Almost a thousand students started HOPweek in The Hague on Monday morning. During this introduction week students get to know the city, the university and each other.

A group of astronomers was actually examining the dust disc around the young double star CS Cha, when they saw a small dot on the edge of their images. It turned out to be a small planet of only a few million years young, which moves along with the double star. Whether it is a super-Jupiter in the making…

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of Leiden University’s Faculty of Medicine with Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Tanzania.

Most of us know that Venice, Genoa, and Florence were major Mediterranean powers during the Renaissance. But did you know that in terms of trade and sea power, Barcelona was probably more powerful than two of these three?

Due to an exception in the law, domestic workers employed by private persons cannot automatially benefit from social security schemes. Home help Carol Kollmann did not agree with this and took her case to court.

From pipetting in the lab to shining in front of the camera at a global student event. With 8.000 viewers watching the livestream, Marjolein Crooijmans presented the iGEM Giant Jamboree in Paris.

The largest galaxies in the Universe feed off cosmic oceans, which helps them grow. This is the presumption of an international team of scientist with two Leiden astronomers, based on observations of the ‘Spiderweb’ galaxy. The researchers published their evidence in Science on 2 December 2016.

Planets existing in other solar systems contain invaluable information about the origin of planets and life. PhD candidate Yapeng Zhang has studied their atmospheres by looking at their smallest parts: isotopes. With her research she hopes to discover what makes our own solar system unique.

'Building 4 Belonging' is the title of Carolien Rieffe's honoured NWO proposal for research on loneliness. Psychologist Rieffe is especially proud of her super strong team. 'It is truly multidiciplinary research with a non-conventional approach.'

The new MASCARA-facilty in Chile has achieved first light. This new facility will seek out transiting exoplanets as they pass in front of their bright parent stars and create a catalogue of targets for future exoplanet characterisation observations.

Ben Van Rompuy was a guest speaker at the 138th Lunch Talk of the Global Competition Law Centre (College of Europe), which took place in Brussels on 15 January 2024.

In the future top Dutch speed skaters may skate even faster thanks to a skate full of electronics. This ‘measuring skate’ gives top skaters and coaches information about the skater’s technique and motion. It can measure the dynamics at play between the foot, the ice and the skate.

The last two months of 2016 were a very productive time for the ACPA. We had no less than 6 promotions!

On 10 January, Ben Van Rompuy spoke at the New Year's meeting of the Dutch Competition Law Association in Amsterdam.

Students on the Adv. LL.M. Air and Space Law reacted quickly to the news of Ukrainians fleeing the war in Ukraine to neighbouring countries. Filip Draba, who is from Poland, collected donations from the class and, together with additional contributions from family and friends in Poland, he amassed €…

The doors of the new University Sports Centre are open to all students, staff and sports lovers. Want to see what it looks like? Watch the video and run through the centre with Zakari!

The Faculty of Archaeology is running a funding scheme to assist small-scale projects that contribute to diversifying archaeological practice in all domains, including classrooms, laboratories, museums, and the field. We discuss the grant with two representatives from the Diversity Committee: Tuna Kalaycı…

Media all around the world reported about it: the most detailed images yet seen of galaxies, shot by radio telescope LOFAR. The international team behind these amazing results were led by Leah Morabito at Durham University and included three talented Leiden astronomers.

Astronomers from Leiden Observatory have developed a new method to find distant quasars and better distinguish them from other objects that look like them, using machine learning techniques. The research result has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. It is the last…

The one-day symposium ‘War in Europe: the impact of Russian aggression in Ukraine two years on’ on 23 February 2024

A safe place to discuss burning social issues such as racism with each other. The student workspace Space to Talk About Race and the Afro Student Association both meet this need and also organise many other activities. Three board members explain why this is necessary.

The British Academy appointed Eveline Crone as a Corresponding Fellow to recognise her contribution to the SHAPE themes - the social sciences, humanities and the arts. The British Academy is the national academy for social sciences and humanities in the United Kingdom. Besides Crone, 83 other Fellows…

In the next few days several compositions by Aart Strootman (guitarist, instrument builder, composer, teacher and ACPA PhD) will premiere at Festival Classique and Festival Gaudeamus.

The project has been done under the supervision of Dr. Diego Garlaschelli and Dr. Frank Takes. The title of the presentation is: ''Complex Network Analysis of Darknet Black Market Forum Structure.

