UT Incentive Fund

The Expanding Perspectives project aims to raise awareness, provide knowledge, and foster discourse and community-building around key topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in scientific knowledge production. It offers a space for reflecting on our scientific practices and positionality while enabling participation in the broader discourse.

The project will facilitate these goals through a lecture series covering topics such as coloniality and decolonization, intersectionality, and class and power in science. Each week, a different expert will lead a session, inviting students, staff, and others to engage with these critical issues during the new academic year (2025/2026).

Submitted by

Felice Diekel, Phd candidate faculty ET
Meadow Poplawsky, candidate faculty ET

We are confident that there are many UT community members that have an itch to contribute to making the UT a better place, either connected to their identity, or to the values they hold.

But how?

By organising the Bring Your Values to Campus event (open to all: staff, student, PhD), we hope to reach three goals:

1. Inform our UT community about all great initiatives, communities, and options out there.
2. Recharge people that feel like they are on their own in making a change; seeing peers and seeing the passion in the room hopefully makes people realise that they are not alone.
3. Activate those who have an itch to contribute, but didn’t feel ready yet. This event could help them make an informed and passionate step towards activism that fits them.

Stay tuned!

Submitted by

• Tom Boogerd, Th!nk with Pride
• Lisa Willemsen, EQUITY, P-NUT
• Matilde Patrignani, Amnesty UTwente
• Vanessa Magnanimo, Women's Academic Network Twente

The University of Twente has 33% international students, who come from around 90 different countries. This wide diversity of cultures and ways of life may present challenges in building connections when starting at the university. Perfect Day is a game designed specifically for this challenge, offering an inclusive and creative way to get to know students from other cultures.

Perfect Day is a board game that revolves around creating your perfect daily schedule—something that is quite personal but can also be influenced by culture. Through open mini-games that spark conversations, players will spontaneously learn more about each other.

By introducing these games at key integration events, such as do-groups during the Kick-In and project groups in Module 1, Perfect Day will become part of the UT community and help foster cultural integration among students.

Submitted by

Camille Goossens, student
Claire Mels, student
Federica Rovati, student
Axel Vos, student

Unveiled is an empathy-based art project that facilitates the sharing of mainly anonymized stories of UT students—stories related to topics that often go under wraps. The project features an interactive photo exhibition where visitors can take on the perspective of the storyteller. The aim is to shed light on and destigmatize these topics by increasing awareness and fostering an open dialogue. By showcasing a diversity of students’ experiences, a more open, inclusive, and accepting atmosphere is created, enhancing students’ sense of safety and well-being.

Submitted by
Mayar Abdalla, student

Eating together is great. All over the globe people celebrate Ramadan, the month of fasting in Islamic teachings, and all over the globe people break their fast with a meal: an Iftar. Even in the Netherlands whole squares can be filled with people, not just Muslims, gathering for a meal. The iftars organised by EMSA last year provided a good basis for not only a meal, but also for fun, intercultural conversations. This is especially wonderful when the leaders of nations are enemies, while their citizens can laugh together.

This year, we want to extent the target population to not only Muslims of diverse back grounds, but to anyone on campus who's interested in intercultural and/or interreligious talks. Together with housing organisation "Veste Wonen" and Islamic student association EMSA, we will organise this connection meal on March 3^rd on the UT campus marketed as "Moonlight dinner". People coming are encouraged to bring a dish they're proud of. However, to make the event more accessible and encourage people to come, we will provide free food as well based on the sign-ups to reduce waste. If you're not happy by the end of the event, neither will we be. Come and join!

Submitted by

Joost Van Hauwe, student

P-NUT aims to be an inclusive organization where people with diverse personalities, skills and mindsets are valued. To achieve part of this long-term vision, we received a grant aimed at supporting people with neurodiverse conditions. We received signals that events about neurodiversity would be highly appreciated and aligned with recommendations to foster a more inclusive culture. By facilitating the sharing of experiences, connections, and knowledge, We aim to cultivate a sense of belonging and friendship while leveraging expert knowledge to address challenges. Simultaneously, these events aim to raise awareness among neurotypical individuals about neurodiversity, fostering a more inclusive and diverse atmosphere at UT.

