The Leiden Leadership Centre (LLC) aims to connect science with practice when it comes to public leadership. The Centre, founded by, among others, Dr. Ben Kuipers and Prof. dr. Sandra Groeneveld, is collaborating with a number of organisations. A recent result was a research assignment for a new vision…

The Caribbean as we know it today is fundamentally a product of colonial activity and globalisation. Practically everyone that inhabits the Caribbean has ancestors from different continents due to colonial activity, which profoundly affects the area to this day. Caribbean writers, both in the Caribbean…

Welcome to the Expertise Centre for Teaching and Learning (ECOLe). Here you will find information on didactics, teacher development, teaching innovation, assessment and the use of teaching tools at humanities. Have a question or need advice? E-mail ecole@hum.leidenuniv.nl.

Whether you’re giving a course for the first time or aiming to update your learning objectives or teaching formats, effective education starts with good course design. This step-by-step plan will help you create or innovate your course: from learning objectives to teaching formats.

Jyothi Thrivikraman set up a Virtual International Collaboration project with a university in Myanmar.

The war between Russia and Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza or the global rise of the far-right: topics that stir up emotions but are also regularly discussed in classes at Political Science. Moreover, with a diverse group of students, there is a great diversity of life experiences, backgrounds and opinions.…

A variety of age checks are required, both in order to protect children and to ensure that they can participate online, a new study funded by the European Commission finds. The article on the study, co-authored by Simone van der Hof, Professor of Law and Digital Technologies at eLaw, was published in…

In June 2024 the Faculty of Archaeology welcomed a new Assistant Professor. Dr Jennifer Swerida, originally from the United States, will strengthen the Faculty’s expertise on the archaeology of West Asia. ‘I explore human-environment relationships inside an ancient oasis and the surrounding land. Previous…

Mensen werken niet alleen liever samen met leden van hun eigen ingroup, ze concurreren er ook liever mee, lieten Leidse onderzoekers in een sociaalpsychologische studie in 51 landen zien. Dit ‘nasty neighbor’- effect was een grote verrassing voor de onderzoekers, totdat ze in studies over dieren doken.…

LUNHA strives to redefine global health by prioritizing justice, fairness, and inclusion in Africa. Through collaboration with diverse stakeholders, LUNHA aims to reshape global health research and foster a broader engagement with social sciences and humanities.

Organisations like the UN and the EU should be given more powers to combat transboundary problems. This is the message of a report published by the Swedish SNS Democracy Council, whose authors include Prof. Jan Aart Scholte of Leiden University. The researchers also wrote the following article.

Almost all the western countries were too late responding to the outbreak of Covid. Why was that? Three governance experts, including Leiden professor Arjen Boin, have written a book about the response to the pandemic. ‘Our current system isn’t geared towards identifying and managing a long-term crisis,’…

On Wednesday 19 January 2022, the online mid-term review of the legal programmes took place on the platform Let’s Get Digital. It was an interactive afternoon in which 130 participants openly and critically discussed the educational strategy for the legal programmes and the faculty.

In traditional style, 2025 was ushered in at our faculty with the Meijers Lecture followed by the New Year's Reception. On Thursday 16 January 2025, the Meijers Lecture took place in the Lorentz Lecture Hall where the Meijers Prizes and the Van Wersch Springplank Prize were also awarded. At the New…

On Friday 5 September, to mark our 450th anniversary we celebrated the opening of the faculty year together with the Leiden Revisited alumni event. Combining both annual events was a huge success, especially as staff brought along their family, partner or friends.

Three professors voice their concerns about a vulnerable group in our society: children who come into contact with youth care.

The Sustainability Monitor 2023 shows that Leiden University is taking its sustainability efforts seriously.

How can The Netherlands, France and Germany cooperate more closely on issues such as European security and defence. Join the kick off of The European Strategic Dialogue Series, an initiative by the Institute of Security and Global Affairs and its partners in France and Germany. Joachim Koops tells more…

Assistant professor Anne-Isabelle Richard has received no fewer than three different grants for research and teaching on relations between Europe and Africa.

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…

Leiden University addresses the UN on children’s rights

In the research for her upcoming book, Elizabeth Stuart: Queen of Hearts, author and academic Nadine Akkerman stumbled upon a little-known portrait of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia and grandmother of King George I, which she believes would have been considered treasonous at the time it was pain…

Have you considered including the Leiden University Fund in your will?

Leiden University will award two honorary doctorates at its Dies Natalis on 9 February 2026. They will go to internet studies scholar Safiya Umoja Noble and philosopher Catherine Malabou.

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 one of the first environmental scientists ever, Arnold Tukker received the honorary doctorate at Linköping University on Saturday 12 November. This Swedish university awarded Tukker for his scientific work to establish a circular economy.