A pop-up exhibition ‘All the Einsteins’ will open at Rijsmuseum Boerhaave on 29 May 2019. This is the first time that the museum will present its entire collection of handwritten letters and documents by Einstein. The exhibition marks, among others, the publication of the first photo of a black hole…

For the first time, scientists have traced back a high-energy neutrino to its source in space. It was produced by a so-called blazar—a supermassive black hole. Researchers from neutrino detector IceCube report this in Science. ‘This is a milestone for neutrino science,’ says physicist Dorothea Samtleben…

What moral concerns do people have when they encounter the financial sector in their everyday life? Erik Bähre's ERC consolidator project 'Moralising Misfortune: A comparative anthropology of commercial insurance’ aims to find out. In collaboration with Brechtje Boeke, five short documentaries from…

Friso Selten recently started a PhD position that is part of the SAILS program. This PhD project is a collaboration between FGGA, LIACS, and eLaw, and is supervised by Bram Klievink (FGGA), Joost Broekens (LIACS), and Francien Deschene (eLaw). In the project Friso will investigate the influence of artificial…

Abstract sounds that draw visitors upstairs, an 'escape womb' and a Christmas game that gets you thinking about the limits of creating our own happiness. Master's students of Media Technology created a special exhibition on the theme of 'self', in the Old School art centre in the Pieterskerkhof in…

Besides being a linguist, George Saad is also a photography fanatic. He shares his most beautiful and telling pictures, shot during his field research in Eastern Indonesia.

The death of George Floyd has led to fierce protests against police violence in the United States and beyond. What effects are we seeing in our University community? We discussed the situation with Diversity Officer Aya Ezawa.

If doctors could better estimate a patient's chances of survival, this would help in choosing a specific treatment. It would be particularly beneficial for the rare and malignant Ewing sarcoma, which mainly affects children and adolescents. Mathematics professor Marta Fiocco has been awarded a substantial…

‘Culture change takes time,’ said Vice-Rector Hester Bijl at the closing panel of the University’s Diversity Symposium on 26 January. She talked about the road to a diverse and inclusive university. The symposium provided plenty of concrete examples of small steps that can already be taken.

Cultural Anthropologist Jasmijn Rana argues in the opinion piece ''Black', 'white', or 'of colour' is not about purity' in the Leiden University Weekly Mare to use uneasiness about being reduced to skin colour and gender to fight racism.

Exactly a century ago, astronomers observed the first two diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) in space. A DIB manifests itself as a colour of light that is missing in the radiation from stars behind an interstellar cloud. Although about 500 DIBs are yet discovered, they remained inexplicable until recently.…

Textbooks in the Netherlands contain significantly fewer female than male characters and relatively few characters from a non-Western background. They also contain implicit stereotyping. This is what Judi Mesman, Professor of the Interdisciplinary Study of Societal Challenges at Leiden University, has…

The jury of the Africa Thesis Award is delighted to announce that the 2024 prize has been awarded to Baleseng Maeneche, a graduate of the Faculty of Arts & Humanities at the University of the Western Cape, for her thesis 'Media Representations of Male Perpetrators of Violence against Women and Children:…

Karwan Fatah-Black of Leiden University, an expert in the area of Dutch colonial history, wrote the text for a slavery remembrance memorial that was unveiled on 1 July in Hoofddorp. The official abolition of slavery was proclaimed 155 years ago on 1 July 1863. On Sunday 1 July 2018 the national remembrance…

Many traces of the city's slavery history can be found in Leiden but the public isn't always aware of them. The initiators of 'Mapping Slavery in Leiden' want to change this with guided tours and street markers. Representatives of the University and other Leiden institutions will be giving the first…

On the 13th of December 2017 Ana Lucia Araujo came to Leiden to discuss the long history of the demand for reparations for slavery. In the basement of the Van Stockum bookstore she presented her recent book on this issue and discussed the research project with Karwan Fatah-Black.

From the discovery of exoplanets to the hunt for extraterrestrial life. At the Astronomy Gala on 17 December in the concert hall in Leiden, astronomers looked back, but above all ahead. With King Willem-Alexander as guest of honour.

Europe's latest quantum computer is set to arrive in the Netherlands. The Dutch IT cooperative, SURF, which supports education and research institutions, has secured funding from the European EuroHPC programme to make this possible. Researchers from Leiden University will play a key role in the project,…

SRON, the Netherlands Institute for Space Research, is holding an open day on Sunday 25 September. It has had a branch at the Leiden Bio Science Park since 2021 and works closely with Leiden University.

The preliminary round in Leiden was cancelled, in part due to the corona crisis, but three young Leiden researchers were able to take part in the preliminary FameLab round at the University of Amsterdam. The Amsterdam jury selected Fabiola Diana and Liza Cornet, both social scientists. They will go…

Sixty-four high school students from Slovenia, Czech Republic and The Netherlands have visited Leiden University in the week of 7-11 November, as part of the Talent Education Project. They split in eight groups, of which some went to the science faculty to conduct research projects.

CWTS is has been successful in another H2020 SwafS-14 call on territorial RRI. We are participating in a Coordination and support (CSA) project, RIPEET, which will start in February 2021 and last for 3 years.

On June 10, Michelle Achterberg received the prize for best dissertation from the Dutch Neurofederation, the network of Dutch neuroscientists, for her thesis 'Like me, ore else...'. Achterberg obtained her doctorate cum laude from the Gravitation Program 'Samen Uniek' of the Leiden Consortium on Individual…

Television presenter and journalist Twan Huys will be a lecturer in Journalism and New Media at Leiden University from 1 September 2024.

Thomas Hansen is the recipient of the 2020 KNCV-Backer Prize for best organic chemistry thesis in the Netherlands.