Are you interested in this project? Read the full proposal 

M.R. Boot (Mario)

PhD Candidate & P-Nut Secretary

+31534892021 m.r.boot@utwente.nl Building: Horst Complex Z222

Surgical practice is notorious for its lack of inclusivity and diversity, and is often not accessible for people with disabilities. Students' backgrounds still play a significant role in program admission, and role models are lacking in Dutch university medical centres. A disability or LGBTQ+ community membership is now a factor for falling behind. Therefore, there is a strong need and urgency to provide inclusive and accessible surgical skills training in a preclinical setting, with recognising and embracing diversity on multiple axes.

This project aims to investigate student and professional beliefs on the current Surgical Skills course for Master Technical Medicine students, apply best-practices, evaluate the impact, and create a model for application onto other skill courses in the Master of Technical Medicine to improve accessibility. An existing multi-axes framework will be used, including accessibility for people with physical, visual, and hearing impairment, fostering neurodiversity, racial and sexual equality, and LGBTQ+ inclusion.

Students and staff from these domains are included in the redesign as co-creators. Baseline measurements and impact of course redesign will be measured with the SIM-EDI tool for simulation team reflexivity, and a self-assessment on equity-focused teaching. Developed teaching materials, activities, and practical models to improve accessibility will be shared with the educational and medical community under open access dissemination.

This project ensures that students and employees in the medical domain feel included and do not fall behind in simulation-based surgical training because of a lack of inclusion, not accepting diversity, or experiencing barriers to their education.

Submitted by

dr. F.R. Halfwerk (Frank)

Assistant Professor, Principal Investigator Cardiac Surgery Innovations Lab

+31534896482 f.r.halfwerk@utwente.nl Building: Horst Complex W115 Personal page

prof.Dr.-Ing. J. Arens (Jutta)

Full Professor

+31534899755 j.arens@utwente.nl Building: Horst Complex W116 Personal page

The University of Twente (UT) is committed to fostering a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment for all employees. To support this goal, the "DE&I in Onboarding" project aims to create engaging videos and e-learning modules focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion topics. This initiative is designed to raise awareness, promote an inclusive workplace culture, and reduce unconscious biases and discriminatory behaviors. By integrating these resources into the onboarding process, UT ensures that new employees are equipped to contribute positively to the university's inclusive culture from the start.

 Submitted by Cathelijne de Carpentier Wolf-de Vin & Inge Meeuwenoord

In this project, we aim to organize an inclusive and accessible sports day to start the discussion on accessible sports facilities, the role such facilities play in culture-building and social safety, and the diversity of perspectives that come together. In a fun and interactive way, the day will connect a variety of stakeholders, from sport facilitators to students, staff, and policymakers, as well as non-UT organizations that in one way or another bring their perspectives to the table. Note that the sports day will carefully combine (sports) workshops with discussions. Furthermore, the sports-centred format will likely attract parts of the UT population that usually disregard DE&I-related events. 

Submitted by Leoni Winscherman

With the project, we want to raise DE&I awareness and start a fruitful conversation between the various actors involved by translating technological potential into concrete actions that increase individual and organisational outcomes. We aim to support creating a science-driven community of staff and students that actively share thoughts, ideas, and opportunities about how technologies can increase DE&I within the UT environment. In particular, we plan to organise the following types of activities: (1) podcast recording across UT faculties to break down barriers; (2) networking event for employees and students to create a sense of belonging.

 Submitted by Simon Schafheitle en Pauline Weritz

P-NUT is the PhD & EngD network of the University Twentem, it represents, informs, and socializes ± 1600 PhD Candidates and ± 55 EngD Candidates as of May 2023. P-NUT Day (formerly PhD day) was previously almost exclusively visited by doctoral candidates with little connection to students, alumni, industry, support staff, or more senior research staff and has only been loosely around one topic each year. We want to open P-NUT Day 2024 to become an event for the whole UT community to foster interaction beyond the typical career stages as well as having the opportunity to focus on the impact on society and how we view recipients of our research. We want to connect the “HUMAN TOUCH” element of our research, we want to highlight different dimensions of diversity (e.g., age, gender, cultural backgrounds, disabilities, language, and technical skills or education) which differentiate recipients of our research. We will use P-NUT Day 2024 as a forum to start the discussion about for whom we are doing our research, and how we communicate with them.

