original vegetation. Dr. Jiří Reif and his team from the CU Faculty of Science are currently starting a new study which aims to clarify the effect that invasive plants have on birdlife in the Czech Republic.

For thirty years, Vladimír Hanzel was Václav Havel’s personal secretary, including his entire term as president. They met in 1986, brought together by a shared love of music. They also lived through the turbulent days of November 1989 together, which Hanzel recalled.

For many, the Erasmus exchange is too short – especially if they arrive at their host university only for the few short months of the winter semester – and their home university requires them to return for the start of the next term already in January. For these students, the month of December is mostly about preparing for and attending exams. The more lucky ones, allowed to stay longer – be it till the very end of the winter semester in February or even until the end of the summer term in June – can join the various programs of the International and Erasmus Clubs prepared especially for the Christmas season.

Are gardening colonies a relic of the past or are they still an important part of today’s urban society? What makes people travel to the garden areas? Will city gardens still exist in the future? Answers to these questions are being sought by a research team headed by Mgr. et Mgr. Arnošt Novák from the department of social and cultural ecology at the Charles University Faculty of Humanities.

As an Erasmus Student I was unaware of the traditions of the Easter celebrations in Czech Republic. Fortunately, the Erasmus Club of Faculty of Arts organised a Czech Easter Afternoon where over 50 Erasmus and other exchange students were able to learn about this seasonal event and the traditions it holds.

This article was written for a competition held by Charles University by the occassion of this year’s 30th anniversary of existence of the Erasmus programme. The author is Valentina Appolonova from Tallinn University in Estonia, currently hosted by the Faculty of Education of Charles University.

Few national holidays are more significant in the Czech Republic than November 17 - marking two major events in their history 50 years apart: the murder of Czech students by the Nazis in 1939 and the harsh repression that followed, and the start of the Velvet Revolution in 1989 that brought down totalitarianism in Czechoslovakia.

As a Pharmacy student at my home university, during my Erasmus traineeship I have been staying in the city of Hradec Králové, where Charles University has its Pharmacy faculty. Here, I have been working in the department of Biological and Medical Sciences, specifically with a group of scientists who are researching endothelial dysfunction.

As the Easter weekend passes here in Prague, the postcard photographs and paintings of Christ are everywhere, seen available to buy at the markets and local stalls or plastered on street walls across the city. We are all familiar with the image – Christ, pinned to the wooden cross, limply hanging in a position of suffering, head hung low with the prickly, painful Crown of Thorns piercing his temples.

The key mission of Charles University is the development and propagation of knowledge and education. The University can find the purpose of its existence laid out in the famous text, dear to the university, of Charles’ deed of foundation, which states that those who “hunger for the fruits of knowledge” shall, in the university, find a “table laid out for their pleasure”.

The topic of the Lecture was 'Protection of Personality in the UK: The Development of Privacy from the 1960's to the Present Scandals', and as an ex-journalist, barrister, judge and teacher, Professor Smith was in an excellent position to lecture on the topic.

“As the leader of Zimbabwean students who stood up to the regime, I wasn’t allowed to continue my studies at any university in the country. My only option was to leave for the Czech Republic,” says Kurayi Garnet Hoyi, one of the former leaders of the Zimbabwe National Students Union.

It’s a tradition of the Erasmus Club at Faculty of Arts to invite the Erasmus students for a Czech Easter Afternoon on one of the Fridays before Easter holidays. This year, the Czech tutors (Jana, Tanja and Ivana) met with about 30 Erasmus students on Friday 30th March to share with them how Czech Easter is celebrated.

“Should I do it?”– a boundless, universal question. A question that presents itself at some of life’s most pivotal moments. However, the answer is often more complex than it needs to be. Often our conceptual understanding of time, our fear of the unknown and financial viability leave us bound to a resounding “No”.

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.

Brian Ó Conchubhair, Associate Professor of Irish Language and Literature at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, US), shone light on the arguably ambigious nature of modernism in Irish-language literature and culture, in his visit to Charles University students this March.

Saturnin, the 1942 novel by Zdeňek Jirotka, has proved to be enduringly popular with Czech readers, and it's not hard to see why. The novel tells the story of a well-to-do young man and his mischievous, quick-witted servant, as they encounter demanding family members, charming young women, escaped lions and troublesome plates of doughnuts.