Shyness is perfectly normal, Michiel Westenberg stated in his farewell lecture. But that doesn’t mean that social anxiety shouldn’t be identified and addressed in good time. ‘Serious shyness has strong genetic roots; you don’t just get over it.’

The moment has finally arrived: after months of hard work, the strategic plan is finished. It was an interesting period, thinks core group member Sylvestre Bonnet. 'How we finally arrived at this strategic plan was very different from what I had thought beforehand.'

His Surinamese neighbours in Amsterdam gave Russia expert and economic historian Isaac Scarborough an idea: a re-evaluation of the Surinamese economy in the twentieth century. An NWO XS grant will enable him to make a start on this.

Amy Eaglestone is a lecturer at the Institute of Political Science.

One of our RISE members, Prof. Laura Heitman, has been nominated for the TOPX Females to Follow “Guiding Star” award. TOPX empowers promising and ambitious women, and aims to honour inspirational females with remarkable careers in Life Sciences. TOPX selected her (and 7 other female professionals) because…

For almost 25 years, ‘de Handboeken Veiligheid’ have been a phenomenon. Who does not have a copy on their bookshelf? In 2024, the series will be celebrating its 25th anniversary and next Monday, the Public Prosecution Handbook will be presented: the latest volume in the series. Erwin Muller talks about…

Professor Ariadne Schmidt and Associate Professor Arie van Steensel (University of Groningen) have produced A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Leiden, the first English-language history of Leiden. Mayor Peter Heijkoop received the first copy.

For too long the Dutch collective memory has judged the Jewish Council too harshly. This perspective needs to be adjusted, Bart van der Boom argues in his new book ‘De politiek van het kleinste kwaad’ (lit. ‘The Politics of the Lesser Evil’).

Of course, Jan Melissen is proud of the publication of his new book. Even so, one painful memory lingers: because of American interference, he was forced to remove the chapter on citizen diplomacy, diversity and inclusion. ‘It did affect me.’

For their research many neuropsychologists use the brain scanners at the LUMC. At the start of the pandemic, the rules for visiting the hospital became stricter and a large amount of psychology research looked as though it would fall through. Thanks to good protocols the researchers can now pick up…

In 2021, Assistant Professor Tax Law Rens Pieterse published a biography about former professor in tax law H.J. Hofstra. Dutch magazine ‘Het Register’ did an extensive spread on Pieterse, his writing and other activities.

Too expensive groceries, diseases suddenly breaking out: from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, hundreds of people documented the world around them in chronicles. A significant number of these texts have been digitised in recent years. Professor of Early Modern Dutch History and project leader…

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.

Adam Cohen in Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and was until 2018 CEO of the Foundation Centre for Human Drug Research (www.chdr.nl). CHDR is a leading institute involved in early drug research in collaboration with LUMC and Leiden University. He is a physician at the department of Nephrology of L…

Matthias van Osch is professor in Radiology, experimental cerebrovascular imaging and he is vice-director of the C.J. Gorter Center for high field MRI. in 2016 he was awarded with the innovational research incentives scheme VICI “Breaking through spatial, temporal and physiological boundaries in brain…

In June 2015 I started working in the LUMC as professor of neuro-oncology, in particular quality of life. I work two days a week in the LUMC, where I am a staff member at the department of neurology. In addition to neuro-oncological patient care, I chair the neuro-oncology tumor working group and lead…

Olaf Dekkers is professor internal medicine, chair of the scientific board internal medicine at LUMC and visiting professor at the department clinical epidemiology in Aarhus, Denmark.

Peter Devilee has over 30 years of experience in cancer genetics, including somatic genetics of tumors and the genetics of familial clustering of cancer, primarily breast and colorectal cancer, and paragangliomas. Since 2003, he is professor of Tumor Genetics at the Leiden University Medical Center…

• Professor in statistical methods for observational (clinical) epidemiological research • Member of the Dutch Health Council

Rob Tollenaar is professor of Surgery in particular in oncology and head of the Department of Surgery of the Leiden University Medical Center. He is also chairman of the management team of the University Cancer Center Leiden-The Hague (UKC-LD) an oncological partnership of the LUMC and HMC. He is…

Anita Liao (M.Sc.) is a PhD student at the Division of Drug Discovery & Safety.

