Events

Artificial intelligence is changing the way we wage war. Drones are becoming increasingly autonomous, algorithms are helping to collect and analyse intelligence, and swarm technology is enabling new forms of military deployment. What seemed futuristic until recently is already becoming a reality on the battlefield.

Ann-Katrien Oimann, an AI ethicist and reservist with the Ministry of Defence, outlines where we stand and the choices we need to make as a society.

Will you join us? Register now for free!

Does your church council or church organization own farmland? Then this networking event is for you. These lands hold more potential than you might think — for local food production, for the community, for the future. Engage in conversation with experts and other church landowners and discover how to manage your land sustainably and with a long-term vision.

These networking days (in Dutch) are organized by De Landgenoten, UCSIA and Ecokerk.

The registration fee is €15 (including lunch and drinks).

Does your church council or church organization own farmland? Then this networking event is for you. These lands hold more potential than you might think — for local food production, for the community, for the future. Engage in conversation with experts and other church landowners and discover how to manage your land sustainably and with a long-term vision.

These networking days (in Dutch) are organized by De Landgenoten, UCSIA and Ecokerk.

The registration fee is €15 (including lunch and drinks).

UCSIA will present the initial findings of the SL4DC project during this training workshop (in English) as part of Higher Education Transformation Week.

More information will follow shortly.

This exhibition traces the presence of Francis of Assisi in the collections of the Ruusbroec Institute Library. This year marks the 800th anniversary of the saint’s death, and 2026 has therefore been declared the Franciscan Jubilee Year.

Open Monday to Friday from 9.30 am to 12.30 pm and from 1:00 pm to 4:30 pm.
Closed on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.
Closed during the Christmas holidays from 21 December to 3 January inclusive.

This is a project of the Jesuit Heritage Foundation, a collaboration between UCSIA and the Ruusbroec Institute.

An exhibition on Francis of Assisi. Eight hundred years ago, Francis of Assisi died. He exchanged wealth for simplicity and continues to inspire us to this day: as a brother to the poor, a friend of nature and a voice for a life with less.

In this exhibition, the Ruusbroec Institute traces the marks Francis left in its own collection. Be among the first to discover the exhibition at the opening.

On 14 March 2026, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Jürgen Habermas, passed away. Following his death, political sociologist Peter Thijssen revisits a question that runs like a thread through Habermas’s work and may be more pressing today than ever: what holds a democratic society together when its citizens fundamentally differ from one another?

UCSIA is organizing this lecture in collaboration with Pax Christi.

The Catholic Church has always had to find its footing in a changing media landscape and technological innovation. But what does that history tell us about how the Church approaches artificial intelligence today?

In the public lecture of the UCSIA Summer School Alessandra Vitullo (Sapienza University of Rome) traces more than a century of Catholic engagement with technology, arriving at the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas and the questions it raises about faith, human dignity, and our automated future.

Free and open to all.

This year, the UCSIA Summer School focuses on the digital transformation of religion and explores how online media are reshaping religious practices, audiences, authority and politics.

Are you a doctoral student or postdoctoral researcher working on this topic? Then be sure to apply for this intensive, fully funded programme of interdisciplinary exchange, mentoring and networking in Antwerp.

The 15th cohort of trainees from the European Leadership Programme has successfully completed their training. The graduation ceremony will feature a speech by Teresa Anjinho, European Ombudsman, who brings a unique perspective from her role as guardian of good governance and transparency within the European institutions.

The European Leadership Programme is an initiative of JESC, the Jesuit European Social Centre. UCSIA is one of its long-standing partners.

In this panel discussion, students from the FUCE Summer School will take the floor. They will share their dreams and concerns about the future of Europe. Lecturer Peter Hanenberg (Universidade Católica Portuguesa) will moderate the discussion.

How does artificial intelligence shape the way we remember and reconstruct the past? Professor Jasna Ćurković Nimac (Catholic University of Croatia) will address this question in a public lecture of the FUCE Summer School.

For more than seventy years, the European project has been animated by the hope of peace. Yet recent years have shown how fragile that hope remains.

The 2026 FUCE Summer School, titled European Humanism in the Making of Peace, invites students and scholars to reflect on how peace can once again become a creative, moral, and cultural project for Europe.

An engaging evening on statelessness — an urgent yet often overlooked human rights issue affecting thousands of people across Europe. Keynote speaker Christiana Bukalo, founder of Statefree e.V., will open the evening with a lecture exploring the historical, philosophical and contemporary dimensions of statelessness, followed by a moderated panel debate with experts from academia, civil society and institutional practice.

The programme will be in English.

Does your church council or church organization own farmland? Then this networking event is for you. These lands hold more potential than you might think — for local food production, for the community, for the future. Engage in conversation with experts and other church landowners and discover how to manage your land sustainably and with a long-term vision.

These networking days (in Dutch) are organized by De Landgenoten, UCSIA and Ecokerk.

The registration fee is €15 (including lunch and drinks).