Applications are now open for the Summer School ‘The European Union, the United Nations and Global Governance’ (12 - 23 June 2023) for Master-level and PhD students. The activity is supported by the European Union’s Jean Monnet programme (Erasmus+).

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded a €4.84 million NWO Large grant to set up a new state-of-the-art laboratory for isotope geochemistry. The new lab, the “Netherlands Isotope GEochemistry Laboratory” (NIGEL), will be built in the brand new VU Research Building at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.…

Research to experiment with bacteria that grow like plants has been granted the NWO XS grant. These bacteria use light and carbon dioxide to grow, and will be designed especially for use in the biotechnological field. Tijn Delzenne and his supervisor Dennis Claessen can spend 50.000 euros on the exp…

In November 2020 former dean Rick Lawson, professor of European Human Rights Law, was elected member of the Management Board of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency in Vienna. He was nominated by the Dutch Government following an open selection procedure.

Continuing to improve the welfare of laboratory animals is the focus of the international conference on 12 and 13 October in Leiden. The UK animal welfare charity, the RSPCA, is organizing the two-day meeting together with Leiden University. The meeting is for researchers, animal caretakers, policy…

Philosophy alumna Naomi Rebekka Boekwijt returns to Leiden University on 20 June to present her latest novel Stemmen (Voices) in Plexus. ‘I wanted to show that things could be done differently in psychiatric care.’

Ayo Adedokun, Assistant Professor at Leiden University College (LUC) in The Hague, is one of the four finalists in the running for the title ‘Teacher of the Year 2022’. The yearly election is organized by the Interstedelijk Student Overleg, the largest national student organization in the Netherlands,…

This year, LUCIS adapted the programme of its popular annual Middle Eastern Culture Market into an evening version, featuring a lecture, book discussion, and music.

In 2022, Leiden will be the European Capital of Science. An enthusiastic team from our Faculty is already busy planning the activities. Today we speak with Marin Visscher. As a project coordinator, he seeks the connection between university and society.

Hortus prefect Paul Keßler was a part of the delegation of Leiden researchers that traveled to Indonesia on a knowledge mission. In two weeks, he visited seven different universities and institutes and of course he also went to see three botanical gardens.

Small, remote islands were long thought to have been the last frontiers of pristine natural systems. Humans are not thought to have been able to reach or inhabit these environments prior to the dawn of agriculture, and the technological shift that accompanied this transition. A paper recently published…

ASTRON en de Universiteit Leiden beginnen samen een nieuwe leerstoel over sterrenkunde en AI. Bijzonder hoogleraar Joeri van Leeuwen gaat deze positie vullen.

De collegereeks over het Nederlandse crisismanagementstelstel gaat vrijdag 26 mei van start. Lector crisisbeheersing bij het NIPV (Nederlands Instituut Publieke Veiligheid) Menno van Duin trapt af en geeft vast een voorproefje over het eerste college.

Professor Herman Paul has been appointed Scientific Director of the Institute of History from 1 February 2025. ‘Especially in these times, transparency is essential.’

Professor of Cognitive Psychology Mariska Kret has been awarded the Dr Hendrik Muller Prize by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) for her pioneering research into emotions. Kret: ‘This prize offers a wonderful opportunity to give a boost to emotion research.’

In 2021 the Leiden Osteoarchaeology Lab hosted an international workshop on methods to study past physical activity. It aimed to tackle a niche topic with the field: namely the method of studying muscle attachments to bone. Dr Sarah Schrader, one of the organisers of the workshop: ‘You can quantify…

Campus The Hague users can share their thoughts on the development of the new Spui building. Students, lecturers and other staff are welcome to offer their input. We are still looking for students for our user groups.

Salma Balazadeh, Víctor Carrión, and Jos Raaijmakers, biologists at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), have successfully applied for an NWO grant and got awarded 730.000 euros. The board of NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences awarded funding for their project within the Open Technology Programme…

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded Nathaniel Martin a Proof of Concept (PoC) grant. With it, his group aims to make a dangerous but potent antibiotic less toxic. He receives €150.000.

From a vegan community kitchen to a green framework for drug development: sustainability became more visible in everyday campus life at Leiden University in 2025.

Gianclaudio Malgieri, Associate Professor of Law & Technology at eLaw, is co-author of the article 'Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) 2.0: A Manifesto of Open Challenges and Interdisciplinary Research Directions' which has been awarded the 2025 Best Paper Award by Information Fusion.

Dr Peter Webb (LIAS) has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant for his project Geo-Poetic Analysis of Pre-Islamic Arabia (GeoPo).

