Lectures for children in more than twenty museums, including six in Leiden

Curious children aged 8 to 112 can already register in January for one or more conferences given by scientists. Ticket sales are open on museumjeugduniversiteit.nl.

Participating Leiden museums are Naturalis, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, Museum of Antiquities, Museum Volkenkunde, Japan Museum Sieboldhuis and Leiden University’s Hortus botanicus. They offer a teaching program that is still partly unknown.

Van Boerhaave is already aware of the program for children. To start, there will be a conference on artificial intelligence on February 12 at 11 a.m. entitled How do we go from a robot babysitter to taking care of our climate problem? teacher. Lambèr Royakkers talks about it. On March 12, Professor Merel Kindt will talk about fears and microphotographer Wim van Egmond will talk about microbe imaging on April 9. Dr. Martijn van Gelder will explain what space telescopes can do on May 14 and Dr. Alexander Pleijter will give a lecture on the subject of “fake news” on June 11.

The Leiden Hortus presents a four-part lecture series on fantasy versus science in the underwater world, which is already sold out. The first episode from February 12 is about “green scum”. Thal Jonas and Hester Roovers will talk about the inhabitants of the aquarium on March 12, and in April and May they will talk about scary critters and botanical design, respectively.

Antiquités offers two series of lectures, at ‘bachelor’ and ‘master’ levels, on ‘antiquity at its best’. Everything is covered, from the burial places of Celtic queens to the pharaohs in Byblos, from Babylonian epithets to the favorite foods of the ancient Egyptians.

The Museum Youth University was started in 2009 at the National Museum of Antiquities. Nearly 200 lectures for children are now given each year in numerous museums.