On 4 May, Leiden University remembered the victims of the Second World War from our university community. Alumni, students and present and former staff of the University came together for this Hour of Remembrance.

Elsevier Weekblad has chosen 30 Dutch talents under the age of 30. They include Leiden alumni Mátyás Bittenbinder (biology), Hielke Onnink, (Public Sector Management) and Baris Koca (law).

Virtual Reality komt steeds dichter binnen handbereik van docenten en studenten. Hoe zou Virtual Reality kunnen bijdragen aan de leerervaringen van uw studenten? Vrijdag 19 februari, kwam een groep van ruim twintig docenten en experts af op een bijeenkomst over deze vraag in Studiecentrum Plexus. Met…

Nikki Sterkenburg, external PhD candidate at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs in The Hague, was interviewed by the NOS programme Nieuws & Co about the meeting of Thierry Baudet with Alt-Right movement Jared Taylor. 'If Baudet would have wished to stay aloof of this movement, he shouldn’t…

Plants that are pollinated by fewer species of animal may be less vulnerable to change than was thought. This is what Saskia Klumpers discovered in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. She will be awarded a PhD on 15 December.

In an appeal case, an employee of a care organisation in Nijmegen who was shown the door because of her criticism about the coronavirus voiced on LinkedIn, has had her dismissal reviewed. The court in Arnhem ruled that the employee had crossed a line and that her employer was entitled to dismiss her…

January is the final month of our temporary exhibition 'Above and Beyond: Making Sense of the Universe for 100 Years'. You can visit every weekend until Jauary 26th.

Tumours act like mini-organs, manipulating their environment and using bodily processes to survive and metastasise. Through research by Erik Danen and his colleagues, we are learning more about the complex nature of tumour cells. In the Dutch newspaper NRC, the scientists discuss their findings.

We use zebrafish as a model organism to study human development and disease as well as animal welfare and environmental impact.

Starting April 13 a brand new exhibition is open for visit, titled 'Above and Beyond: Making Sense of the Universe for 100 Years

‘We’ve only just begun,’ said Honorary Doctor Jennifer Chayes in her acceptance speech after receiving her Honorary Doctorate on 8 February. 'We are on the cusp of a data revolution, which will deeply impact both science and society.'

Professor Kees Waaldijk presented the report on the LawsAndFamilies Database to Pearl Dykstra, member of the High Level Group of Scientific Advisors of the European Commission on 25 April. This comparative study shows that in European countries same-sex partners are increasingly gaining equal rights.…

Professor Annetje Ottow will be appointed President of the Executive Board of Leiden University on 8 February 2021. She will be the first woman to be appointed to this post at Leiden University.

At the end of the year we always compile a list of our most interesting, most popular articles from that year. In the crazy year that was 2020 one topic was at the forefront of everyone’s minds: coronavirus. Fortunately, there was also room for other stories.

Inviting a navy officer to talk about piracy, inspiring critical thinking and offering to help with finding internships. Students appreciate that and therefore nominated Anita van Dissel, who teaches Maritime History, for the Lecturer of the Year Award.

Het zichtbaar maken van ongeschreven verhalen van inheemse culturen en volken van de Cariben. Dat doet de tentoonstelling ‘Caribbean Ties’ in de Oude UB.

30 July is the International Day of Friendship. The student years are a time when many close friendships are formed, and a surprising number of them last a whole lifetime. Two of our alumni share their stories about a special friendship.

The Dies Natalis for alumni was held on Saturday 10 February, organised by the Leiden University Fund (LUF) together with the University. Almost 500 alumni came together in the Kamerlingh Onnes building to celebrate the 443rd anniversary of the foundation of their alma mater.

Covid year 2021 might have felt somewhat less strange than the year before, but the virus still left its mark on University life and our students and staff. Fortunately there was also room for research, visiting dignitaries and in-person classes. And our social media accounts weren’t only about covid…

2024 has been an eventful year, and this is reflected in our social media posts. An overview of the most liked, most shared or most impressive posts.

The lecture series “Humanity in the Automated State” held its second session on January 12, 2026, at Leiden Law School. Dr. Aya Rizk from Linköping University brought her expertise on Information Systems whit a focus on how digital technologies and data drive organizational change, particularly in decision-making…

The lecture series

The Leiden University Green Office is pleased to announce its Spring Podcast competition -- Beyond the Safe Space -- on the theme: the Planetary Boundaries.

A record number of 417 PhD candidates defended their theses in 2016. How many of these were cum laude? What were their propositions? The advantage of dirty nappies, for example. Read about the facts and figures on PhD defences in 2016.

