Spui Campus, Leiden University’s fourth location in The Hague, will soon open its doors. The former V&D department store’s transformation into a university campus is becoming more visible by the week. Removal vans will soon be driving back and forth to move all the furniture there in time. The first…

Dick Schoof kan ook wel de buurman van de Haagse faculteit worden genoemd. Vooral vanuit zijn rol bij de NCTV werkte hij veel samen met de Universiteit Leiden en hielp hij onderwijs en onderzoek vooruit, vertelt hoogleraar Terrorisme en Contraterrorisme Edwin Bakker. ‘Voor een kritische vriend was altijd…

Early diagnosis, new treatments, and personalised care: all of these are possible if we can better unlock the wealth of information hidden in health data. Unfortunately, this data is often poorly organised, difficult to access, and not interoperable. The new international Leiden Institute for FAIR and…

Trail, FGGA’s internship platform will be one-year old in November. In the upcoming weeks, we will be interviewing some FGGA students who went on internships. What did they learn from their internships? And what tasks were assigned to them?

Together with students and local residents, historians Ariadne Schmidt and Alicia Schrikker researched the Leiden Transvaal neighbourhood. They will present their findings on Thursday 20 October, at a specially organised mini-festival in the neighbourhood.

Second-year Law student Rosemarijn Sterk achieved the highest average mark for her foundation year (2024–2025). Her average mark of 9.2 was the highest of all first-year students at our faculty. As a result, Rosemarijn was awarded a cash prize of €150 from the Legatum Böckelmanianum fund.

Americans are electing a new president in November but they also have other choices to make in the polling booth. Alumnus Sanne Rijkhoff works at a Texas university and is trying to help make students more aware of the elections.

Canal Watch (De Grachtwacht), which has been cleaning canals since 2018, has received the Dutch Research Council (NWO) Communication Initiative Award.

Human resources

‘I’m setting Academia in Motion by promoting and developing Open Educational Resources (OERs) to enable affordable learning for anyone, and to keep learning and education in the hands of universities and schools,’ says physician, anatomy teacher and e-learning developer Paul Gobée.

Deze week sluiten we het academisch jaar af met verschillende FGGA-studenten, waarin zij hun zomer- en toekomstplannen vertellen, maar ook terugblikken op het afgelopen jaar: ‘Ik vond het ontzettend prettig om weer terug te komen naar de fijne sfeer op Wijnhaven.’

Over 160 years ago, the Hague-based photography pioneer and traveler Alexine Tinne (1835-1869) captured current South Sudan and its inhabitants on film. These photographs represent some of the earliest images taken in the heart of the African continent.

Would you like to share your academic research with a diverse international audience? On the not-for-profit news platform The Conversation, academics and journalists team up to write research-based articles. Leiden University recently partnered with this platform, and two of our colleagues share their…

Looking to share your academic results or insights with a global audience? Leiden University is a ‘contributing member’ of the international journalism platform The Conversation. In 2024, this resulted in 51 articles, which together were read by more than 667,000 people.

Research

A Dutch consortium has received €6.7 million to accelerate the development of nanomedicines together with patients. Researchers from Leiden University play a key role in the project.

Radhika Gupta has received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council to study how transnational Islamic charitable networks are entangled with Western humanitarianism and neoliberal welfare frameworks.

We are saddened by the news of the unexpected passing of prof.dr. Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld on 28 July 2021.

At the 24-th session of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute, held in The Hague 1-6 December, the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies played a prominent role, contributing cutting-edge research and expert insights to key debates on international law.

Connecting scientific fields, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. What did the university achieve in 2024? A small sample.

Recognising our colleagues’ teaching efforts – and as a manager, taking steps to do so. Broadening our understanding of quality. Marieke Adriaanse, Professor of Behavioural Interventions in Population Health Management and Recognition & Rewards ambassador, can see that Academia is in Motion, but she…

After nearly two years of retirement, Wil Roebroeks looks back on a career that began in a time of freedom and ended in a field that has undergone profound academic and social change. ‘I have been fortunate to always enjoy my work,’ he says. ‘That is also my advice to younger generations: above all,…

The relationship between academia and democracy is a complicated one. Should policy makers listen to scientists or to citizens? That is the dilemma Valérie Pattyn and Johan Christensen will discuss with a panel of experts during the academic conference EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF).

