Masses of hamburgers, steaks, cheese and a lot of eggs: Americans love their animal products. But researcher Oliver Taherzadeh discovered that only a relatively small group of high-volume consumers need to modify their diet to achieve an enormous environmental gain.

Discover budding creators, artists and researchers at the Night of Discoveries art and knowledge festival. And many researchers from Leiden University are taking part.

In a new study published in PLOS One, Leiden archaeologist Anastasia Nikulina, together with an international team from France, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, challenges the long-held belief that early humans had minimal impact on their environment before the rise of farming.

The year 2023 saw the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the Wagner Group rebellion and wildfires and floods as all the weather records were smashed. Our most-read stories were about the climate crisis and the elections: here’s the list.

The integrity and reliability of academic research are of fundamental importance to the University. All parties, both within and outside the University, must be able to have confidence that our research is conducted in a scrupulous, fair, verifiable, impartial and independent manner.

Active learning is one of the ambitions mentioned in the University’s educational vision (Learning@LeidenUniversity).

The JUL board 2025/2026 consists of five colleagues:

Dutch scale-up In Ovo, a spin-off of Leiden University, has raised 34 million euros to accelerate its international growth and scale-up plans. The new funding is supported by Leiden University’s Libertatis Ergo Holding. The funding has also been provided by, among others, impact investors ECBF and ABN…

Op zaterdag 3 juni vindt de Museumnacht Leiden plaats. Ook dit jaar zijn Leidse wetenschappers en studenten onderdeel van de programmering.

Leiden academics Remco Breuker and Auke-Florian Hiemstra stand to win the title of Person of the Year.

Research

Face masks and plastic gloves are supposed to protect us from corona, but they are becoming an increasing problem for the environment. In a special series of the New York Times, Leiden biologist Liselotte Rambonnet and alumnus Auke-Florian Hiemstra talk about their research and the special website they…

How can you figure out if a skeleton is male or female? How did they brew beer in the distant past? Visitors to ArcheoHotspot could examine archaeological finds and taste prehistoric drinks at the Faculty of Archaeology.

What are you supposed to do if something goes or has gone wrong? Whether it be a break-in, an accident or an unsafe situation of any other kind, or data breach or cyber-attack; please read how to report each type of incident below.

What are you supposed to do if something goes or has gone wrong? Whether it be a break-in, an accident or an unsafe situation of any other kind, or a data breach or a cyber-attack; please read how to report each type of incident below.

One of the largest roofs at Leiden University, that of the Snellius building, has recently been equipped with 590 solar panels and 57,000 sedum plants, making it the largest combined roof in the Benelux. The roof was officially opened on Monday 10 October by Annetje Ottow and Martijn Ridderbos, President…

Nanoplastics can accumulate in developing hearts, according to a study by biologist Meiru Wang from Leiden University. Her research on chicken embryos sheds new light on how these tiny plastic particles pose a threat to our health.

Paul Gobée (LUMC), Kirsty Rolfe (Humanities) and Frank Takes (Science) have been nominated for the Leiden Teaching Prize 2023.

What a result! The Higher Education BioBlitz recorded 3,155 species, smashing our target of 2,500. Thanks to your efforts, Leiden University made an impressive eight ‘very rare’ finds. A result that gives hope for our biodiversity.

Four promising young researchers will be able to conduct two years of research at a university abroad thanks to a Rubicon grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The Leiden laureates are Renske Janssen, Girija Josh, Anne van der Meij and Yana van der Weegen.

There are many tributaries to Rosalin Kuiper’s story and they all lead to the sea. The 28-year-old sailor was one of the five-person Team Malizia in the world’s most prestigious sailing competition: the Ocean Race.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Vidi grants to Leiden researchers.

Through various initiatives, Leiden University is trying to make people aware of the importance of biodiversity: the cultivation of a wide variety of micro-organisms, animals and plant species. This is important because in the Netherlands biodiversity has declined from about 40 percent in 1900 to about…

From sponsored runs to festivals and from open days to concerts: Leiden University hosts lots of events each year. We are highlighting six of them for 2023.

A new government, conflicts around the world and obviously a lot of science: these are the five stories about Leiden University that you enjoyed reading in 2024.

Did you get a taste for recording local wildlife with Expeditie Stadsnatuur? Join the higher education BioBlitz and help us discover what is growing, crawling and fluttering on our campuses.

If we want to solve the complex issues now facing us as people and as an organisation, leadership is an absolute necessity: and then not only from supervisors and managers, but from everyone. You can use the set of cards and the animation developed specially for this purpose to gain insight into your…

Facility, Organisation

Eighteen researchers from Leiden University have been awarded a Veni grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This grant gives promising young researchers the opportunity to develop their ideas for a period of three years.

Although there is considerable evidence that nature in the city is beneficial to both people and animals, we still do not have an overall picture of those benefits. To rectify that, a Leiden PhD candidate and a student – armed with a cargo bike – are using The Hague as a life-size laboratory.

De Faculteit Archeologie bestaat dit jaar 25 jaar. Ter ere van dit jubileum opende de faculteit op 1 maart zijn deuren voor het brede publiek.

A lot of municipalities work with a points system to encourage construction projects to take biodiversity and creating green areas into account. But this way of working also benefits local neighbourhoods and residents, master's student Marije Sesink discovered. She based her study on The Hague.

Alumnus Anoma van der Veere did Japanese studies and talks in this interview about his studies in Leiden and his work as a researcher at the Leiden Asia Centre and as Japanese correspondent in Tokyo.

Ten Leiden researchers have been awarded a Veni grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The grant, of up to 280,000 euros, will enable them to elaborate their ideas over a period of three years.

Het College van Bestuur laat door een postdoc een eenjarig vooronderzoek doen naar het koloniale en slavernijverleden van de Universiteit Leiden.

Over 20,000 students, lecturers, administrators, support staff and many others protested on 25 November against the plans to make billions of cuts to higher education. Students and staff from Leiden University also travelled to The Hague to voice their objections to the disastrous plans.

Neanderthals were able to outwit straight-tusked elephants, the largest land mammals of the past few million years. Leiden professor Wil Roebroeks has published an article about this together with his German colleague Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser in the Science Advances journal.

The rules of play for researchers are becoming increasingly complex. This makes it essential that they receive the best possible support with challenges such as complicated grant procedures or strict privacy and ethics requirements. Leiden’s research support professionals have a network in which they…