TEDxLeidenUniversity 2024: Untamed

Serafine Beugelink

We should all try out activities that don’t align with our natural talents. By prioritising interest over skill, we can break through mental barriers and discover new versions of ourselves! Serafine Beugelink argues that we should all be more encouraged to expand our horizons and learn new things, even if it doesn’t align with our natural predisposition. By breaking through these mental restrictions (e.g. “I can’t do maths”), we can experience many personal and societal benefits and get to know new versions of ourselves. Being a mathematics and physics teacher herself, Serafine wants to share the benefits of school diversification.

Rummana Syeda

We have been told that the EGO needs to be suppressed, otherwise, we are considered ‘bad’ people. When we listen, understand, and accept our EGO, we can embrace our duality, which will bring us peace and balance. Our EGO is our human self, here to protect us in the human realm as it respects our morality and fragility. Only when we understand our EGO, will we not only be able to understand ourselves but each other. Rummana Syeda will discuss how constantly suppressing our ego leads to feelings of guilt, shame, sadness, and overall deep internal conflict. Going through a divorce, losing time with her toddler, and losing her job – all at the same time caused her to re-evaluate this narrative. When we understand and accept our EGO, we can embrace our duality, which will bring us peace.

Perazim Singo

By utilising curiosity as a guiding light, Perazim unpacks agri-food production starting from historical Western Europe modernisation to current African food sovereignty. Reflecting upon this, it’s shown that a commitment to curiosity in all its dimensions and colours permits contextualised knowledge to inform practices for African small-scale farmers. Perazim Singo is a student speaker from Leiden University whose diversified cultural background led to her awareness of agri-food production. Growing up in Zimbabwe, Mongolia, and Uganda, she discovered different food cultures which pushed her to engage in agri-financial technology.

Alexia-Teodora Matei

De-growth is a concept rooted in a deep care for human and planetary well-being and it proposes empowering, agentic thinking: societies have the power to reorganise economies – and, more generally – systems of living; they have the power to prioritise human contentment and the healing of nature over relentless economic growth. Alexia-Teodora Matei is a student at Leiden University who advocates for the rethinking of our systems of living and the concept of de-growth. She invites the audience to reflect on the normative foundations of de-growth and how they propose to prioritize human and planetary well-being.

Cyril Moulin-Fournier

According to Cyril, our future has never felt more uncertain. Waves of change follow one another at a dizzying pace: the rise of AI, climate change, and global political tensions. It is no wonder – we find ourselves more anxious than ever before. However, what if it were possible to thrive with uncertainty? 11 years ago, Cyril Moulin-Fournier was taken captive while on holiday in Africa for several months. This experience completely changed his relationship with uncertainty. He learned that in life one has to let it go, instead of adapting to conformity and what society pushes us to be. In his talk, he’s going to share how we can do it too.

Namita Tiwari

In the words of Oscar Wilde —Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable. This talk will explain how — with GenAI even the improbable has become not just possible and believable, it has also become achievable and profitable. The key impact areas will be presented: customer centricity with personalization, creativity with innovation, brand inclusivity, and enhancing cognitive productivity. As a marketing leader, Namita Tiwari centers her talk on the promise and potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) —the Genie marketers have been dreaming of!

Jordi Khoso Hussain

Have you ever wanted to be an entrepreneur? In this talk, Jordi encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to follow four tenets of stoicism that can lead to success and growth: focusing on what can be controlled, amor fati (love of fate), developing resilience, and accepting the present moment. Jordi Khoso Hussain is a student speaker from Leiden University. Jordi’s speech draws from his own experience as a university student who wants to become an entrepreneur. He explains four of the main tenets of stoicism and links them to his personal experience while giving us tools to engage with them. For him, both successes and failures are lessons whose learnings can be used to achieve our goals.

Sonia Den Dubbelden

Would you like to win at life? Are you wondering what you can learn from games? If yes, then listen to this talk and discover more about game theory, life, and turning a losing hand into an exciting game. Let’s play! Using her experience of growing up in several orphanages around the globe and repeatedly being told she would not amount to anything, Sonia Den Dubbelden will inspire the audience to refuse to be tamed by worthless words. Looking at life from a game science perspective, she will dissect the world’s aesthetics from its cultural dynamics and society’s hidden mechanics.

Mélina Colbaut

With a pinch of musical creativity and philosophical insights, this talk wants to deconstruct our common (mis)conceptions about our identity and existence so that the audience can leave the room with a fresh perspective on themselves and their lives. Melina is a student speaker from Leiden University. Through her speech, Melina demonstrates how music taught her the biggest life lessons, both as an artist and as a human.