A seven-metre glass tunnel, filled with running water, and equipped with speakers and cameras. An artificial river for investigating what light and sound pollution do to migrating fish.

This project analyses the democratic consequences of increasing decentralization and regionalization in European countries. Through an original approach that foregrounds informal political dynamics, it studies the functioning of democracy in subnational units, and investigates the effects of ever more…

PACES is an innovative, inter-disciplinary and multi-level research project that asks, How do changes in society, individual life experiences and migration policy shape decisions to stay or to migrate over time and across countries? And how can this knowledge inform future migration policies and gov…

How do chemical contaminants traverse and affect terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystems?

A difficulty of studies on chemical kinetics are the reaction time scales and detection of their intermediates.

The Archaeology and Epigraphy of Jordan’s North-Eastern Desert and Beyond

The Faculty of Humanities

On the 2nd of September Jiyan Qiao successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Leiden University provides ambitious students with the most recent and innovative areas of knowledge, and offers them the freedom to develop their own area of expertise.

In this dissertation, a corpus of 595 seventeenth-century letters (mainly private ones) written between 1664 and 1672 is examined from a sociolinguistic perspective.

Situated at the crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Spanish Philippines offer historians an intriguing middle ground of connected histories that raises fundamental new questions about conventional ethnic, regional and religious identities.

The fourth volume of Ex Novo has the pleasure to host Heleen van Londen, Marjo J. Schlaman, and Andrea Travaglia as guest editors of the special issue titled The Natural and The Cultural. Integrating Approaches in Landscape Heritage Management. This timely collection of peer-reviewed papers and short…

On Wednesday 24 September 2025 Marija Šerić successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This research cluster is a part of the Institute of Political Science’s research programme ‘Institutions, Decisions and Collective Behaviour’. Its members study the design and functioning of Dutch political institutions as well as attitudes and behaviour of political elites and citizens.

Leiden University opened its doors in 1575 – the very first university in the Netherlands. The law faculty was involved from the start and so in 2025 we, too, celebrated our 450th anniversary.

This article discusses the degree of independence that is required for national human rights institutions to function successfully.

Local authorities face numerous major issues in different neighbourhoods, all requiring different approaches and solutions. With this study, Leiden University aims to gain a better understanding of how residents from every neighbourhood in The Hague think and act on such issues. This insight will help…

Resilient future generations that will shape a healthy society.

Where do our MSc Governance of Sustainability students end up after graduating? Below you find four stories of our graduates, who were interviewed by two first-year students. What is their work like, how did they end up here, and how did the masters’ prepare them for this job?

With the powerful electron microscopes at NeCEN we study abnormalities in cells of blood vessels in cardiovascular disease, the interaction between pathogens and hosts in infectious diseases, molecular processes that cause cancer and the interaction between drugs and target proteins. Drug development…

During the development of the (human) body from a single fertilized egg, organs and structures must form. The development and growth of biological forms is called morphogenesis.

Around 1.8 million years ago, early hominins moved into Eurasia and adapted to colder climates and unfamiliar ecosystems. This project investigates whether innovations in diet such as eating new plants or applying new techniques for food processing (cooking or fermentation) contributed to this major…

What are best practices for teaching students to engage with 'wicked' problems?

Vestiges of the Three Kingdoms of Ancient Korea (Samguk yusa) is the first annotated English translation of one of the most important premodern Korean historical texts.

The War, Peace, and Justice (WPJ) research group brings together leading social scientists, researchers, teachers, and both current and former leaders and practitioners to explore cutting-edge issues in war, conflict, peace, and justice.

De rechter oordeelt dat ExxonMobil extra geld beschikbaar moet stellen voor gepensioneerden. Over de hoogte van die compensatie moeten het bedrijf en de ondernemingsraad nog verder in overleg beslissen. Stefan Sagel, hoogleraar arbeidsrecht, duidt de zaak in het NRC.

Emperor Naruhito and King Willem-Alexander will visit Leiden University on Thursday 18 June.

Diversity and inclusion are core values of Leiden University.

What are the patterns and processes of human mobility in the pre-colonial circum-Caribbean as revealed by burial populations and what are the underlying motives and socio-cultural principles on both micro- and macro-scales?

Bacteria in the teeth tell us a lot about nutrition and disease in our ancestors. It also tells us more about the immune system. This provides clues for treating modern diseases and allergies. For a long time archaeologists were irritated by tartar on the teeth of excavated skulls. They thought that…

The research project MAXCAP: Maximizing the integration capacity of the European Union: Lessons and prospects for enlargement and beyond starts with a critical analysis of the effects of the 2004-2007 enlargement on stability, democracy and prosperity of candidate countries, on the one hand, and the…

My ERC Starting Grant, funded with €1.5 million for 5 years as part of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, is focused on building the early warning system WARN-D to reliably forecast depression in young adults before it occurs. Why depression, and why prediction?

What was the name, the appearance, development and the playing technique of the cello in the Low Countries between 1600 and 1800 and what music was composed for it?

How do first-hand narratives of war of commanders in the front line relate to the official narrative of the Eighty Years’ War?

In his dissertation Gabriel Paiuk explores the variable ways in which what is heard is formed. To address this, he postulates a novel concept of sound image in a post-anthropocentric context in which both mind and material artefacts are instances across which the image occurs, rather than hosts on which…

Would you like to do something for the victims of the war in Ukraine? Several actions have been set up to help the people in Ukraine. Read below what you can do.

We give you 10 reasons why you should study the programme International Financial Law at Leiden University. We have expert instructors and an excellent reputation

Time, Religion and Sacred Discourses of the Ayuuk People

The central research question focuses on identifying shifts in the urban social network in terms of private, semi-public and public space by means of mapping the spatial distributions of wells and cesspits in the town of Haarlem in the course of the pre-industrial period (1200-1800). Shifts may be indicative…

The Aesernia Colonial Landscape project investigates ancient settlement patterns and dynamics around modern Isernia in Molise (Italy), the Latin colony of Aesernia (founded 263 BC). It consists of intensive systematic field survey in the territory of the colony, combined with remote sensing and geoprospection…

Academic staff and students blog about their research and teaching.