The Executive Board of Leiden University appointed Dr. Johannes Magliano-Tromp as interim member of the Faculty Board of the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs with the portfolio Education.

BplusC Libraries and Old Observatory Leiden working together to provide telescopes

We would like to welcome Matthijs Westera, who will be joining LUCL as Assistant Professor of Humanities and AI for SAILS.

In May-June 2014, the BA and MA students from Leiden University supervised by Rachel Schats and Frank van Spelde excavated over 90 single coffin burials in Kampen on a cemetery belonging to a Medieval infirmary.

Mark Klaassen, assistant professor at the Institute of Immigration Law, has been appointed as a committee member in the Advisory Committee on Migration Affairs.

New name of the Computer Applications group

Metamaterials researcher Martin van Hecke was featured in the Dutch science tv show Atlas.

It is time for the fifth lecture in the series Manuscript Mondays. We shall have two speakers. Jesse Keskiaho (University of Helsinki, Finland) will start with a talk about the soul. In the second talk Evina Steinova will tell us more about the medieval encyclopaedia. The talks will be followed by a…

Gerard van Westen and his group, together with pharmaceutical company Galapagos, start on developing software that invents new effective molecules. They will receive an NWO LIFT grant of 280,000 euros, of which 63,000 euros will come from Galapagos. The company will also bring its expertise in biology,…

The cumulative index contains a list of all the editorials, articles, case notes published in each volume by subject ever since publication started in 1963.

Are you writing your thesis this semester? Choose a sustainable topic! To help you get started, Leiden University Green Office has made a guideline to write your thesis about a sustainable topic. Find examples, a step-by-step plan to follow and our reasoning behind this project! Or, did you recently…

Joris Larik was interviewed by BBC World Service radio on the state of Brexit negotiations, the Irish border issue and ongoing Dutch preparation.

On April 19th, well-known Indian singer and scholar Sumithra Vasudev will give a unique lecture and singing performance at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Antiquities Museum) in Leiden.

The plane trees from the forecourt of Cluster North have been moved to the Herta Mohr building (Cluster South). The trees could not remain in their original location because of the forthcoming renovation of Cluster North. They have been moved already in advance of the flowering season. In June, the…

Read all about YAL membership and the members of the Young Academy Leiden.

Het is nog lastig in te schatten wat de gevolgen zijn van de aangekondigde bezuinigingen. Een week na Prinsjesdag kan decaan Koen Caminada al wel wat vragen van binnen FGGA beantwoorden. ‘We staan er relatief goed voor, maar de gevolgen kunnen groot zijn.’

On Tuesday 16 April, the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) of Leiden University and the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV) organised a panel discussion on the recommendations of the report: ‘Nuclear weapons in a new geopolitical reality’. In this report the AIV recommends…

An international visitation committee has judged the research programme of the Institute of Public Administration of Leiden University as excellent. The report, which looked at the period 2014-2019, was published last week.

‘To be honest, I knew very little about the Netherlands when I arrived in 1998. But studying law in Leiden was a very enriching experience.’ Nathalie van den Berge grew up in a number of different European countries, and now works at a UN office in Tanzania, where she lives with her Dutch husband and…

A breakthrough from the PhD research of medical chemist Elmer Maurits may help patients with autoimmune diseases and blood cancer in the future. But bringing a discovery from the lab to the clinic is not so easily done. Thanks to NWO's Venture Challenge, Maurits and his team will receive ten weeks of…

Alumnus Rennie Roos lives and works in Indonesia. What took him there, what does he do there and what inspires him?

The course Designing Your Life helps students navigate their career pathways. As it turns out, these pathways are full of twists and turns and - as with many journeys - you only make progress once you gather the courage to take the first step.

The start of this year saw the opening of the LDE Centre for Governance, Migration and Diversity. The Centre looks at public administration and policy issues in the four South Holland cities from a multicultural perspective. What is unusual is that there are already master's graduates at the Centre.

The Faculty of Science launched the new Academic Year on 21 September with a special We Are Science talk show. Dean Paul Wouters starred in his role as talk show host and received a wide variety of guests.

He started his career as a part-time PhD candidate and a reading volunteer at his children's school. Now, as a professor, he looks back on forty years of research and education: Peter Klinkhamer of the Institute of Biology Leiden, ecologist in heart and soul.

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.’

At first glance, archaeology seems like a job that is hard to take home. Nothing could be further from the truth though! Our archaeologists are currently developing new dating methods, are looking for lost cities in their living rooms, and perform daring acts of experimental archaeology!

Light makes us flourish – in this respect we humans are just like a rose or an azalea. Light can also be used to treat people who are ill. In Leiden, Sylvestre Bonnet and Esther Habers are working – each in their own discipline – on new applications of light in a clinical context.

