October 6th 2025,a one-day event that aims to bring people from different backgrounds in science communication together and give them the platform to network, learn and interact with each other. The theme of this year was ‘The art of understanding’ (‘De kunst van begrijpen’).

Morning plenary talks
The day began with three 20-minute plenary talks from Jeroen van der Waal, Marjan Slob and Tila Pronk, where they discussed their takes on the theme of the year.

Jeroen van der Waal
The first one to step in the podium was Jeroen van der Waal (full professor in stratification sociology at the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam). In his talk, he emphasized the strong influence of our own social bubbles when creating initiatives and campaigns for science communication. He explained that our direct environment usually has interests similar to ours., similar financial well-being and similar education, but that does not represent the general population. Hence, “If I am enthusiastic about something (an idea for a campaign for example), then probably the general population will not be”, he claimed. With this example, he wanted to convey the importance of thinking empathically about the people outside our bubble when designing campaigns and initiatives for them.

Marjan Slob
The second speaker was Marjan Slob (philosopher and writer). In her presentation, she discussed the misconception of visualizing science as a jigsaw-puzzle that scientists slowly piece together with perfectly fitting pieces. Instead, she claimed that science is more nuanced, and that doing science is about trying to understand whether the different parts we discover fit together and how so. She illustrated her point with the following quote from Nelson Goodman to explain her thoughts: “There are many ways the world is, and every true description captures one of them”. Finally, she shared that, for her, the most important mission of science communication is to bring across the nuances of what it is to do science and to explain that most times science is not the best explanation of our world, but rather the best one we have till that moment for a lack of better tools.

Tila Pronk
The last speaker was Tila Pronk (associate professor in social psychology at Tilburg University). In her talk, titled “De noodzaak van verbinding”, she began by discussing the impact of confirmation bias in the polarization of society. In the same direction, she then underlined the repercussions of the media’s portrayal of polarization to the population’s mental health. Supported by her data, she then claimed that “the leading risk factor for health problems among young people was a lack of social support.”. But nonetheless, there still are not many organisations and media working on mental health campaigns. She finished her talk emphasising that connecting is important for humans and hoping that in the future living together in society has a stronger compound of togetherness.

After the talks there was a Q&A debate with the audience and the three speakers.