50 years ahead in health
In 2026, Maastricht University and the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences will celebrate their fiftieth anniversary together. The jubilee year is more than a look back at highlights from the past. It is a moment to be proud of what has been built together and to look ahead.
Ahead to the questions that continue to challenge us. To the role of science in a changing world. And to how we, as a faculty, continue to contribute to the health of tomorrow.
More than a jubilee
FHML50 is therefore not only a jubilee, but an invitation. An invitation to students, staff, alumni and former colleagues to reflect together on fifty years of pioneering, innovation and collaboration. At the same time, we look ahead. To how the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences continues to contribute to the health of tomorrow. Discover the jubilee year, the stories and activities on the FHML50 website and celebrate 50 years ahead in health with us.
How it began
In 1969, M. Baeten the mayor of Maastricht, the members of the municipal executive, and the municipal secretary gathered around a television on Prinsjesdag. With anticipation, they watched Queen Juliana deliver the Queen’s speech. Would she announce that what many in Limburg had been striving for over the years would become reality: that the eighth medical faculty would be established in Maastricht?
She did. With one important condition: the medical faculty would be part of a newly to be founded university, not a standalone medical faculty.
Thanks to the visionary leadership of Sjeng Tans, work had already begun long before the establishment of the Rijksuniversiteit Limburg, now Maastricht University, on innovative academic education. The identity that would become characteristic of Maastricht University was laid down in its own philosophy: the Basisfilosofie Medische Faculteit Maastricht 1972. A choice was made for experimental problem-based learning (PBL), a new approach in the Netherlands. Worldwide, the Maastricht medical faculty is the second university to apply PBL, and FHML is still known for its educational innovation. There was a pioneering spirit in Maastricht!
Click on the image for more visuals from the '70s and '80s.
The first participants
Even before the official opening of the Rijksuniversiteit Limburg in 1976, the first medical students started in 1974 at the Eighth Medical Faculty. As the university had not yet been formally established, they were not called students, but course takers.
From the very start, there was also a strong collaboration with primary care. The founders seized the opportunity to build a new faculty based on the latest insights. The Eighth Medical Faculty grew into an academic community in which education, research, healthcare and societal impact are closely interconnected.
As the first faculty, the Faculty of Medicine laid the foundation for a university that consciously chose innovation, small-scale education and strong regional and international engagement. Research was also organised differently in Maastricht. It extended beyond the walls of the hospital, focusing on societal needs and structured around thematic areas. This approach still forms the basis of FHML’s research institutes today.
The growth of Rijksuniversiteit Limburg
In 1980, the year in which the first doctors from the 1974 cohort received their degrees, education and research also started around health issues beyond the clinical setting. The General Faculty was established, introducing Social Health Sciences as a graduation track, where an integrated view on health was introduced. This became the first academic healthcare programme in the Netherlands that did not lead to a medical degree. In 1984, the General Faculty was further developed into the Faculty of Health Sciences. Here, various disciplines came together in seven graduation tracks. The foundation was laid for a broader approach to care and a holistic view of health.
This development was further strengthened by the establishment of the Molecular Life Sciences programme in 2002.
Due to the presence of both a Faculty of Medicine and a Faculty of Health Sciences, there is, to this day, a fundamentally different relationship between the medical and health sciences in Maastricht compared to other Dutch universities; with more attention to both disease and prevention and health, and to the complementarity between both approaches.
The Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences
In 2007, the two faculties joined forces and merged, resulting in the current Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML). Maastricht University once again proves itself as an educational innovator and continues this development. More recently, the new bachelor’s programmes European Public Health and Regenerative Medicine and Technology have been developed. Within programmes, continuous innovation and improvement remain central, through approaches such as innovative curricula, longitudinal learning lines, programmatic assessment and portfolio-based learning.
Since 2008, FHML has worked together with the academic hospital Maastricht in the Maastricht UMC+. In the period from 1988 to 2015, the various research institutes were also established: CARIM (1988), NUTRIM (1992), MHeNs (1999), GROW (1999), MERLN (2014), SHE (2005), CAPHRI (2003, resulting from a merger between the institutes Health and Extra), M4I (2014) and Climate Health Institute (2025).