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Professor Jakob de Haan has been appointed as Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. He received the Royal Decoration from Mayor Marco L.J. Out of the municipality of Assen.

On Friday 24 April 2026, Jakob de Haan, Professor of Political Economy at the Faculty of Economics and Business, was awarded a royal decoration. He was appointed Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, taking receipt of the accompanying insignia from the Mayor of the municipality of Assen.

For many people in the Netherlands, the flea market is synonymous with bargain hunting, haggling and unexpected finds. But anyone who truly wants to be sustainable should start with a different question, says consumer researcher Marijke Leliveld: do I actually need this?

Bayu Jayawardhana controls robots with mathematical formulas. He does this, for instance, in the new project FARMLAB, in which various types of agricultural robots work together to monitor crops in real time.

The RUG will also be present at the festival grounds in Stadspark on May 5. No long lectures, no complicated jargon but easy to follow mini-lectures by researchers from the University of Groningen. In just a few minutes, they will take you through surprising insights on one central theme: freedom.

On Tuesday 9 June 2026, the annual Ben Feringa Impact Award will be presented. With this award, the University of Groningen honours the unique achievements of its researchers and students in the field of knowledge utilisation. Nobel laureate Ben Feringa will present the prize to the winning researchers and students during a festive ceremony at Forum Groningen.

Climate change is claiming an increasing number of victims in Europe. This is evident from the latest Lancet Countdown Europe, in which 64 researchers from 42 different countries map out the consequences of climate change for European public health. The results of this third edition are published today in the journal Lancet Public Health.

Alette Smeulers’ meticulous research into war criminals and genocidaires has brought her firmly into the spotlight. Her book Angstaanjagend normaal (which translates as ‘Terrifyingly Normal’) features a typology of these offenders. She wrote the book explicitly as a warning to all of us. The thing that worries her most is the commonly held idea that you could not be a perpetrator yourself.