Historian Paul van Trigt and Arabist Peter Webb have been awarded Consolidator Grants by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant of up to two million euros will allow them to consolidate their research team or programme.

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, Associate Professor at eLaw, contributed to 'Cyber–Physical–Human Systems', a book exploring the latest developments in interactions between cyber–physical systems and humans.

Research

On Sunday 8 October 2023, during the Weekend van de Wetenschap, the Faculty of Science of Leiden University will open its doors to anyone curious about science from 11.00 to 16.00 hrs! Explore a world of wonder and discovery; where science is transformed into an unforgettable adventure. Intriguing…

Organisation

From March 27 to 31 Byvanck Professor Carrie Vout gave the intensive masterclass Classical Art - Definitions, Politics, Limits. This special lecture series was open to students and PhD candidates in Archaeology and Classics. One of the attendees, Nicky Schreuder, on the class: 'It was a critical and…

Medievalism is the area of academic study that investigates the reception and reconstruction of the medieval past since the Middle Ages came to an end.

Proving a quantum computer to be quicker than a normal one is one step closer. After a breakthrough in speeding up classical algorithms, researchers Vedran Dunjko and Casper Gyurik showed that only one quantum algorithm could beat its classical counterpart. They discuss their discovery in Quanta Mag…

A lecturer winning a prize, an expert appearing in the media or a professor giving their inaugural speech: these are faces we often see. But we rarely see the staff who work behind the scenes to make their work possible. They are now featured in the photo exhibition ‘The forces behind the faces’.

Professor Mirjam de Bruijn will research digital warfare in the North African Sahel with an NWO Open Competition grant. The focus of the research will be on Fulani social networks in war and cultural violence.

On Wednesday 6 July 2022 Leiden University College The Hague (LUC) celebrated the graduation of the Class of 2022. The 170 students received their Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree’s in LUC’s interdisciplinary honours programme Liberal Arts & Sciences: Global Challenges.

Today, 13 May 2024, Leiden University’s Executive Board is publishing the advice of the committee that investigated reports of unacceptable behaviour and breaches of academic integrity. These reports were about a professor from the university and their partner (a former member of the university staf…

The Choose a Language Day was created to make high school students enthusiastic about choosing a linguistic profile and further education. Third-years were able to learn about different language studies at the Faculty of Humanities.

Dr. Vanessa Newby (ISGA) and Dr. Catherine Jones from St Andrews won a grant worth over €23.000 from the RSE Saltire Facilitation Network Award entitled: ‘Worse Things Happen at Sea’: The Governance & Security of the Ocean. The grant will comprise three workshops in 2022: one in Leiden, one in Edinburgh…

In the ‘Imaginary’ exhibition, its curators show how society is made up of mathematics. From algorithms that save lives to ones that generate art. The exhibition is from 2 June to 25 July at Oude UB in Leiden.

The proportion of professors at Leiden University who are female has risen slightly to 32.0%. These are the results of the Women Professors Monitor 2024 released by the Dutch Network of Women Professors (LNVH). This puts Leiden University above the national average of 28.7%.

On Tuesday the 5th of September the Faculty of Archaeology officially opened its academic year. All staff and students were invited to this festive occasion.

Frans de Haas, professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy and Director of the Dutch Research School of Philosophy, will join the management team of the MI on a temporary basis, in any event until 1 January 2022, in the role of Scientific Director-Change Manager.

Research

Education

Professor of Islam and the West Maurits Berger wants to use citizen science to answer this question. On the futureofislam.eu website, he is inviting European Muslims to complete an anonymous survey about how they see their future and the role of Islam in this. He will present the first findings at the…

If we want tax evasion to become a thing of the past then there has to be more balance in how tax advisers are educated, according to tax professors Jan Vleggeert and Jan van de Streek.

The submission deadline for applications to Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Scaliger Institute fellowship programmes has been set for 1 April 2025. The Scaliger Institute, the special collections research centre of the UBL, supports scholars in any field of study and from anywhere in the world to…

There has been good progress with the new South Cluster construction through the summer months. All the door and window frames are now in place, the building will soon be wind and watertight and the interior finishing has already begun. The work will be completed in the months ahead, with the building…

After seven months of hard work, the participants in the Research Traineeship Programme concluded their research on Friday 2 September with a pitch and a poster presentation.

Education

A course that concludes with a video pitch, instead of a paper or examination: Italian Language and Culture students each recorded their own knowledge clip, speaking to a wide audience about Italian cultural expressions. We asked Goran Bouaziz, Cameron-May Bosch and Katja Timmer what they thought of…