You speak Japanese, know everything about medieval art or understand exactly what Hegel meant. And then you graduate. Many Humanities students find it hard to enter the labour market. A relevant part-time job can help. Therefore, the faculty has been working together with the employment agency Randstad…

Many students are looking to contribute during this crisis but are not sure how and where to turn. A group of students from Leiden University and the TU Delft have developed a platform to facilitate this: www.studententegencorona.nl. The platform was created to link organisations trying to find answers…

The Faculty of Humanities’ On-Campus Master’s Experience Day was a pleasantly busy event. The information sessions and corresponding information market went down well with interested undergraduates.

Feeling good doesn’t just lift our mood—it also helps us stay flexible and resilient. A new study by an international team of neuroscientists shows that natural brain opioids released after rewards play a key role in broadening attention, offering fresh insights into stress, cognition, and well-bein…

If three or more objects move around each other, history cannot be reversed. That is the conclusion of an international team of researchers based on computer simulations of three black holes orbiting each other. The researchers, led by the Dutch astronomer Tjarda Boekholt, publish their findings in…

Astronomers want to understand the Universe, from the Big Bang to the present day, and what the future will hold. In Leiden they focus on two key questions: ‘How did stars and planets originate’ and ‘How were galaxies and black holes formed in the young Universe?’ A new generation of telescopes – just…

The ability to collect and interpret huge quantities of data has become indispensable to society and academia. Leiden University is a knowledge and expertise centre for data science that places the emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation.

Nanotechnology has pervaded numerous industrial sectors over the past decades. Although many of us may not be aware of it, nanomaterials are now embedded within many of the the products we use in our daily lives. The agricultural sector might be next in line. Leiden environmental scientists Tom Nederstigt…

An X-ray scanner, some small metal balls, and a newly developed algorithm. That is all you need to make a 3D model that enables you to look inside art objects without dismantling them. Thanks to the research of Francien Bossema (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica and Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer…

The New Scientist magazine has selected two young Leiden scientists for its Top 25 Young Talents in the Netherlands and Flanders: historian Karwan Fatah-Black and neuropsychologist Mariska Kret. Who will be the winner? You can vote for one of them!

Anthropologist Rodrigo Ochigame studies how AI is changing the practice of scientific research. From astrophysics to mathematics to climate science, they find that the adoption of new AI models is raising questions about what counts as reliable scientific evidence.

Whilst resisting abhorrent Russian aggression, Ukraine has made a clear choice for a future in Europe. With an association agreement already in place, and Ukraine being a candidate for EU membership, Ukrainian lawyers need to be trained in EU law and Ukrainian Law Schools need to develop the capacity…

On November 21, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena gives the Ehrenfest Colloquium. Maldacena is known worldwide as the inventor of AdS/CFT correspondence, which might be key to a theory of quantum gravity. Maldacena is winner of the prestigious Dirac Prize and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental…

National Meat Free Week, from 11 to 17 March, encourages us to choose the environmentally friendly option more often. But apart from preventing animal suffering, does eating less meat really make much difference? Three questions for Leiden Professor of Industrial Ecology Arnold Tukker.

Can we reshape school playgrounds through data and design? By using AI and wearable sensors, data scientist Maedeh Nasri discovered ways to create environments where children, including those with ADHD and autism, can connect, play, and grow.

In 2021, Thijs Bosker and Paul Behrens — both Associate Professors in Environmental Sciences at Leiden University — received funding from the Leiden University Fund and the Gratama Foundation to develop tangible and practical exercises that help people to deal with environmental issues from a local…

Online services are stored on servers in data centres. Remko Fermin researched methods to make the memory in data centres more energy efficient.

Our lecturers had just a week to convert their subjects into online formats. It was an enormous challenge because by no means everyone was involved in remote teaching at Leiden University. As well as being Vice-Dean of Leiden Law School, Ton Liefaard is also a lecturer. ‘I especially want to support…

LEGO creations, a clothesline of visions and a journey into the past and the future: just some of the highlights of Uni-vision day, where creatives developed their vision of the future of study.

ASTRON en de Universiteit Leiden beginnen samen een nieuwe leerstoel over sterrenkunde en AI. Bijzonder hoogleraar Joeri van Leeuwen gaat deze positie vullen.

A team of students from Leiden won the iGEM international biology contest in 2020 with their Rapidemic mobile testing kit. The kit makes it easy to detect viruses. The team has now been nominated for the Most Innovative Student in the Netherlands prize. Cast your vote and help them develop their inv…

A subject like history is all about the past. That often involves scrolling through old documents, but in the Research Master's in History, Professor Dario Fazzi takes a different approach. His students work with Virtual Reality.

Minuscule elementary particles from space colliding with Earth can give us an insight into the distant objects they come from. But first, you need to know how to catch them. With a Vidi grant from NWO, researcher Sjoert van Velzen will 'hunt' for neutrinos coming from exploding black holes.

Afro-American slaves in the 19th century did not always flee to the north of the United States, according to historical research. Most of the slaves who fled remained in the southern states and posed as free coloured people. This is the conclusion that Professor Damian Pargas from Leiden University…

Lyndsey Housden teaches in the Interactive/Media/Design department at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague. She is a researcher and artist, working with interactive and haptic installations, spatial design and interdisciplinary projects for exhibitions, theatre, and festivals.