Last July, after the end of my Advanced LLM in Public International Law, I wanted to find new tasks to prove myself on topics related to what I studied during my stimulating master in the Netherlands. In the impossibility to work “on the field” as I was busy for my bar exam in my own country and I was…

In the Spring semester of 2017, two courses will be offered by the Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies, Dr. Helmut Tauscher. One is oriented at the BA level (starting February 23), the other at the MA level (starting February 20).

The fact that Tim Meijers ended up becoming a philosopher came as no surprise. Even as a child, the university lecturer endlessly asked questions to himself and others. Now that is his job at the Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University. Tim Meijers researches sustainability and justice between…

How can I align science, society and myself to address today’s major challenges? That’s what students of the Honours College track ‘Science, Society and Self’ aim to find out. How do their classes at honours differ from their regular education?

The European Research Council (ERC) announced the awarding of 494 Starting Grants to young scientists across Europe. One of these scholars is Corinna Jentzsch, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Political Science. She received this grant for her research project ‘Countering…

It’s not something the police force wants to see, but it still occurs: racist and misogynist police conduct. Human rights specialist Dr Linda Louis has studied how technology could help police officers behave correctly and comply with the applicable legal norms.

Transparency is seen as an important value for democratic government policy. Does that mean that we should do away with state secrets, such as confidential information involving intelligence agencies and political deals made behind closed doors? Political philosopher and ERC grant recipient Dorota Mokrosinska…

After an extremely painful conclusion, the Western allies have left Afghanistan and the Taliban have regained supremacy. How will Afghanistan move forward, and what does the departure mean for global relations? Rob de Wijk, emeritus Professor of International Relations and Security, analyses the failure…

‘The whole of society benefits if it is accessible for people with a disability.' This is what Pauline Gransier, student of Film and Literary Studies at Leiden University, has to say. She has been nominated for the Top 100 Enabled.

The past two years, Laura van der Knaap and Professor Karsten Lambers worked on creating open teaching materials on agent-based modeling, funded by Erasmus+ and in collaboration with Danish, Irish and Dutch partners. Programming is an important skill involved in this, which is often seen as intimidating…

Do young people who want to change gender have the unconditional right to medical treatment? Pediatric Endocrinologist Martine de Vries, who is also Professor of Medical Ethics, treats transgender children and adolescents. She will discuss this in her ‘Pride Talk’ on 18 September.

Ben Wielstra strives to unravel the evolution of balanced lethal systems. On 1 February he started his own lab at the Institute of Biology Leiden. Wielstra is one of five researchers at Leiden University who has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2018 by the European Research Council. ERC Starting…

In July 2022 our alumnus Samatar Botan received the news that he had received the NWO Mosaic 2.0 grant. This grant enables him to start a PhD research at our Faculty on the ancient Aksumite Empire, a topic that is close to his heart. We speak with him about his ambitions and drive. ‘I want to know more…

In the weekend of 24 February, master’s student and skater Lisa van der Geest won two skating marathons in Luleå, Sweden: the 100 km and the 42 km in the KPN Grand Prix on natural ice. Lisa has already won many times this year.

Finding solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the not-inconsiderable task of the new Peace Academy in The Hague. Professor Maurits Berger and twelve students from different conflict zones are starting a creative thinking process that aims to discover the basic conditions for peace in the…

In May 2022 Lennart Kruijer succesfully defended his PhD, which he wrote as a member of the VICI Project ‘Innovating Objects’, led by prof. Miguel John Versluys. So succesfully, in fact, that he was awarded the Cum Laude honors. Just a short time later he was awarded a grant and a fellowship to further…

On 30 August 2024, 330 students received their Bachelor Diploma of International Studies. The students were awarded their diplomas in the historic Pieterskerk in Leiden. A large audience of about 1000 people consisting of friends, family, and staff members gathered to celebrate the graduates’ achievements…

A consortium of international researchers comes with a unique solution to the energy problem. By mimicking photosynthesis, they aim to produce sustainable fuels out of sunlight, water, and CO2. Their secret? ‘Soap bubbles’, says Leiden chemist Sylvestre Bonnet, who is part of the consortium.

Ever since Nadine Akkerman, Professor of Early Modern Literature & Culture, came across a woman spy in her research, secret agents have kept cropping up in her work. Now there’s Spycraft, a popular history book exploring the espionage techniques used by early modern spies, which she has co-written with…

Music, being together and the impact of science were at the heart of the festive opening of the academic year and the start of the faculty’s 200-year anniversary. The faculty was 200 years old on 2 August 2015. The anniversary was celebrated in style, attended by 500 members of staff and students.

Every month a member of the Institute for History tells about a book that inspired him or her. Afterwards, the pen is passed on to another colleague. This month dr. Robert Stein tells about the book 'La Vérité sur l'affaire Harry Quebert' by Swiss writer Joel Dicker. It is not so much the whodunit that…

He announced this news in a tweet earlier this month: 'Delighted to announce that I've been appointed Full Professor of Global Security and Technology'. So let's get more closely acquainted with Dennis Broeders (46), who explains why the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) is ideal for him,…