On 1 September 2023, 280 students received their Bachelor Diploma of International Studies. The students were awarded their diplomas in the historic Pieterskerk in Leiden: the UNESCO world heritage site, where the university was originally founded in 1575. A large audience of about 700 people consisting…

On Sunday, November 9 2025, Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey presented a film at the “Eastern Neighbors” Film Festival in The Hague.

The new cabinet has finally taken office. Six of its members studied in Leiden, once again making the University a key supplier to the cabinet. Who are these alumni?

The first results of the National Student Survey (Nationale Studenten Enquête: NSE) reveal that students at Leiden University are satisfied with their study programme.

PhD defence

Leiden University offers one full Leiden University Excellence Scholarship (LExS) to an African candidate interested in the two-year Research Master African Studies programme (ResMA AS); thus non-EEA/non-EFTA* applicants. LExS is a prestigious scholarship and includes a fee waiver up until the statutory…

During the coronavirus pandemic, scientists were in a hurry to find drugs that would help fight the disease. To combine the research that was being carried out around the world, PhD candidate Judith ter Schure developed a new statistical method: ALL-IN meta-analysis. This helps determine sooner whether…

When university lecturer Martine Bruil was on exchange in Ecuador as a teenager, she fell in love with the area's ancient languages. Now, more than 20 years later, she is starting a research project on the kinship of the language Awapit with the Quechua language that was spread by the Incas.

A grant from the JEDI Fund allowed university lecturer Jessie Morgan-Owens to design a lecture series on indigenous studies. ‘We filled a gap in the knowledge.’

The English taught interdisciplinary minor Violence Studies looks into various facets of interpersonal violence. Is this minor for all Leiden students? These two 'colleagues' are certain of it.

Archaeologist Tuna Kalayci investigates roads in a recent edited book. What happens if we think of roads not only as containers of action but also as dynamic and complex phenomena, as the action itself? This question inspired Dr Tuna Kalayci to bring together various studies across a wide range of epochs…

Associate professor Rens Tacoma has won the 2021 Research Prize for Historical Sciences. The prize is awarded annually by the Italy Studies Working Group for the best scholarly publication in the field of Italy Studies in Dutch or Flemish academia.

Four researchers from Leiden University will receive funding from arthritis foundation ReumaNederland over the next five years. This should facilitate long-term research into arthritis.

Salvador Santino Regilme, Jr. Associate Professor of International Relations and Program Chair of MA in International Relations, has been honored with the Cecil B. Currey Book Award for 2023. The accolade, presented by the Association for Global South Studies (AGSS), recognizes Regilme’s exceptional…

Leiden Law School and the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies are very pleased to announce that Dr. Mamadou Hébié will be re-joining the Grotius Centre on the 1st of May 2021.

Monica den Boer, who has decades of experience within police and defence and was also active as a Member of Parliament (D66), has been appointed extraordinary professor of Police Studies.

The challenge: take three hundred students from vastly varying disciplines and teach them the basics of academic thinking in twelve lessons. Impossible? Professor Ben Arps and his team of tutors succeeded. It resulted in a large amount of positive student evaluations.

During his bachelor's programme in International Studies, Tom de Groot became fascinated by the theme of peace and security. Now he designs and moderates training courses to help professionals develop further in this field.

A major new study of ancient DNA has traced the movement of people into southern Britain during the Bronze Age. In the largest such analysis published to date, scientists examined the DNA of nearly 800 ancient individuals. Publication in Nature on December 22, 2021.

There seem to be genes that influence how our brains develop over time. A large international consortium has discovered this with an extensive study. The results of the study were recently published in Nature Neuroscience.