Three directors of PostNL have been arrested in Belgium, suspected of human trafficking among other things. Abuses also exist in the Dutch parcel delivery sector. Why does the Netherlands act less firmly?

Facility

In het asielplan van vorige week kondigde het kabinet aan meer in te zetten op vertrek van ’Dublin-claimanten’. Daarbij stelt het kabinet z’n hoop op een hernieuwd EU-plan.

PhD candidate Karen van den Akker has written a children’s book to get young girls excited about technology. The picture book ‘Met mama naar Mars’ tells the story of Luna, who wants to travel to Mars.

Our university recently joined the European university alliance Una Europa. Staff from the 11 affiliated universities met in Leiden last week to discuss our collaboration.

The Faculty of Archaeology's own home-grown journal Inter-Section has released a new volume. Inter-Section offers students and PhD candidates the unique chance to publish in a peer-reviewed journal. The new volume focuses on the materials that shape our world.

How would you convert Egyptian hieroglyphs into Latin script? And what is actually the correct translation of dishes on a Vietnamese menu? On Saturday 28 January, high school students from all over the Netherlands will come to Leiden to ponder a series of language-related puzzles. Their goal? To win…

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, PI of the ERC StG Safe and Sound hosted at Leiden University's eLaw Center for Law and Digital Technologies, recently met with Arnau Izaguerri of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to explore avenues for collaboration. The focus of the discussion…

Artificial intelligence systems are smart. They can recognize patterns better than humans, for example. Yet humans are still very much needed. How can you better steer those AI systems? LIACS lecturer Jan van Rijn wrote a book about this together with a number of colleagues. We asked him a few quest…

How do you progress from an immense gas cloud somewhere in the universe to a star with planets? Research by Astronomy PhD student Martijn van Gelder sheds more light on the earliest phases of this process. He will receive his doctorate on November 24th.

On 3 June, Annetje Ottow (chair) and Hester Bijl (rector magnificus) met the Humanities faculty. Although a physical introduction was preferred, this visit also had to be done digitally.

In an interview on the website of the NWO, Sabine Luning, Marjo de Theije and Esther van de Camp talk about the gold miners they met in various African and South American countries and they come to new insights.

Research

To what extent can Parliament limit freedom with the so-called 2G policy? Associate Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law Ingrid Leijten of Leiden University discussed this topic on NOS Nieuws en Co.

This pandemic has affected everyone and especially students who were not able to carry out their projects on the laboratories. I am an international student from Cyprus and I had the opportunity to perform my Research Project 1 completely remotely, at Rawi Ramautar’s group. Even though, this may sound…

Organisation

This page provides updates on the protest today at the Academy Building and Hortus botanicus in Leiden.

Who wouldn’t want their own episode of Het Klokhuis? Researchers Milica Nikolic and Chris Riddell are in the running for the Klokhuis Wetenschapsprijs, which aims to introduce a broad and young audience to scientific research in the Netherlands.

Alumnus Wandile Madalane tells us how his time in Leiden has made it easier for him to engage with renowned figures and how he does NOT miss the rain.

The new SSH labs will offer great opportunities for FSW and FGW staff engaged in experimental research. The labs will be a place of inspiration, not only because of the state-of-the-art equipment, but also as a result of the increased interaction with colleagues in other disciplines.

The leads for our new interfaculty themes recently met for the first time. We asked three of them what opportunities their theme presents to society, the university and individual staff?

Three enormous maps of China, created during the reign of three different emperors of the Qing dynasty, have now been made available in open access and are downloadable via Leiden University Libraries’ (UBL) Digital Collections. The rich maps are an early example of academic collaboration between the…

Charlotte Vrendenbarg is Assistant Professor intellectual property rights (IP) at Leiden University. She was recently sworn in as deputy judge at the District Court of The Hague, exactly 30 years after her mother was installed as a judge in Breda. ‘Following in her footsteps was not a goal in itself,…

Major developments worldwide are creating new challenges for society. The pandemic has hit us hard, for example, and we are already feeling the effects of global warming. How can society and politics deal with the urgent problems of our time? That is the theme of the Global Transformations and Governance…

Last academic year, Johan van Wilsem, strategist researcher at the Netherlands Court of Audit, taught the one-off elective ‘Policy Evaluation in Practice’ to students of the Master Crises and Security Management (CSM). A great success, for both students as lecturer Van Wilsem. The course scored 8.8…

On 21 June 2021 a meeting took place during which PhD candidates within the research theme 'Institutions for Conflict Resolution' at Leiden University presented the current state of their doctoral research.

