The annual homicide rate has decreased considerably since the 1990s. In their hunt for an explanation, researchers Pauline Aarten and Marieke Liem made a surprising discovery: if you divide homicides into categories, you find significant differences in the homicide rate. Publication in the European…

How do we prepare our students for a future labour market in which flexibility, resilience and adaptability are essential?

The 289 students who recently moved into the tower on Kolffpad at the Leiden Bio Science Park are sitting pretty. A self-contained unit in the middle of the campus yet surrounded by green, with a launderette, games room and study area on the ground floor, and, coming soon, a branch of Coffee Star.

The new open access book The Science of Citizen Science bundles insights into science that is conducted together with citizens, to promote this growing form of science.

On 17 October, a representative from the ERC Safe & Sound project attended the first edition of WE ROBOT Europe in Berlin. At the conference, speakers and participants from the academic world, policy bodies and industry shared and discussed their thoughts on robotics regulation in the EU and the US.…

Facility, Organisation

Six professors or associate professors from Leiden University have officially been appointed 'Medical Delta Professor'. Their inauguration took place at the Medical Delta Conference in Delft on 8 April.

PhD defence

Middle East Studies Lecture

The Dutch asylum application centre in Ter Apel is overburdened, an issue that is currently a prominent feature in the Dutch media. In podcast De Verbranders, PhD students Neske Baerwaldt and Wiebe Ruijtenberg engage in dialogue, and use different angles to examine themes related to migration, borders…

The SENSYN project has found a solution to few public datasets for criminological research: synthetic datasets. Marieke Liem talks about this unique innovation

How do you get citizens more involved in energy transition projects? This is the central question of the new transdisciplinary research project EmPowerEd. As a consortium partner, Leiden University is focusing on effective and inclusive collaboration between citizens, municipalities and industry.

Paul Wouters came to the Faculty of Science for a few months to help with organising day-to-day issues after the previous dean left. This has involved rather more than he expected. ‘I can now really understand why every faculty has its own dean.’

The new government needs to look further ahead, says environmental scientist Rutger Hoekstra. ‘We keep pushing forward big dossiers like demographic ageing, climate and migration. Even though we know they play a big role in our future.’ Hoekstra therefore hopes that the new coalition agreement will…

‘Teaching is not merely a profession; it’s a calling.’ These were the words of Ayo Adedokun on winning the LUS Teaching Prize at the opening of the academic year on 6 September. The prize is for the best lecturer of the year.

After nine years, Mirjam de Baar is leaving as vice-dean of the Faculty of Humanities. ‘It will take some getting used to letting go of this vice-deanship because the education portfolio is very close to my heart and I’ve worked hard for it in recent years in close cooperation with many colleagues.’

The Faculty of Humanities wants to take a stand in the middle of society with its research and education. That’s why last year, in the middle of a pandemic, the Societal Advisory Board was founded. What are the members’ plans?

Annetje Ottow is stepping down as President of Leiden University’s Executive Board on 1 September 2025 after almost five years in the role. She looks back at the highs and lows – and ahead to what’s next.

Conference, Van willen naar zijn

Talking about suicide is important, but anything but comfortable. To make this difficult subject easier for students and staff to discuss, the university is organising a campaign week in line with the national campaign ‘1K Z1E J3’ (I see you) being run by Stichting 113 Zelfmoordpreventie (113 is the…

It is with great sadness that we learned that our colleague Leo Waaijers, guest employee at our institute, passed away on August 1 after a short illness.

Social

With the help of the JEDI fund, Fatima al Moufridji and Thijs Porck went in search of cultural contacts between early medieval England, Northern Africa, and the Middle East. Together they made four knowledge clips that can now be seen on YouTube.

The Sustainability Monitor 2023 shows that Leiden University is taking its sustainability efforts seriously.

With the holidays just around the corner in this dark month of December, when we light candles as a symbol of warmth and hope, we would like to take a moment to reflect on this past year. We have accomplished a great deal together but the year has been difficult at times.

A team including staff from Leiden University won the Open Initiative Trophy on 11 February, a prize for the best open science initiative in the Netherlands. The winners developed Reprohak, a hackathon-like event where participants repeat research to see whether the results were reproducible.

Starting this semester, Urban Studies students will be able to work on the urban development of the municipality of The Hague. A LUF incentive grant will enable them to put their knowledge into practice even more effectively. At the same time, a study will be started on the optimal use of urban spac…

Assistant professor Anne-Isabelle Richard has received no fewer than three different grants for research and teaching on relations between Europe and Africa.

