Jury prize for Friendship and its Others

According to the jury, the course Friendship and its Others: Coexistence, Coalitions, Conflict, and Care forms a site of friendship and emancipation. Teachers (and friends) Tjalling Valdés Olmos en Divya Nadkarni create a welcoming, calm atmosphere and show students what friendship can teach us about intimacy, care, conflict and disagreement, and how it can help repair divisive forms of politics. As one student put it: 'Friendship is love, and the world needs it.'

The form of the course fits seamlessly with its content. Students wrote letters to each other and to the authors of the literature they studied. According to the jury, the epistolary genre carries ancient connotations of friendship. It offered students the opportunity to connect the personal, the political and the theoretical.

Audience Award

The course Byzantium. Kunst van het Oost-Romeinse Rijk received the most votes for th Audience Award. In her course, Esther Mulders zooms in on the Byzantine visual idoim and image theory, emphasising materiality and the senses. Students appreciate her enthusiasm and 'infectious passion' and admire the way in which Mulders manages to both praise and criticise the period. According to a student, the course is 'indispensable' in the curriculum: 'I certainly wouldn't have wanted to miss it.'

The nominees

Six courses had a chance to win the Education Award 2025. The shortlist was chosen from 70 courses nominated by students and staff. In addition to the winning courses, these were:

• Art and Anxiety - Anna Lawrence
• Images and their Lifeworlds: the Politics of Contemporary Visual Cultures - Aylin Kuryel en Noa Roei
• Dutch Sign Language - Marijke Scheffener
• Literature, Empathy and Moral Imagination - Shahin Nasiri

The jury consisted of:

• Sabine van Wesemael - Director Graduate School of Humanities (chair)
• Marrigje Paijmans - winner Education Award 2024
• Vesna Vravnik - lecturer and member of the Works Council
• Tahira Mohammad - member of the Faculty Student Council

Watch the videos on the other nominated courses below.