This month we interview alumna Dominique Mars who made an interesting career choice: she tells us how she chose to be a teacher at a primary school whilst having obtained her Master in Child Law.

Behind the scenes people are working hard on the vision and strategy plan of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences: a manifest of our priorities and ‘a pamphlet for change,’ according to Dean Paul Wouters and Board Secretary Jordi Kerkum. The faculty-wide conversation about our collective future…

The most important group of medieval manuscripts from the Special Collections of the University Libraries of Leiden (UBL), the Codices Vossiani Latini, is now available in open access via the Digital Collections. The 324 Latin manuscripts copied in medieval Europe, along with 48 post-medieval manuscripts,…

During a festive meeting, the In-house Emergency Service (IES) team of the Pieter de la Court Building was pampered by the Faculty Board FSW and the UFB management on 10 February 2022. It was high time to thank the team for their service, drive and commitment. Symbol of this gratitude is the statuette…

On 11 January 2022, the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences opened the new year during a livestreamed reception. Dean Paul Wouters and Executive Director of Studies Kristiaan van der Heijden were the hosts. After several faculty prizes were awarded, our Dean expressed a new year’s resolution…

Examining cybercrime from criminological, legal, administrative, and technical perspectives. The new Bachelor's programme in Cybersecurity & Cybercrime addresses the growing demand for versatile cyber professionals..

The cultural linguistic minority group of deaf people who communicate using sign language systematically experiences limited access to fundamental rights. Linguist Joni Oyserman identified this problem and has received a Meijers grant to fund her investigation.

When politicians claim they can make major differences with their migration policies, they’re raising false expectations. The opportunities for the government to restrict migration are in fact very limited. And what about the little room they do have? Mark Klaassen’s advice is to make use of those opportunities…

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.

Amsterdam-based bicycle company VanMoof was declared bankrupt in court this week. The company had been struggling with financial problems for some time and recently closed its doors, causing great concern among customers. Several affected customers whose newly bought or repaired bikes were still being…

As of 1 May 2025, Professor Kartica van der Zon has been appointed professor by special appointment of Family Law, Law of Persons and Juvenile Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen.

Maaike Kempes believes more attention should be paid to non-congenital brain injuries in suspects. This may partly explain their criminal behaviour.

Starting 1 January 2023, Matthias Haentjens has been appointed as Professor of Civil Law at Leiden University. His expertise lies in the field of property law, insolvency law, and private international law.

There was a lot of interest. In front of nearly a hundred researchers, supporting colleagues and Martijn Ridderbos, the Vice-Chairman of the Executive Board, Lotte van Dillen, Research Director of Psychology and Saskia Goedhard, Director of Humanities Operations jointly opened the new lab with a classic…

Over a thousand women ended up in a State workhouse between 1886 and 1934. This was a place for vagrants, beggars and drunkards: people who were said to be too lazy to work. Who were these women who were sent there? PhD candidate Marian Weevers found out.

Complex research with a generous sprinkling of jargon: PhD defences can be difficult for non-experts to follow. In the compulsory new lay talk, PhD candidates begin by explaining their dissertation in words of one syllable. And it’s not just the PhD’s family and friends who appreciate this.

A deliberate attack on a tangible element of a culture, such as a temple, is often also an attack on intangible elements: the religion or religious customs. Equally, the intangible can be attacked without the involvement of the tangible, for example the brutal curtailment of rights. How are these reflected…

On Monday, 4 July 2022, the graduation of the two-year Advanced MSc International Relations and Diplomacy (MIRD) programme was commemorated in the iconic Academy Building in Leiden. Students and guests were welcomed by the Program Director, Professor Madeleine Hosli.

The waiting lists in youth care are alarmingly long. This has been confirmed again by a study carried out by a Dutch foundation The Forgotten Child.

Government leaders have been searching for words to condemn the actions of Belarus which intercepted a passenger aircraft flying from Athens to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, having a fighter plane divert it to Minsk.

On 12 and 13 May, the University of Luxembourg organised a workshop titled ‘The Politics, Law and Political Economy of European Banking Union: The First Decade of Operation.’ Barbora Budinská presented a paper on the application of national law by the European Central Bank (ECB) within the Single Supervisory…

The suspects of the fatal assault on Mallorca will be investigated in the Netherlands. If the Dutch Public Prosecution Service sees sufficient reason to prosecute the suspects, then a Dutch court will consider the case.