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga and Bart Custers from eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies wrote an article on Fair Medicine and AI highlighting that AI for biomedical research and healthcare should be beneficent and equitable for everyone.

Max van Lent, Aris Politopoulos, Emily Strange, Claire Vergerio and Astrid Van Weyenberg have joined the Leiden University Teachers’ Academy. Lecturers at the Academy exchange experiences, develop their skills and share their knowledge and expertise with the rest of the university, for example via the…

In the academic year 2018 - 2019, the Faculty of Humanities established the Educational Innovation Programme. In this way, the faculty wants to realise the ambitions from the educational vision of Leiden University in education. How is the programme currently doing? We talked to project manager Sanne…

Citizens still see great value in science communication and want to be increasingly involved in science. This is evident from research by the National Expertise Centre for Science & Society (NEWS) and researchers from the Science Communication and Society department at Leiden University.

The University of Oslo and Leiden University have joined forces to organise a Tutorial on Robots and Society: Ethical, Legal, and Technical Perspectives on Integrating Robots in the Home and Healthcare Systems and Services at the IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communica…

During LAWLANDS, the winning design of the 450 Art Competition was unveiled. The artwork by student Jill Stoelinga was chosen as the winner and is now on display at the KOG.

Leiden University will award two honorary doctorates at its Dies Natalis on 9 February 2026. They will go to internet studies scholar Safiya Umoja Noble and philosopher Catherine Malabou.

The Mapping Slavery project will place markers that tell the story of Leiden’s slavery past. Why is this important and what does it mean for today’s society? Before the markers are placed, a panel came together on 24 March to discuss the slavery past of not only the city but the University too.

eLaw reflects on a very successful turnout at this year's 17th edition of the annual CPDP Conference in Brussels. This year, the conference was rebranded as CPDP.ai in order to draw attention to AI regulation and governance beyond privacy.

As eLaw Postdoc researcher exploring the multiple intersections between law, gender, and technology, Carlotta Rigotti has recently participated in a groundbreaking international workshop focused on combatting image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) at the CAIS premises in Bochum, Germany.

There should be more social meeting places on our campus. That's one of the outcomes of to the second brainstorming session on the strategic plan. On Tuesday, education and the campus took centre stage during the meeting in Corpus. Professor and programme director Miranda van Eck and student assessor…

The Leiden Teachers Academy (LTA) was founded to help collaboration between excellent teachers. Osteoarchaeologist Dr Rachel Schats has been one of the latest additions to the Academy, nominated by the Faculty Board for the position as a Teaching Fellow. ‘In the LTA we talk about new innovations in…

During a meeting at the University on 10 November, staff spontaneously removed a painting by artist Rein Dool from the wall in one of the meeting rooms in the Academy Building, reversed it and placed it on the floor. A tongue-in-cheek action with a serious undertone. This has led to a lot of commotion…

On 25 February 2021, the UN High Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (FACTI panel) has adopted its final report, to which Valentina Carraro (GTGC) and Hortense Jongen (VU Amsterdam) have contributed by writing a background paper…

Not all gay and lesbian students feel equally safe at their sports clubs. ‘Homo’ is used almost unthinkingly as a term of abuse and players often face homophobic comments. What can sports clubs and teams do to make sure everyone feels safe when playing sports?

The Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies is proud to announce a fortified partnership with the International Bar Association to annually stage the largest moot competition focused on international criminal law: The International Criminal Court Moot Court Competition.

Microorganisms that temporarily ‘go to sleep’ play an important role in the evolution and survival of a population. Mathematician Shubhamoy Nandan conducted research on the effect of this characteristic called ‘dormancy’ in a novel mathematical model.

Universiteit Leiden en Unicef werken al 10 jaar samen om kennis over kinderrechten uit te breiden en te verspreiden. Ze verlengen deze samenwerking.

As of April 1, physicist Dorothea Samtleben is the first female program leader of Nikhef, the National Institute for Subatomic Physics. Samtleben will lead the Neutrino Physics group there. ‘This is an important step for Nikhef when it comes to diversity.’

This year, Leiden University College (LUC) celebrates its 15th anniversary with the theme ‘Global challenges, local impact’. This theme highlights how LUC tackles global issues through education and research while making tangible contributions to Dutch society

In its new Annual Report 2023, Leiden University reviews its research and teaching, as well as its ICT, staffing, finances, real estate, impact and knowledge transfer.

Leiden University's eLaw Center's BIAS Project and the Universidad de la Laguna's AEQUITAS project will collaborate to develop a deeper understanding of AI technologies' impact on workers and inform policies accordingly.