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Rector’s Letter – October 2026
27 october 2026
Dear Students and Colleagues,
Artificial intelligence is upending the way we learn, write and conduct research. We could have merely endured it, or ignored it altogether; instead, we chose to rethink how we teach and assess. We now focus less on what you can recall than on what you can do with what you know: build an argument, make connections, exercise your own judgement. A machine can generate text. It cannot think for you.
Other initiatives are taking shape. We have redesigned our bachelor’s programmes and updated their content. A new Bachelor in Humanities draws on Athens, Rome and Jerusalem to explore what it means to be human. A Master of Arts in Islamic Studies, taught in English, opens in partnership with the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies (IDEO) in Cairo.
Yet Domuni is, above all, its people. Alison, in Brussels, has gone back to the studies she had to give up at twenty-one. Darick, a priest in the Arabian Peninsula, has just defended a thesis written alongside a demanding pastoral ministry.
And this month alone saw eight defences, on subjects ranging from the phenomenology of evil to compassion in the writings of Thérèse of Lisieux and Edith Stein. Behind each one stand teachers and supervisors who guided students, read their work and encouraged them, sometimes from thousands of kilometres away.
Much good, little noise: the motto of Marie Poussepin, foundress of the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation, has lost none of its relevance.
Domuni is a community in which ideas travel across languages and disciplines. Our international research webinars and online workshops, open to all and offered in several languages, are where this happens: spaces to share questions and test ideas together. We look forward to welcoming you!
Rector