Building maintenance and construction work
ILS labs move – timeline and process – updated March 7, 2026
Building maintenance and construction work
ILS labs will be moving from Janskerkhof 13/13A to Drift 10, providing great opportunities – as well as some challenges – for lab users and lab support. This post will keep lab users up to date about the process. Please let lab support know ASAP if you have research plans involving lab support, lab space, or loan equipment in the coming 14 months (that is any time between now and May 2027) so that we can minimize the impact of the move on your experimental research.
What we are working toward
At Drift 10, ILS labs will occupy the basement, half the ground floor (Studiepunt will stay where it is) and the first floor. We will be moving 8 of our current 11 setups: 2 biolabs, 2 eye-tracking labs, 3 phonetics/general-purpose labs, 1 head-turn lab. These setups will all be situated in sound-proof booths. In time (well after the move), we will also set up an interaction lab, in the basement. Of course the terminal/analysis room (aka K.06) will be moved as well.
How we’re going to get there
We’ll be moving one setup at a time, and each setup will take several weeks to build in the new location. This whole process will take about a year to complete. New experiments will start in Drift 10 as soon as the relevant setup has been built there, while current experiments wrap up at Janskerkhof. This period of experiments being conducted at both locations will last 43 weeks at most – we hope to keep it shorter as this will be a difficult time.
During the year of the move, preparations for the renovation of Janskerkhof will already start. This will involve noisy demolition activities that will be ramping up over time. No fixed schedule has been set yet, but it is likely that starting from the summer of 2026, there will still be four days a week available for wrapping up experiments at Janskerkhof, gradually tapering off to only one day a week by the start of 2027. We have scheduled the move of each lab setup in such a way that current experiments can finish at Janskerkhof and new experiments can start at Drift – a complex puzzle.
When is this going to be happening – timeline
This is the current timeline:
- Lab support staff is, of course, preparing for the move right now (specifying dimensions, outlets, light switches, cable lengths, furniture, …).
- January – April 2026: construction work in Drift 10:
- Ceilings are being fortified now (to make them strong enough to carry the sound-attenuated booths). Here are some pictures showing the progress.
- Construction of the sound-attenuated booths started February 16 and hopefully be done (including ventilation, fire alarm and electricity) by Easter (April 6).
- In March, ventilation shafts will be widened.
- A bunch of maintenance will be done on the windows.
- Between April 2026 and November 2026 we will be physically moving the experimental setups, one at a time. For most of the setups, it will take 3-6 weeks to get them running at Drift. Once one setup has been made fully functional at Drift, we move the next one over.
- It will be possible to some extent to wrap up current experiments at Janskerkhof, until early 2027. Starting in the summer though, noisy building activities in Janskerkhof will be ramping up over time, driving us out more and more. The Philosophy & Religion department will move out of Janskerkhof in June or July, so it’ll just be us, the renovation builders, and the mice left there. Again, we aim to have all the lab setups moved out to Drift by November 2026.
What does this mean for you as a lab user
Moving the labs is a ton of extra work, so lab support has less time to devote to supporting experiments than usual. We are fully committed to letting all experiments proceed as planned, but we also have to be realistic: we will have to work very efficiently to do it all. This means that starting now, we will be enforcing two existing rules about undergraduate student work:
- BA and (R)MA student research can only involve existing paradigms. We have dozens of experimental tasks ready to go for you! Come talk to us and see what’s possible.
- To promote efficiency, all communication with lab support about undergraduate student work has to be done by the supervisor.
Furthermore, it is vitally important that all lab users keep us updated about their plans, so that neither lab users nor lab staff run into unexpected problems. We have done our utmost to accommodate the timeline of all the current and future experiments that we know of – the resulting schedule of which setup will be moved when does not have much wiggle room left.
Please note that alternative solutions such as postponing experiments, or conducting them online rather than in the lab, or conducting them elsewhere using portable equipment rather than in the lab, may actually generate more work and are therefore not necessarily helpful for lab support. Come talk to us so we can find the best solution for you.
Contact Iris Mulders if you haven’t, already – and keep us updated about any change in your plans.