Carla van Baalen was awarded the Thorbecke Medal on 4 June. She received the award in recognition of her remarkable and varied oeuvre in the field of parliamentary history.

Now the Dutch national Law Sector Plan has been positively evaluated, the temporary funding provided to Leiden Law School for the research projects ‘Institutions for Conflict Resolution’ and ‘Empirical Legal Studies’ will become structural.

Vanaf september 2025 biedt de Faculteit Governance and Global Affairs de bacheloropleiding Cybersecurity & Cybercrime aan. Deze unieke Nederlandstalige opleiding leidt studenten op tot veelzijdige cyberexperts. ‘Er is veel vraag naar specialisten op het gebied van cybersecurity en cybercrime’.

Science Europe has selected CWTS at Leiden University and the Know Center (Graz, Austria) to conduct a study into the links between open science and research cultures.

Bacteria whirl around in the mouths of most people, forming dental plaques and sometimes causing nasty gum infections. Treponema denticola might be a dangerous pathogen, but not much is known about this bacterium. It was up to Ariane Briegel and her research group to change that.

How can we ensure that young people vape less? How do we prevent the spread of scabies among students? And how can we encourage physical activity at work? Students from Health and Medical Psychology recently presented their answers to these questions to professionals in the field.

Leiden Law School is organising a summer conference on Law and Artificial Intelligence as part of the interfaculty and interdisciplinary research programme on Artificial Intelligence (SAILS) at Leiden University.

In a new article, four PhD candidates call for methodology to be explicitly stated in tax studies and practice. ‘Our hope is that explicit methodology will become more prevalent and even standard in the future.’

Writer and columnist Nicolien Mizee will be Leiden University’s new writer in residence from autumn 2023.

What opportunities does uncertainty offer with regard to innovative behaviour of professionals and what role does leadership play in this?

Research by The Young Academy on the length and intensity of the Dutch academic year has given us food for thought. Do our staff have enough time and space to conduct research? And do we ask too much of our students? The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science asked us universities to think about…

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.

A successful series of lectures on interior design, a symposium on four-poster beds and a new series of study afternoons on the horizon. University lecturer Alexander Dencher knows how to hold the attention of a growing audience. How does he do it? And what makes the history of interior design so fa…

The Citizen Science Netherlands (CS-NL) network was officially launched this month with the aid of an Open Science NL grant. The new vision for this network was presented on 28 May.

On Friday 12 November 2021, the Net Zero Space initiative was launched at the Paris Peace Forum. The International Institute of Air and Space Law (IIASL) of Leiden University is one of the first supporters to the initiative.

As many as seven first-year students from the Faculty of Science were honoured as young talents. In addition, the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) also lauded three master's students and an astronomy project during a vibrant ceremony on 28 November. Professor of Science Communication…

Research

Wolves in the Netherlands mainly feed on wild animals such as wild boar and red and roe deer. But in areas such as Drenthe where these are scarce they also prey on free-roaming cattle used for nature conservation

To truly help citizens, professionals sometimes need to dare to deviate from the rules. That was the main message during the meeting on ‘rebellious professionals’ in healthcare and well-being, held on 15 October in The Hague.

Many poor people in Indonesia mainly rely on their family members, neighbours and the local community as a social safety net. One of the forms of aid from the community is called ‘jimpitan’ in Central Java. PhD candidate Ayu Swaningrum researched how this social security system works.

From historical understandings to new treatments: during the Public Day of the Leiden Institute for Brain & Cognition, curious visitors learned how rapidly research into brain disorders is evolving. ‘I found the neurosurgery and the research on organoids on chips particularly fascinating.’

Daniela Kraft's group has succeeded in creating a network of microparticles that is both strong and completely flexible. This may sound simple, yet they are the first in the world to succeed in doing so. A real breakthrough in soft matter physics.

What is the current state of democracy and how do we understand the effects of public support on democracy? The two-day symposium Support for Democracy: Measurement, Explanation, and Effect

PhD-student Maia has received multiple awards regarding her research on the impact of tobacco on the respiratory health of past Dutch populations.

2021 saw many prizes awarded to staff and students of Leiden Law School. Grants for new research projects were also awarded and our staff were invited to particpate on committees or recognised in other ways too. An overview of this year’s achievements is given below.