How to strengthen mutual trust between agencies in the criminal justice system and youth with a migration background or weaker socio-economic position. The Netherlands Science Agenda has awarded 1.5 million euros to a consortium to find out.

Graig Klein, assistant professor at the Institute of Security of Global Affairs (ISGA), has been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC) for his project TERGAP. With this 1.500.000 euro grant Klein and his research team will investigate terrorist groups’ decision-making and strategic…

As eLaw Postdoc researcher exploring the multiple intersections between law, gender, and technology, Carlotta Rigotti has recently participated in a groundbreaking international workshop focused on combatting image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) at the CAIS premises in Bochum, Germany.

Party for Dispuut Pleyte (so called after the 19th-century Dutch Egyptologist). The study association for Ancient Near Eastern studies and Classics and Ancient Civilizations celebrates its 50th anniversary. Ahead of the festive symposium on 7 June, we look back and ahead with chairman Steef Haeldermans…

On 8 and 9 June, the second edition of EU Cyber Direct’s Closing the Gap conference took place at the Egmont Palace in Brussels, Belgium. This year’s edition was organized by François Delerue and Dennis Broeders as part of their participation in the EU Cyber Direct project, of which the Institute of…

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.

The city of Leiden has a unique combination of knowledge institutions. To ensure this knowledge flourishes and the city gains the maximum benefit from it, the Leiden City of Knowledge partnership was launched five years ago. A new partnership agreement will be signed on 11 November.

On 25 February 2021, the UN High Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (FACTI panel) has adopted its final report, to which Valentina Carraro (GTGC) and Hortense Jongen (VU Amsterdam) have contributed by writing a background paper…

Micah DenBraber studied at Leiden University College in The Hague while pursuing an internship at the World Resources Institute (WRI), a self-proclaimed ‘think-and-do-tank’, where he built partnerships with the philanthropic sector, among other things.

The Applied Machine Learning Days AMLD is a global platform that brings together experts and participants from over 40 countries across industry, academia, and government in the field of Machine Learning. In this year’s edition, members of the BIAS project organized a track around the topic Fairness…

The Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies is proud to announce a fortified partnership with the International Bar Association to annually stage the largest moot competition focused on international criminal law: The International Criminal Court Moot Court Competition.

Every year on or around International Women’s Day on 8 March, Leiden University holds its Annie Romein-Verschoor Lecture. This year’s lecture will be given by Sylvana Simons, MP and leader and parliamentary chair of the BIJ1 party. What does International Women’s Day mean to her and which challenges…

New Report Launched by ACPF with the support of the Department of Child Law and Health Law

On 18 January 2025, the Annual Reconnect & Gala of the Advanced MSc International Relations and Diplomacy (MIRD) celebrated over 20 years of bringing together current MIRD students, alumni, and faculty members. This year’s discussions focused on the theme: 'The Future of IR: Digital Innovation, Climate…

The ROBUST consortium, which is the initiative of the Innovation Center for Artificial intelligence (ICAI), has received 25 million euros from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to strengthen fundamental AI research.

Yann Ryan recently joined the Institute for History as a postdoctoral researcher within the starting grant project 'Quiet Rebels? A Social History of Political Rhetoric’ under the supervision of Anne Heyer. Below, he introduces himself.

LIACS assistant professor Ben van Werkhoven leads the development of software for optimising graphics processing units. By now, version 1.0 of 'Kernel Tuner' is just around the corner. This milestone shows that the software is ready for serious use.

In the 2020 presidential elections, voters in several, mostly southern, electoral districts of the United States saw ‘their’ polling stations closed by the local authorities. In order to cast their vote, they had to travel further or use the mail ballot. Media reports and civil rights activitsts often…

Successfully completing a master’s thesis in Political Science is no small feat. Not only is this for most students the most extensive and in-depth research report they have ever written, the work is also held to very high standards. Yet, every year students manage to impress their instructors and demonstrate…

From monitoring pollution to tracking rainfall, citizen science comes in different shapes and sizes. But at its heart, it’s about the relationships between citizens, policymakers and researchers.

On Thursday 11 December 2025, Daan Roovers, the philosopher and former Denker des Vaderlands (Philosopher Laureate), will give the 54th Huizinga Lecture at the Stadsgehoorzaal in Leiden. Under the title What’s at stake: The boundaries of politics and fair play, she will reinterpret Johan Huizinga’s…

With the conference circuit slowly reopening after Covid forced almost all academic interactions online, thousands of conference attendees descended on Brussels for Europe’s largest technology conference. eLaw’s annual sponsorship of one of the many CPDP conference panels brought a diverse range of…

Hoe kan het dat universele mensenrechten wereldwijd niet hetzelfde in de praktijk worden gebracht?