Welcome to the new academic year! I would like to extend a special welcome to all our new students. We have never been so many in number as in this year. The choice of the University of Lucerne as your alma mater is a good one. We are small, personal and focused on humanities. We can handle Google, Zoom and WhatsApp well. But the great scientific achievements in the natural and human sciences are achieved post-Corona in the direct personal exchanges between researchers and teachers. And so our main building on Frohburgstrasse is not simply a coworking space, but the space in which a community meets in person for research and teaching. Google, Zoom and WhatsApp are a means to this end, but not the goal.

The University of Lucerne specialises in the human sciences. We are interested in people and their institutions: how they experience their world and navigate it, how they believe and hope, think and talk, regulate and cooperate, decide and act, and how they stay healthy and become healthy. In Switzerland, we are the only university with this profile. We are in the process of modernising and internationalising this profile, e.g. with a new Master in Climate Politics, Economics & Law, with the WHO Collaborating Centre of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine or with framework agreements with the European University Institute in Florence as well as the University of Salamanca and soon with other leading humanities universities in Europe. We also take initiatives from Central Switzerland and strengthen, position and profile them internationally, such as the Zug Institute for Blockchain Research or a new university research centre for health, integration and well-being.

Dear students: welcome to the personal, specialised and modern University of Lucerne. I wish you a successful and fulfilling autumn semester 2023!

Bruno Staffelbach, Rector