"Together with Stefano Rosatti (adjunct lecturer and Head of the Department of Italian for the academic year 2017-2018) we have recently reformed the entire B.A. programme so as to make it possible also for absolute beginners to enroll in the course,” says Edoardo Mastantuoni, adjunct lecturer at the Italian Department of the University of Iceland, in an interview with Stúdentablaðið.

For many of us, social media has become an inseparable part of daily life. In the past few years social media has reached a vast circulation and completely changed how we communicate. Facebook is by far one of the biggest social media sites out there and there seems to be no sign of a decrease in new users.

“Wow, Literary theory, really… You know you’ve got the brains to study mathematics or engineering, right?” says an uncle of mine who shall remain nameless, and wrinkles his nose. I look down at my hands. Maybe he’s right. There’s no point in scrutinizing writings and speculating about earlier societies. There’s no point in asking why humans are here on earth and what their purpose is. Or what?

Margrét Björk Ástvaldsdóttir is a sociology student and the Vice Chairman of the University of Iceland’s Feminist Association, which recently celebrated Period Days for the first time. Many interesting lectures on periods were held during the Period Days, which lasted for three days.

In his farewell address, former president of the United States, Barack Obama, declared his concerns about the status of the middle class and the country’s increased inequality. Within that context, he mentioned that the next wave of economic disturbances will not come from abroad, but will be the result of the merciless advancement of automation. By that, he means that new technological advancements will soon make a number of middle class jobs obsolete.

The University of Iceland is obliged by law to insure that information for disabled students is accessible and easy to find. Despite that there are a lot of things that can be improved and it can be hard to find information about solutions for students with learning disabilities. The team behind Rights-Ronja wants to improve access to information for those university students that are disabled or struggle with learning.

Coming as an exchange student from Sweden I was somehow expecting to find a lot of similarities between my forested home country and this barren volcanic island. Like the seemingly constant darkness descending upon the societies of the upper northern hemisphere every winter (which the summer-me always forgets that the winter-me lived through only half a year ago). However, as the foreigner I am, I have also inevitably noticed some of the peculiarities this absolutely charming country has to offer.

Iran and Afghanistan are neighboring countries in the Middle East. Not so long ago I, a 22-year-old Icelandic student at the University of Iceland, was able to find them on the world map without too much effort, but I knew nothing about them. Since the countries share a boarder I assumed that the education system was similar in these two countries, but that is not the case. That I have learned from my friends, Homa and Maryam.

You can almost hear a pin drop in the jam-packed train. People barely glance around, careful to be unobtrusive and respect their seatmates’ personal space. The silence is unbroken by the “doodoodoodoo doodoodoodoo doodoodoo-doo-doo” Nokia ringtone or the marimba iPhone ringtone that everyone in Iceland recognizes. The reason, in part, is that this train is in Japan.

„Where do you come from?“ asks the teacher at the beginning of a lecture for the first year students of Icelandic as a second language. Then something happens that no one expects. The classroom is full of people.  As the class answers the question, the teacher counts the different nationalities of all the people in the room. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.”