Now that the Herta Mohr building is fully operational, construction work is moving to the other side of the University Library. Over the coming years, the former Matthias de Vrieshof will be transformed into the Aleida Nijland building. Architect Bart van Kampen tells us more about the plans.

With its FestivOWL theme, Orientation Week Leiden (OWL) promises to be one big festival for new international students in Leiden.

How ethical is research involving humans and robots? And can research on artificial intelligence cause problems when it ends up in the wrong hands? In any research involving humans or their data, the ethics committee assesses where the issues are. Associate professor at LIACS Suzan Verberne chairs the…

Last week, third-year students of the Bachelor Security Studies concluded a seven-week intensive programme with a two-day conference. They presented their findings in front of a full lecture hall and in the presence of the client for whom they worked on a complex security issue. Tutor Saskia Postema:…

I am an associate professor in health psychology here at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. My main line of work is health behaviour and behaviour change, so trying to understand why people do what they do including clearly unhealthy things. I have done a lot of work on personal goals and…

'Academics who share their knowledge with the outside world on social media are often insulted or even threatened. Especially female academics and academics of colour seem to regularly be the victim of sexist and racist comments.' This is what Ineke Sluiter, Professor of Greek Language and Literature…

Cutting down global emissions of greenhouse gases to combat global warming won’t do the trick alone: we also need negative-emissions technology that can capture carbon dioxide directly out of the air. In the prestigious journal Global Environmental Change, PhD candidate Oscar Rueda and colleagues shed…

Andrew Littlejohn composed a sonic ethnography with sounds recorded in Japan’s northeastern region. To understand the experience of being in the middle of a changing landscape, Littlejohn composed a sonic ethnography called Shizugawa, named after a district in Minamisanriku Town where he recorded.

Working as a diplomat for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: for many students it would be their dream. Alumnus Tom Groot Haar is busy making it a reality. 'My career seems like a preconceived plan, but it wasn't.'

Moving to a different city as a student can be a daunting prospect, let alone to a different country. Each year, many students come to Leiden, and many find a home away from home thanks to the Humanities Master’s Buddy Programme. Kathleen Burke and Victor Jarzargaray experienced it first-hand. “It’s…

As a twelve-year-old girl, Nicky van de Beek became intrigued by the tomb chapels in Saqqara, Egypt. Now she is doing her PhD on them, just like another Leiden Egyptologist decades earlier. Herta Mohr persevered with her research during World War II. Now she is the namesake of the first Leiden building…

Over the past few hundreds of years, the world has changed radically. However, cultural stereotypes from the 17th century are still alive and well today, and even academic researchers sometimes use terms coined centuries ago. Why do they do that? Herman Paul, Professor of the History of the Humanities,…

In a new series we talk to past and present students who were the first in their family to go to university. In this first instalment: novelist and columnist Christiaan Weijts (1976). ‘I always felt as though someone would tap me on my shoulder once they’d discovered my clandestine presence.’

Two Leiden students stand a chance of winning the ECHO Award for Higher Education. Deniz Rana Kuseyri (Rana for short) and Ruşen Koç are two of the six finalists for this annual national prize that is awarded to students who promote diversity and inclusion in their own discipline.

According to some stories, Einstein washed his hands there only once. According to others, students moved it as a joke. Whatever the case may be, Einstein's sink has enjoyed mythical status among students and employees of the Faculty of Science for decades. But what is the real story? Alumnus Alex Pietrow…

Prison and student life are worlds apart. But in the Learning Behind Bars project, Leiden criminology students get the chance to study inside prison walls with people incarcerated there.

Multidrug-resistant pathogens and worldwide pandemics are increasing, making infectious diseases more prevalent. To develop new treatments, deeper knowledge of the interaction between bacteria and human cells is required. Ariane Briegel recently became a Medical Delta professor and studies such path…

All microscopic objects, from enzymes to paint particles, are jittering constantly, bombarded by solvent particles: this is called Brownian motion. How does this motion change when the object is flexible instead of rigid? Ruben Verweij, Pepijn Moerman and colleagues published the first measurements…

Herman Boerhaave (1668 - 1738) is generally known to have been a dedicated doctor and chemist. However, the significant role he played in botany is less well documented, according to Margreet Wesseling. So she decided to write about about Boerhaave the botanist to mark the 350th anniversary of his birth…

Hans Slabbekoorn is specialised in animal sounds. On 1 July, he was appointed professor of Acoustic ecology and behaviour. A great honour, according to the new professor. ‘This job never gets boring, whether I am investigating the urban jungle or marine noise.’

According to a new study, for half of the world population the answer would be yes. For the other half: maybe? Leiden environmental researcher and head author Nicolas Navarre explains: ‘With improvements to crop yields, reductions in food waste, and changes in consumption patterns, 90% of people could…

Bonobos – just like humans – pay more attention to pictures that show other members of their species displaying emotional behaviour than to neutral scenes. Leiden researcher Dr Mariska Kret made this discovery while conducting research at Apenheul Primate Park.

The last time they visited Campus The Hague was back in March, the pupils from The Hague department of ICM Weekend School. On Sunday 13 September, they were finally able to continue their lessons, corona proof. A report of the kick-off for the new school year for third-year pupils and their parents,…

What will be the focus of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus strategic alliance in the next few years? Wim van den Doel, the new Chair of LDE, talks about his vision for the future of the alliance, social issues and the reality of academic collaboration.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in May, twenty-five bright international students gathered in the Old Observatory to celebrate their graduation of the International Leiden Leadership Programme. A tour of the Sterrewacht and the ‘borrel’ made for a nice completion of the Honours programme.

