The Department of Company Law and Financial Law provides education and conducts research in areas including company and corporate law, financial contract- and liability law, corporate governance, sustainability, Dutch and EU financial regulatory law, mergers and acquisitions, insolvency law, and international…

Research in the POD-group addresses all features of random phenomena – modelling, structuring, analysis, control, optimisation – and covers both fundamental and applied aspects.

Leiden University has a long tradition of Asian language education. Chinese, Japanese and Korean partners are essential in providing a practical side of learning education.

In personal stories, university staff and students with different backgrounds reflect on our colonial and slavery past. How does this history affect the present and the future?

The Netherlands is informal, friendly and welcoming. Everyone can feel at home here, regardless of religion, ethnic background or sexual orientation. The Dutch speak many languages and the countryside and cities are easy and safe to travel through, by any means of transport. No matter where you come…

At the Faculty of Archaeology, we investigate the development of human societies worldwide, from the earliest beginnings to modern times. We also study the heritage of mankind, which evokes this deep history, and which connects with, and informs, contemporary society.

The Mathematical Institute has a rather liberal management structure. Tasks and responsibilities are distributed among the staff. Important decisions are taken by consensus. Various organisational divisions are featured below.

There is a crisis in the law concerning the accommodation of religious practice. The legal profession is demanding that the law be changed because it does not want religious institutions to have the 'right to discriminate'. The profession holds that evolving societal sexual norms can render lawful religious…

During a symposium in honour of his 60th birthday, statistician Aad van der Vaart received the royal award of Knight in the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands. Colleagues talk about his significance for their field and how they got to know him. ‘The collaborations with Aad have been one of the great…

It was her original Salterio from 1725, built by Michele Barbi, which Franziska Fleischanderl could coincidentally acquire in 2014 that ignited her passion for this special string instrument. Before, she was focussed on contemporary music with modern Hackbrett.

A more inclusive and diverse society is what Talisha Schilder, Hawra Nissi and Chiraz Hassoumi spend many hours a week working towards. Their hard work led them to being nominated for the ECHO Award.

Carolijn Brouwer and ambitious are synonymous. That has got her a long way. She was the first woman to be part of the winning team of the Volvo Ocean Race, the toughest of sailing races. 'Would I take part again? Only for a bigger challenge - as skipper, for example.'

Even the Mohawk Indians were talking about Serv Wiemers’ thesis. This Law alumnus, who has been intrigued by the world of American Indians since he was a boy, recently wrote a book about that world.

The Dies Natalis for alumni on 11 February was an online event. Almost 1,000 alumni tuned in to Bastiaan Rijpkema’s interview with Annetje Ottow, who had then been President of Leiden University’s Executive Board for all of three days. Alumni are part of her portfolio on the Executive Board.

The Greek diasporic queer poet Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933) has been recognized as a central figure in world literature and literary modernism. On December 9th, a symposium around his work will take place at Leiden University Libraries. This will be combined with the launch of Maria Boletsi's book…

Sexual harassment was the theme of the recent annual symposium of student ambassadors to the Leiden-Bollenstreek police in collaboration with the police and the municipality. An extremely important issue to students − if the 100 places being claimed as soon as the symposium was announced was anything…

Defending your PhD research in front of nearly 300 elementary school students: that was the challenge faced by PhD candidates Jo-Anne Verschoor and Marinka de Willigen during the VUURVLIEGEN competition organised by the Centrum JongerenCommunicatie Chemie (C3). After an exciting competition, the children…

Our MA student Marie Costers from the University of Antwerp wrote about her experiences as a student at NVIC in Spring 2025!

The African Studies Centre Leiden presented the last book by its renowned colleague Prof. Stephen Ellis (1953-2015), This Present Darkness: A history of Nigerian organised crime, on 9 June. The book was published posthumously. Former colleagues and friends paid tribute to Ellis, who was regarded as…

During the opening of the academic year, true to tradition the LUC Teaching Prize will be awarded to the best lecture at the University. Get to know the nominees. This week: Christine Espin.

Each year, around forty women in the Netherlands lose their lives, most often at the hands of a (former) partner or family member. Judges, lawyers and survivors now turn directly to Professor Marieke Liem for expertise. For her, this is telling: ‘The time has come for greater knowledge and a coordinated…

From 14 to 29 PhD candidates, seven actively involved faculties and, above all, lots of innovative interdisciplinary research, all with data science as the common denominator. The university’s Data Science Research Programme (DSO) has proven so successful that after five years on a start-up grant it…

German alumna Selina Holstein tells us all about the Dutch broodjes & hagelslag, the team diversity and variety in work while working for a large firm and the importance of the Noordwijkse beach.

Hoping to learn something about the human brain, Leiden researchers are creating a setup to shoot single photons, particles of light, into someone’s eye. ‘The eye is a passageway to the brain.’