Psychologist Ellen de Bruijn studies the effects of hormonal fluctuations on behaviour and on the brain over a woman's life course. With an ERC Consolidator grant, she and 3 PhDs and a postdoc will further her EEG research on the different stages at which girls and women experience strong hormonal f…

It was his thesis supervisor during his master's in Film and Photographic Studies who encouraged Shivan Shazad to pursue a second master's in diversity policy at Ghent. He is now Manager of Diversity and Inclusion at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Martijn Kitzen has been appointed professor by special appointment of Military Science at ISGA on behalf of the Royal Netherlands Society for War Studies (KVBK).

Not everyone benefits from the increased flexibility in the labour market. EU migrant workers engaged at the lower end of the employment spectrum are falling behind. According to Daniel Carter, the legal system is at fault and in his PhD thesis he explains the reasons why.

Lecture, Global Questions Seminar

Annelies Schulte Nordholt is a University Lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

Herman Siemens is a Senior University Lecturer at the Institute for Philosophy.

I am an internist-endocrinologist in the Department of Internal Medicine and Professor of Diabetology, in particular the neuro-endocrine regulation of diabetes and overweight.

Pepita Hesselberth is Assistant Professor Film, Literary and Media Studies at Leiden University, and research fellow at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

Alisa van de Haar is Assistant Professor in historical French Literature. Her research focuses on historical multilingualism, the history of the language sector, and the intersection between language and migration. From 2022 to 2026, she conducted a Dutch Research Council Veni project titled ‘Languages…

To understand how the brain works, it is essential to map it out in detail. This appears to be possible with a microscopy technique in which Leiden physicists excel. This breakthrough could significantly advance the human quest to understand brain functions.

The first full-colour images of the cosmos from ESA's space telescope Euclid were presented today. Never before has a telescope been able to take such crystal-clear astronomical images of such a large part of the sky and so far into the deep universe. The five images illustrate Euclid's full potential;…

Leiden professor of molecular astrophysics and astrochemistry Ewine van Dishoeck was presented with the Niels Bohr International Gold Medal on Friday 7 October. The medal, instigated by the Danish Society of Engineers IDA, was awarded by Queen Margrethe of Denmark at a ceremony at the Carlsberg Academy…

Are AI models such as Midjourney violating artists' copyright? Dirk Visser, Professor of Intellectual Property Law, spoke about this topic on Dutch current affairs news programme 'NOS Radio 1 Journaal' .

‘Working in Leiden is a dream come true.’ Ákos Kovács studied in his birth country Hungary and worked in Germany, Denmark and Groningen. As professor of Microbiome Ecology at IBL, he immediately started working together with his new colleagues to make discoveries about the versatile bacterial species…

For over a year now, the James Webb Telescope has been sending stunning images that exceed astronomers’ expectations. The photos are fascinating to see, but what exactly are we looking at? Assistant professor Melissa McClure explains.

On Tuesday a few dozen students and staff from Leiden University protested on the square in front of the Lipsius building against the classroom scanners that have been installed in buildings and lecture halls. They are demanding that the scanners be removed.

Neilabh Sinha was awarded a subsidy from NWO Promoties in de Geesteswetenschappen and started as a PhD candidate at the Institute for History in September. He introduces himself.

Astronomers have captured a new deep field of Pandora's Cluster (Abell 2744) with the James Webb Space Telescope. The images show never-before-seen details. The results are described in four scientific papers. Leiden astronomers Marijn Franx and Mariska Kriek collaborated on the study. 'This opens a…

A team of international researchers led by Tomas Stolker in the Netherlands has imaged a young gas giant exoplanet near a 12-million-year-old star. The planet is orbiting a star at which planet formation has finished, while the same-aged companion star still has a planet-forming disk. The researchers…

An image has great powers of persuasion. It is said that ‘a picture is worth more than a thousand words’. But these days, images can easily be manipulated with severe consequences. ‘Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the value we attach to images’, says Elize de Mul, whose PhD thesis deals with ‘digital…

The collection guides of archives and collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) have been made available via the portal Collection Guides. This has greatly improved the findability, visibility and ease of use of these collection finding aids.