Professor Beatrice de Graaf held the 53rd Huizinga Lecture on Thursday 12 December. In front of a a sold-out Stadsgehoorzaal, she spoke about how history can be used in times of crisis to give meaning to the situation.

Parents often see that when their sweet, socially-minded children become adolescents they change into selfish 'hotel guests' who think only of themselves. But adolescents become increasingly better at weighing up one another's interests. This discovery has been made by development psychologist Rosa…

Do you gain enough practical experience in an academic language and culture study programme? Certainly, proved the bachelor students of Italian this summer. For the Transfer IT programme, they combined their own interests with the knowledge they gained during their studies. This resulted in vastly different…

An impressive 875 students from all corners of the globe are taking part in Orientation Week Leiden (OWL). After all the lockdowns in their own countries, they’re glad to meet up in real life in Leiden. What do they expect of their studies here?

The rights of children born through international commercial surrogacy are at risk of being overlooked or even violated. Lawmakers, judges and commissioning parents should be more aware of this and take protective action throughout the surrogacy procedure. This is the conclusion reached by lawyer and…

'What nature made isn’t necessarily an optimized medicine to use in the human body,’ says Professor of Biological Chemistry Nathaniel Martin. That’s why a group of Leiden researchers is making a chemistry-based improved version of the frequently used antibiotic vancomycin. They received an NWO NACTAR…

From exploring global issues at LUC to shaping young minds in the classroom, LUC alumna Malou den Dekker shares how her academic journey led to a career in education.

Your local city park may be improving your health, according to a new paper led by Leiden environmental scientist Roy Remme. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Remme and his colleagues describe how access to nature increases people’s physical activity—and therefore overall health—in…

Betty de Jonge is a household name in our faculty. As the person behind AskBetty, she knew how to answer every question about Office. Starting this month, she has officially retired.

Cybersecurity doesn’t start with your first job – it starts with your first phone. According to Sofian Fesenko, a student of Crisis and Security Management (CSM), digital resilience needs to be built from a young age. That’s why he developed an educational card game to raise children’s awareness of…

Four PhD researchers of Leiden University have been selected to participate in the Europaeum Scholars Program 2022-2023. Two of them, Lena Riecke and Sophie Vértiter, are doing their research at ISGA. Time for a introduction.

Since 2009-2010, the West viewed China as more assertive. Especially after Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the country abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s ‘low profile’ foreign policy. Friso Stevens explains in his dissertation where this change has come from. The dissertation defence is on 28 March.

With the new academic year, the Honours Academy welcomes a new assessor: Maarten Kolpa. What does an assessor do? And what can he do for honours students? Maarten talks about it in an interview.

German-American Mia Müller (26) has been working at the European Parliament for three years now as Press Officer at The Greens/EFA Group. She is a bit nervous about her 'first' elections.

Sarah Michiel is the Institute Manager of NIMAR and has been living in Morocco since 2012. Due to the coronavirus, she has been working in Belgium since 20 March, where she grew up. The NIMAR office in Rabat is currently empty and all visits and conferences have been cancelled. Sarah is trying to run…

Mountains of pepernoten, shelves full of chocolate letters and adverts showing the perfect Christmas table. With the holidays approaching, supermarkets are trying to entice us to buy all sorts of treats. Cognitive neuropsychologist Judith Schomaker researches how by directing consumers’ attention, you…

During the first weekend of October, a group of fourteen Master of Arts in European Union Studies alumni returned to the place it all began, 15 years after graduating from Leiden University. The international group, representing the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Belgium and…

Search engines are getting better at answering our questions. And chatbots are increasingly likely to search the internet for relevant sources. ‘Search engines and chatbots will become more closely entwined’, says Professor Suzan Verberne.

We continue to work from home as much as possible. How are the staff members of the Institute for History doing? Mike Schmidli shares his experience below.

Researchers from the Netherlands Cancer Institute, the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and Oncode have created a tracking system that can reveal how often cells have divided. This allowed them to find a yet undiscovered population of immune cells: young memory cells that behave like stem cells.…

The Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC) is to be joined by a further two talented young chemists. Bela Bode and Michele Pavanello have each won a Marie Curie subsidy. Bode will be studying electron transport in photosynthesis and Pavanello will be using computer models to study charge transport in large…

Nine museums in eight days, and an average of 25,000 steps a day? You must be talking about a trip with the Leiden Art History Association! In July, 20 students and a lecturer travelled to New York to take in all the art, architecture and other high points the city has to offer. We spoke to Joëlle Daems,…

Professor Pieter ter Keurs has spent his entire career studying collecting. Now, he is retiring. ‘I hope the focus on collections will carry on.’

Ian Simpson is a relatively new face at the Faculty of Archaeology. Starting as an assistant professor in the Heritage and Society department in 2018, he is one of the faculty’s members in critical heritage studies and looks both at the past as well as the future. ‘I study how heritage can be employed…

People in leadership roles are unlikely to discuss leadership skills with their colleagues. But that is precisely what we as a university would like them to do. Because trust in one another’s abilities will make us an agile university that innovates and makes room for talent.