The lecture series “Humanity in the Automated State” continued on February 12, 2026, at Leiden Law School with Professor Madalina Busuioc of VU Amsterdam, a public governance scholar, AI-DG Lab co-director, MSc programme founder, and recipient of a European Research Council grant.

The lecture series “Humanity in the Automated State” continued on 19 March 2026 at Leiden Law School with Dr. Mengchen Dong from the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

On 28 November 2025, Leiden University and PLNT Leiden hosted “The Knowledge Orchard” - an event aimed at starting up/ enhancing interdisciplinary cooperation between academics at Leiden University, and improving collaboration between Leiden researchers and external partners in research and educatio…

Crises like climate change and loss of biodiversity threaten our planet. That’s why sustainability is an important topic in research and education across Leiden University. On this website you read how scientists from many disciplines work together in researching sustainability.

Overview of the main research projects at the Leiden Papyrological Institute.

This network brings together scholars whose work explores how contemporary frameworks of crisis produce experiences of the present, rehash or disrupt established narratives of the past, and broker specific outlooks on the future. We collaborate in studying these crisis-scapes and exploring how they…

On the passing of Anique Schüller

Wouter Moerland is on a two-year secondment as ecology adviser at the Municipality of Leiden. This biology alumnus talks animatedly about his work. ‘We’re working hard to increase nature’s chances in town.’

Since 2009, at ACPA, 95 candidates received their PhD in Creative and Performing Arts. On this page you will find an overview of ACPA's alumni.

The Leiden University Institute for History is responsible for the main part of the historical research carried out at Leiden University. The institute has a wide-ranging academic scope.

SRON, the Netherlands Institute for Space Research, is holding an open day on Sunday 25 September. It has had a branch at the Leiden Bio Science Park since 2021 and works closely with Leiden University.

Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker will retire on 8 February. If there’s one theme running through his career, it’s the links between the University and society. In this series of pre-retirement discussions, Stolker will talk one last time to people from within and without the University. In this edition…

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Like ants, termites and bees, some bacteria work together as a multicellular group. There is a strict division of labour in such colonies, to make the group more resilient to the outside world. Now researchers have found that some parts of the bacterial colony can take ‘for the greater good’ to a whole…

To develop good cancer treatments, we need to know much more about how malignant tumour cells develop. Professor Ewa Snaar-Jagalska looks at not just the effect of medication on isolated cells but also the behaviour of cancer cells in their tissue environment. Inaugural lecture on 11 December.

It is time for the international community to put a stop to war crimes – especially against medical personnel, argued international chair of Doctors Without Borders Joanne Liu in her Cleveringa lecture.

Paul Brakefield, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the Institute of Biology in Leiden (IBL) has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for his research. He will receive 2.5 million euro to develop his research programme over a period of five years.

On Tuesday October 11th, ACPA’s PhD-candidate Frank Blokland will publicly defend his thesis “On the origin of patterning in movable Latin type: Renaissance standardisation, systematisation, and unitisation of textura and roman type”.

How does language work and how do we learn a language? The more we know about language, the better we can understand how people interpret the world in words. Roberta D'Alessandro carries out research on the architecture of language. There is now a dossier about her work online.

The D66 proposed bill on Ending Life with Dignity is inadequately substantiated and contains contradictions. This is the view expressed by Professor of Political Philosophy Paul Nieuwenburg in his inaugural lecture on 17 March.

Macrophages – the front line of our immune system – protect us from infections. But in the case of the tuberculosis bacteria, this often goes wrong. The group of Annemarie Meijer from the Leiden Institute of Biology has now discovered that macrophages in zebrafish are better able to eliminate tuberculosis…

Leiden University has awarded its prestigious University Medal to Emeritus Professor Lex van der Eb. As a pioneer in genetics and molecular biology, he received this honour for his services to science and his key role in the development of the Leiden Bio Science Park (LBSP).

PhD candidate Dennis Wander searches for the best of both worlds. That is to say: a cancer drug that is effective and also has minimal side effects. To this end, he makes new molecules inspired by two existing medicines. And not without result: ‘We have created a new variant that is very promising.’…

An unexpected phenomenon in a merger of a cluster of galaxies. An international team of astronomers led by Francesco de Gasperin has witnessed a gas tail of a galaxy, that slowly extinguished, but then lightened up again

Op 26 april 2012 kwamen ze samen om ervaringen te delen met Leidse staf: twaalf Chinese promovendi die in Nederland zijn in het kader van het beursprogramma van de China Scholarship Council. Tien dagen eerder, op 16 april, ontving de Universiteit Leiden een delegatie van Peking University.