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The FNRS has awarded the five-year Ernest-John Solvay Prize in the Social Sciences to Jean-Marie Baland, Professor in the Department of Economics at UNamur's EMCP Faculty and co-founder of the DeFiPP Institute's Centre de Recherche en Economie du Développement (CRED). A major accolade for a career devoted to the study of poverty, informal institutions and sustainable development..

The University of Namur takes another step forward in its commitment to supporting digital transformation. It is joining the prestigious European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS) network as a Partner Institution, via the MINDIT research center (Management de l'Information et Transformation Numérique).

For the past fifteen years or so, participatory and deliberative democracy mechanisms have been multiplying: participatory budgets, popular consultations, citizens' panels, and so on. Vincent Jacquet, a political scientist and coordinator of the European research project Citizen Impact (ERC project, European Research Council), studies the impact of these devices from the point of view of governors and citizens.

Why take English classes when you want to become a veterinarian? How can you teach Spanish to future management engineers? Far from vocabulary lists or lab classes with headphones, these languages are taught as genuine cross-disciplinary skills that are essential for the jobs of tomorrow. 

The lack of primary care is a major public health issue. In 2022, it was estimated that 52 municipalities in French-speaking Belgium were facing a severe shortage of general practitioners. This is a worrying situation that the University Observatory for Rural Medicine (OUMRu) has been addressing since 2023, with the aim of identifying concrete solutions. Working alongside a doctor and a health geographer, Amélie Pierre, a sociologist and lecturer at the Faculty of Economics, Management and Communication SciencesPo (EMCP), is studying the factors that influence access to healthcare, particularly from the patients' point of view. She emphasizes the need to take into account the realities experienced by vulnerable groups.

Nathalie Burnay, professor at the EMCP Faculty and researcher at the Transitions Institute, has just been awarded prestigious WELChange funding from the F.R.S-FNRS for her interdisciplinary research project dedicated to extending careers. This is a highly topical social issue, which she is tackling in collaboration with a team of demographers from UCLouvain.

The F.R.S.-FNRS has just published the results of its various 2025 calls for proposals. These include the "Credits & Projects" and "WelCHANGE" calls, as well as the "FRIA" (Fund for Research Training in Industry and Agriculture) and "FRESH" (Fund for Research in the Humanities) calls, which aim to support doctoral theses. What are the results for UNamur? Twenty-eight projects have been selected, demonstrating the quality and richness of research at UNamur. 

Terminator to talk about AI? Wall-E to talk about technological dependence? The Truman Show to discuss social media? In a new book, two professors from UNamur, Anthony Simonofski (digital transformation—EMCP Faculty—NaDI Institute) and Benoît Vanderose (software engineering—Faculty of Computer Science—NaDI Institute), take readers on a journey at the crossroads of digital technology and cinematic imagination. 

Semantic change, i.e. the evolution of word meanings over time, offers crucial information about historical, cultural and linguistic processes. Language acts as a mirror of societal change, reflecting evolving values, norms and technological advances. Understanding how the meaning of words evolves enables us to trace these transformations and gain a deeper understanding of our distant and recent past.This seminar explores how computational methods are revolutionizing our ability to analyze semantic change in historical texts, addressing a major challenge in the field of digital humanities. While advanced computational methods enable us to analyze vast datasets and uncover previously inaccessible patterns, few natural language processing algorithms fully take into account the dynamic nature of language, particularly semantics, which is essential for research in the humanities. As AI systems develop to better understand the historical context and dynamics of language, human annotation and interpretation remain essential to capture the nuances of language and its cultural context.In this presentation, I will show how computational and human-centered approaches can be effectively combined to examine semantic change and its links to cultural and technological developments. I will present examples illustrating how semantic change can be analyzed across temporal, cultural and textual dimensions."Methods "seminarsThe Methods Seminar is a series of seminars organized at the University of Namur with the aim of fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge exchange. All seminars take place in a hybrid format.This seminar series focuses on advanced methodological approaches, particularly in the fields of natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence (AI), video and image analysis, and multimodal analysis.To stay informed about details of upcoming seminars, please subscribe to our mailing list below. I subscribe to the "Methods" mailing list

More info to come."Methods "seminarsThe Methods Seminar is a series of seminars organized at the University of Namur with the aim of fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge exchange. All seminars take place in a hybrid format.This seminar series focuses on advanced methodological approaches, particularly in the fields of natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence (AI), video and image analysis, and multimodal analysis.To stay informed about details of upcoming seminars, please subscribe to our mailing list below. I subscribe to the "Methods" mailing list

Victimization and identity: the post-heroic society More info to come All TRANSDEM seminars

The Namur Digital Institute (NaDI) is launching a series of original events: "Les Séances du Numérique". Films followed by debates with experts to understand digital challenges and stimulate collective thinking. A project spearheaded by Anthony Simonofski, Anne-Sophie Collard, Benoît Vanderose and Fanny Barnabé.