Submitted by Bram Kohlen

SNOOZE is a student-led project that aims to improve the well-being of students and employees and increase their productivity by creating a nap room on the UT campus.

The pressure on students to meet constant deadlines and the work stress for UT employees often leads to choosing between personal well-being and continuing towards the goal. This builds up exhaustion over time and often leads to the unintended outcome of study- or work-performance decrease. People who are neurodivergent or dealing with different kinds of fatigue or mental difficulty, such as autism, ADHD, grief, etc are the people whose days can be most disrupted. If this group can insulate themselves from stimuli for a few minutes for a nap to refocus, it will have a positive effect on the rest of the day.

Submitted by Viktoriia Konashchuk

Several studies have reported a common pattern of withdrawal of Muslim female students from physical activities within educational institutions in Western countries.

Those withdrawal patterns were claimed to be partially due to certain situational factors regarding the participating environments, e.g. poor communication, inflexible dress codes (particularly concerning wearing of the hijab (headscarf), gender organization and use of public swimming pools. Opening possibilities and alternatives, acknowledging the complexity of the dynamics of the situation in such a sensitive area might prevent these young women from abandoning indigenous cultural practices and knowledge systems which could enrich their work and university experience.

The sport day initiative at the UT will be organized in collaboration with UT sport center and potentially with the FC Twente women as part of promoting diversity and inclusion at the UT and the region. The sport day will include several competitions between the students, sporting exhibition in which different sporting activities at the UT are explained and could be tested on a micro scale, a facilitated discussion on potential challenges and solutions that hijab wearing women at the UT face when wanting to take part in sporting activities, and a symposium showcasing exemplary Muslim female athletes and public figure sportswomen from The Netherlands.

Submitted by Islam Bouzguenda

The Amnesty activist group dedicates itself to changing the culture around sex and how genders relate to each other at the UT. We wish to create a safer environment for all students as they explore their sexuality in their university life. Our goal is to make the UT a supportive community educated on healthy sexual relationships and consent. The ultimate goal is to implement the Amnesty Let’s Talk About Yes manifesto and make this effort a sustainable movement to change policy and support services together with UT Students and Administration; but most importantly, change the culture around the realm of sex. Throughout the year there will be multiple events. At the very beginning of the year, we want to organize a symposium on psychosexual development. In the Let’s Talk About Series various taboo topics are discussed, such as allyship, intimacy, the vicious cycle of violence, etc. The aim is to create awareness, be open to hearing different opinions, and break the bias. We are also going to have several different Pop-Ups around campus attract people who have never heard about these topics and increase our impact and awareness substantially. 

Submitted by Alexandra Mulder

Diversity in higher education institutions is a polarizing topic. We notice that many of these polarizing conversations are focused on opinions: for example, whether or not the university is ‘too woke’. However, limited attention is paid to the lived experiences of fellow students and faculty, and their stories on navigating the academic environment - as a person first and a minority second.

Unlike opinions, stories are a powerful tool for connecting people. Stories have been used for centuries to bring people together, foster understanding, and build empathy. This connection can help break down barriers between people and promote a sense of belonging and inclusion. Therefore, we want to adapt the existing storytelling and listening methods and techniques method called "Roundtable" to fit more closely to the more challenging contexts that characterize the reality of the UT work environment: (1) heterogenous groups; (2) groups of co-workers with continuous work relationships; (3) groups with hierarchical power differences.

Submitted by Anneke Sools, Yudit Namer, Tessa Dekkers 

Ambitious Women UT was founded to address the problem of the gender ratio imbalance and offer a chance of gathering with students in similar situations and discuss our experiences with one another. What we want to achieve can be described in two small but significant words: support and awareness. With each other’s support we can get closer to a more equal world, by making changes together, step by step. In addition, by creating awareness we can spread the meaning of equity in society and pursue it, addressing the current problem and making others conscious that we have the power and control for change. By hosting wide-ranging events we create a united community that encourages each other, increases connections and broadens our academic network and skills. Furthermore, we hope to participate in the work towards a more equal and inclusive environment for everyone.

Submitted by Pelin Akça, Lucia Canora Flores, Erika Mäkelä