The quest for Trustworthy AI is high on both the political and the research agenda, and it actually constitutes TAILOR’s first research objective (H1) of developing the foundations for Trustworthy AI. It is concerned with designing and developing AI systems that incorporate the safeguards that make…

Ruling Overseas: Connected Practices of Governance of Law

The Old Obervatory Leiden is one of the partners of the local learning ecosystem ‘Verwonder om de Hoek’, an educational platform from Leiden that lets school children and families wonder about the world of Nature, Science, Technology and Sustainability. On this page you will find the educational programmes…

Simulations of galaxies help researchers understand astronomical observations better. The EAGLE simulation, a large project in which Leiden astronomers play a leading role, shows the evolution of the Universe, from just after the Big Bang to the present day.

The skin has recently gained attention within body studies for its many specific cultural and social associations, in addition to its biology. This project aims to examine the different layers of meaning and the functions invested in the skin in ancient Greece: how did ancient Greek literary and medical…

Regulating Relations: Controlling Sex and Marriage

The earth has more than 7 billion inhabitants, all of whom leave behind traces of pollution. However, not all forms of pollution have the same harmful effect. Leiden scientists help determine where we should put our priorities.

This study examines the system and poetics of literary patronage in the Renaissance by presenting a comprehensive analysis of the poetry of Giannantonio Campano. In this way, it addresses two themes largely overlooked by modern scholarship.

Leiden University's Citizen Science Lab supports and organizes initiatives where anyone can get started with scientific data and research. This is how we enrich research with insights from the community, make science accessible to all, and tackle important local issues together.

Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS)

Our team is committed to the study of knowledge in its broadest sense, encompassing both ideas and practices in all its historical variety. We look at what people regarded as knowledge, how they created, collected, circulated and used it, also why it mattered to them, and how all this was embedded in…

The municipality of Leiden aims for circular construction, but how do you reconcile that with the growing demand for housing? For the Kennisatelier Duurzaamheid, master's students from Industrial Ecology are investigating whether the municipality can build enough houses up to 2030 and still use half…

The whole world is waiting anxiously for sufficient supplies of coronavirus vaccines. As Launch Navigator at Pfizer, alumnus Dennis de Mik must help ensure that the Netherlands receives 19.8 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. How is he going about this and how has his Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences…

'Refugees often have to run for their lives. In Leiden, we run to raise money to support them and to contribute to their education.' With these words Leiden biology student and and former refugee from Congo Lesage Munyemana, calls out to sponsor teams for the Leiden Science Run.

After three years of courses, exercises, debating and reflecting, Honours College students received their certificate during a festive ceremony. Even more than with the certificate as such, attendees were pleased with the way Honours enables students to deal with an increasingly complex world.

PhD candidate Jianhong Zhou aimed to better understand whether and how plant species adapt to environmental changes. She developed two databases that she used to analyze how easily or difficultly plants adapt to changing conditions. Zhou defended her PhD thesis on 4 September.

Doctors are there to diagnose and treat people. But sometimes a diagnosis can’t be made or doctors differ in opinion. Luckily, Alireza Mashaghi Tabari and his research team have developed a new framework to solve medical diagnostic problems. This framework can also be applied to many other research…

On 11 May the House of Representatives voted in favour of a law that will enable some sectors to reopen sooner than planned with the aid of test certificates. Political philosopher Josette Daemen is critical of the new legislation. ‘Just because we get used to measures doesn’t make them desirable.’

In the new board game Epoch – Early Inventors you explore the prehistoric landscape. You gather food and raw material to develop tools and skills, and you try to appease the gods. Dr Maikel Kuijpers was involved in its development from the start and he is very happy with the result. “There is a lot…

From 2029, childcare in the Netherlands will be almost free for working parents. Egbert Jongen, Professor of Economics, spoke with Nieuwsuur about the missed opportunities for non-working parents: 'Participation in formal childcare is particularly beneficial for children from disadvantaged families.…

How did you get to where you are now? This is a key question in the Academic Life Course board game, developed by and for academics. ‘In a normal working week we hardly ever talk about the career choices we make, but with this game, we do.’

In the coming decades, more than 2 million social housing units in the Netherlands will receive an upgrade in insulation and heating, in order to increase energy efficiency. To study the environmental, financial and social impact of this energy transition, a team of scientists from three universities…

Leiden researchers have developed an app that doctors can use to more easily determine the right dosage of medication for corona patients. At the moment, doctors are prescribing many existing kinds of medication to patients. Using the app, they can determine a safe and effective dosage.

Just one year ago, nobody would have given Trump a cat's chance in the US presidential elections. Now he will be the next President of the United States. Professor of Journalism and New Media Jaap de Jong explains the rhetoric that has got Trump so far.

In the past decades terrorists have regularly surprised us with unexpected and spectacular attacks, such as the one on the World Trade Centre in New York. How can intelligence services stay one step ahead of them? Consult Charles Darwin and Steven Spielberg is the advice of terrorism expert Yannick…