The Hague Journal of Diplomacy regularly updates its digital bookshelf with recommendations of recent books on diplomacy, global affairs, and international studies.

With the University Council elections approaching, the Leiden University Green Office (LUGO), with the support of LU's Central Sustainability Team and the D&I Office, contacted all seven candidate parties to inform our community about their views on sustainability and diversity. We asked each party…

Conference, Final conference

Michelle Spierings has been awarded the ‘Glushko Dissertation Prize’ for her thesis work on: ‘The Music of Language: Exploring grammar, prosody and rhythm perception in zebra finches and budgerigars’. The award recognises and honours young researchers conducting ground-breaking research in cognitive…

Socialising with other people is an important part of feeling good. What do children need from their surroundings to do this?

Physicians and researchers of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and Leiden University are working on therapies for restoring damaged organs such as hearts and kidneys. They are even trying to construct tailor-made organs. Read more on this topic in the new science dossier on Vascular and Regenerative…

The Dutch Student Orchestra is performing at Stadsgehoorzaal, Leiden’s concert hall, on 11 February. Several Leiden students have sacrificed many a free hour to the rehearsals. Days before the big performance we present them with three dilemmas.

Prof. Sarah de Rijcke will succeed Paul Wouters as dean of Leiden University's Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FSW) from 1 January 2024. Paul Wouters will retire at the beginning of January.

The As-Soennah mosque in the Schilderswijk, The Hague. The mosque where young Muslims of all kinds, moderate to orthodox, find a place. We, students from the Honours Class Denktank: Islam in Nederland (Think tank: Islam in The Netherlands), paid a visit to the mosque and went to talk with its imam.

Man-made sounds in and around the oceans stress marine life and have an impact on marine species and ecosystems by changing the underwater acoustic climate. Hans Slabbekoorn from the Institute of Biology Leiden pleads for technical solutions to mitigate problems of noise pollution. Science review paper…

Arjen Doelman (Leiden University), Max Rietkerk (Utrecht University), Ehud Meron (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) and Isla Myers-Smith (University of Edinburgh) received an ERC Synergy grant of 10 million euros with their RESILIENCE project. The researchers will investigate whether and how tipping…

Dr. Tesse Stek has been awarded a Veni and a Free Competition (within the Humanities field) grant by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for his research projects.

The European Union has awarded a COFUND grant to a consortium of researchers from the universities of Groningen, Leiden and Eindhoven for a collective fellowship programme called ‘oLife’. The 6 M€ programme, which is co-financed by the participating universities, will recruit and train 18 post-doctoral…

On Friday 5 February 2021 the online conference of the Dutch Platform of Empirical Legal Studies (ELS) took place. This conference served as a platform to bring young, enthusiastic and driven ELS scholars together in a research community and enable them to learn more and discuss about empirical research…

The end of January arrived together with welcome guests from Saxion University of Applied Sciences. As a part of their two-day-long visit to South Holland, almost 100 Saxion archaeology students visited our Faculty.

Swarms of drones, pedestrians or the cells in your body. Those are all examples of active matter: materials whose building blocks can move autonomously. That’s what Luca Giomi studies. Giomi has been appointed Professor of theoretical physics in the area of soft matter and biological physics at the…

Three of our researchers have been awarded a certificate for receiving enough downloads to be in the top 10% of papers in 2022

In a world where bacteria are increasingly resistant to antibiotics, Emma van Groesen set out to find a solution. This month she obtained her PhD, after four years of research into new variants of the antibiotic vancomycin. With success.

Ayo Adedokun, Assistant Professor at Leiden University College The Hague (LUC), was one of the four finalists for the National Teacher of the Year Prize for 2022. The National Prize is an annual event organized by the Dutch National Students Association (Interstedelijk Studenten Overleg, ISO), and the…

Due to the corona crisis, they had to switch to online education halfway during their course: associate professor Marcel Schaaf and PhD candidate Michiel Hooykaas of the Institute of Biology Leiden talk about digital practicals, online lectures and their biggest obstacle: exams.

Thanks in part to the persistence of a Leiden research group, cancer could be detected in the near future with just a single drop of blood. Not only can the diagnosis be determined at an earlier stage, but the blood test is also cheap, fast and patient friendly. The first results of this method seem…

Leiden physicists have developed a way to address how accurately a superconducting single photon detector (SSPD) can be characterized by detector tomography. SSPDs are not fully understood, and tomography is a key element to determine how these devices detect light. A better understanding of these detectors…

How do cells repair their damaged DNA—and what happens when that process is hindered and cancer arises? Sarah Moser has taken a closer look during her PhD, uncovering surprising insights that could help improve future cancer treatments.

This week the Turkish army invaded North East Syria. The Turkish invasion might well have had an unintended side effect: the escapement of thousands of Islamic State terrorists held in captivity. Experts on terrorism and politicians fear a resurrection of the terror group.