These pages provide information about recent developments at or relevant to the ILLC. Please let us know if you have material that you would like to be added to the news pages, by using the online submission form. For minor updates to existing entries you can also email the news administrators directly. English submissions strongly preferred.
Headlines Miscellaneous
- (New) World Deaf Day: Prof. Floris Roelofsen connects deaf community with science
- (New) Paul van Ulsen (14 January 1946 - 23 September 2023)
- Month of the Union (Vakbondsmaand)
- Floris Roelofsen appointment as advisor NGT Ministry of Internal Affairs
- Szabolcs Mikulas (1966-2023)
- Jan van Eijck launches new book
- European Society for the Philosophy of Mathematics
Miscellaneous
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(New) World Deaf Day: Prof. Floris Roelofsen connects deaf community with science
Last week it was World Deaf Day 2023. At the UvA we have a designated cross-faculty lab, that researches and develops innovations concerning Dutch sign language: SignLab.
This year, the first-ever SignLab Open House was held, where the deaf community and UvA researchers met and talked about the current innovations. Professor Floris Roelofsen from the Institute of Logic, Language and Computation was present to highlight the need for research on sign language.For more information, see https://lab42.uva.nl/read/news/world-deaf-day-prof-floris-roelofsen-connects-deaf-community-with-science or contact Marion Vetter at m.e.j.vetter at uva.nl. -
(New) Paul van Ulsen (14 January 1946 - 23 September 2023)
We are very sad to announce that Saturday, the 23rd of September, Paul van Ulsen passed away.
Paul successfully defended his dissertation entitled E.W. Beth als logicus in September 2000, which he wrote under the supervision of profs Troelstra and Van Benthem.
He has since been a long-term guest at ILLC taking responsibility for the Beth library and ILLC's reference library.For more information, contact Peter van Ormondt at P.vanOrmondt at uva.nl. -
Month of the Union (Vakbondsmaand)
Thanks to the new Collective Labour Agreement (CAO), every employee who becomes a member of a union (e.g., FNV, AOb, CNV) in the month of September will receive €100 back from the UvA, in addition to other offers that unions have for new members and a tax benefit.
Being a union member comes with many advantages, such as legal advice on labour issues and a vote on the next collective agreement. Please consider signing up!
For more information, see https://www.aob.nl/assets/Downloads/flyer-maand-van-de-vakbond-en-nl.pdf or contact Tobias Kappé at t.kappe at uva.nl. -
Floris Roelofsen appointment as advisor NGT Ministry of Internal Affairs
Floris Roelofsen has been appointed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs as member of the Minister's advisory board on Sign Language of the Netherlands.
For more information, see https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/ministeries/ministerie-van-algemene-zaken/nieuws/2023/08/18/benoeming-nieuwe-leden-adviescollege-nederlandse-gebarentaal or contact Floris Roelofsen at f.roelofsen at uva.nl. -
Szabolcs Mikulas (1966-2023)
With deep sorrow we announce that Szabolcs Mikulás died on 27th June 2023. He was 57, and had been beset by cancer for the last three years.
Szabolcs will be very well known to many in the logic community. He took his first degree, in Mathematics and Philosophy, in 1990 at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His doctoral thesis "Taming Logics” (1995) was in Algebraic Logic under the joint supervision of Hajnal Andréka and Johan van Benthem, at ILLC Amsterdam. The thesis is available on request from r.hirsch at ucl.ac.uk (see also https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01066355 for related work). It has been hugely influential in subjects ranging from linguistics to algebras of relations, and continues to be the basis of current investigations into relational representability, which corresponds to (lack of) provability in the Lambek Calculus. Szabolcs had made a recent breakthrough, by proving the failure of the finite representation property for representable ordered residuated semigroups (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.11685.pdf). As recently as May, he was working with PhD students on closely related research.
Szabolcs worked at King’s College London from 1996, and then at Birkbeck College London from 2000 until 2022, as a Lecturer and (from 2011) Senior Lecturer. He published nearly fifty research papers, many with co-authors, on subjects including algebras of relations, temporal logic, relevance logic, and databases.
The last 20 years were the happiest of Szabolcs’s life. He was lucky enough to find a true soulmate, Nataša Perović, who cherished and loved him right through to the end.
For more information, contact Yde Venema at Y.Venema at uva.nl. -
Jan van Eijck launches new book
On Friday the 29th of September 2023 Jan van Eijck will launch his new book Twijfelen aan de werkelijkheid at Huis De Pinto.
You are cordially invited to this event.
For more information, see https://www.vaneijck.org/posts/2023-07-16-twijfelen.html or contact Jan van Eijck at jan at vaneijck.org. -
European Society for the Philosophy of Mathematics
In the last few years the European community of Philosophy of Mathematics has grown considerably in number and maturity. With the aim of giving a clearer and more structured perspective to young scholars, the European Society for the Philosophy of Mathematics (ESPM) has recently been founded.
The mission of the ESPM is to foster the study and research in the Philosophy of Mathematics and to coordinate the activities of the national communities. Towards this goal, the ESPM organizes an international conference and a summer school.
For more information, see https://philmath.eu/.