Athanasios Stathopoulos is a University Lecturer at the Institute for History since August 2019, but has been a familiar face at Leiden University since 2015. He introduces himself below.

Leiden University has taken eighth place in this year’s SustainaBul, the sustainability ranking for universities and universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands. It was in 18th place last year.

Many children have an unhealthy diet and do not get enough exercise. Sanne de Vries wants to help everyone get a healthy start in life.

John Kroes received a royal honour from Leiden deputy mayor Julius Terpstra on 20 November. He was appointed Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau for his exceptional services to the university and his extensive voluntary work for organisations in Leiden and The Hague.

In the Netherlands it is now possible to visit non-essential shops if you make an appointment beforehand. But when you book an appointment you have to provide a lot of personal data. Are shops allowed to ask you for all this data and what happens to it?

On Thursday 19 June, the sun-drenched garden of the Huizinga Building was the setting for the Education Market. Over snacks and drinks, colleagues inspired each other with educational innovations.

It is the seventh year in a row that the Faculty of Archaeology is placed in the top ten of archaeological institutes worldwide. The QS World University Rankings by Subject looks at criteria like academic reputation and citation ratios.

Rahul Gandhi, former president of the Indian National Congress, was on the Hague Campus on 10 September.

Yesterday, an article appeared in Biznews about the watershortages in California. David Zetland, university lecturer at Leiden University College, gives his opinion about this problem.

Hospital pharmacist and lecturer on the master’s programme in pharmacy Arianna Pranger has made it to the final of the Lecturer of the Year 2021 competition. Outgoing minister Van Engelshoven (Education, Culture and Science) will award the prize to the winning lecturer.

What hidden nature is there in our cities and how can we use such organisms? This is what the HiddenBiodiversity project will be exploring over the next four years. The project’s kick-off meeting was held at the Hortus botanicus on Monday 26 September.

You can hardly avoid it if you want to quickly implement satellite internet. Elon Musk's company Starlink is "all-powerful in space" (Volkskrant). Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant wrote an extensive article on the situation and the possible dangers and alternatives. For this, they interviewed several experts,…

Organisation

Monday 14 November marks the start of the Week on the International Student. The perfect moment to reveal our new Acts of Kindness Pillar. At 12.00 hours on the dot, the festive reveal will take place in the restaurant at KOG. Everyone is cordially invited to take part in the ceremony and have some…

As a Leiden University’s master’s student in Political Science you conduct independent research and report your findings to fellow academics and, who knows, to a larger audience. Your thesis is a showcase of your academic skills and personal interest, and perhaps even passion. Easier said than done,…

On 30 October 2025, Eleonora Dagienė successfully defended her PhD thesis at Leiden University, titled ‘Quantitative Research Assessment and its Unintended Consequences’.

This summer, Jeffrey Fynn-Paul started as a lecturer at the Institute's Social and Economic History section.

Craft your own empirical research in workshops of the ELS lab @Leiden!

On Thursday 2 June, the research conference for academic staff members of the Institute of Public Administration took place at the Beeld en Geluid venue in The Hague. The aim of the conference was to showcase the ongoing research conducted at the Public Administration and explore the potential for more…

Professor Claartje Levelt, together with Paula Fikkert (Radboud University), has received an NWO Open Competition grant for research into the development of word production in toddlers.

Last July saw the start of the new master programme Cosmopolis Advanced, an initiative of the Institute for History at Leiden University in partnership with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta. The Cosmopolis Advanced programma, led by prof.dr. Jos Gommans and coordinator dr. Lennart Bes, provides…

Various countries are planning new missions to the Moon. Not just for prestige and science, but also to extract raw materials.

With support of several publishers and private foundations, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Scaliger Institute welcome around 15 to 20 Fellows and guests per year to consult and research materials from our Special Collections. The Scaliger Institute received many applications this year from…

Professor Ann Skelton has been elected as Chairperson of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.

On 11 July 2024, a gathering was held to celebrate the start of the construction of the new University Sports Centre (USC). Rugby players and a pole dancer from USC Leiden played a role in the celebration. A video was also shown, giving a whistle-stop tour of the new building.

November marks exactly 100 years since the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. To celebrate this special discovery, the Faculty of Humanities, together with various parties, is organising the 'Month of Tutankhamun': a month full of activities around Egypt's most legendary pharaoh.

The interdisciplinary programme Social Resilience & Security is inviting proposals for seed funding. The programme aims to combine knowledge and expertise from five different faculties to study transgressive behaviours, its dimensions, aetiology, and effects of interventions with a multidisciplinary…

The Global Summit, which took place from 12-16 January 2021, is an initiative by Richard Albert, the William Stamps Farish Professor in Law, Professor of Government, Director of Constitutional Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and Founder & Director of the International Forum on the Future…

What is life like as an academic? Twelve PhD candidates will report on their daily work in videos and blogs on the Faces of Science website (in Dutch). They include three researchers from Leiden who are researching topics such as North Korean support for African liberation movements, how differently…

Last year, the Faculty of Humanities started organising onboarding afternoons, where new staff members can get to know each other. ‘All new staff members are welcome.’

As a result of the current corona measures, attendance at the Opening of the Academic Year on 6 September will be restricted to a maximum of 75 persons. The ceremony can, however, be viewed online by taking part in a video wall.

On March 16 students and alumni of the Advanced LLM in European and International Human Rights Law were brought together in an online Zoom event organized by our programme coordinator, Mahshid Alizadeh, and head of the LLM, Rick Lawson.

Van Es is the successor to Professor Huijgen whose retirement is approaching after nearly 27 years’ professorship. This new appointment is from October 2022, but Van Es has been working at the faculty for some time.

As of 1 September 2024, the cum laude honour will no longer be awarded for the Master’s in Medicine. The Executive Board recently decided to grant an exemption to the Leiden University/LUMC Faculty of Medicine. This decision is in line with other medicine programmes in the Netherlands.

The many thousands of small celestial bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit may have ended up there due to a star that passed close to the solar system billions of years ago. This is shown by Leiden simulation expert Simon Portegies Zwart, along with his German and Dutch colleagues. ‘We are answering several…

Lukas Milevski is a lecturer in International Studies at the Institute for History. He introduces himself.

On the second floor of the Sylvius Laboratory, new labs are being built for researchers of the Faculties of Social and Behavioural Sciences and Humanities. After a successful tender construction has recently started.

The ‘Amorphophallus titanum’ at the Hortus botanicus Leiden is blooming. This Titan Arum, also known as the ‘giant penis plant’, last flowered in 2009.

The development of the Humanities Campus is entering a new phase. On 13 June, the Municipal Council approved both the zoning plan and the visual quality plan. This means that the university can now go forward with developing the new construction and the central green square on the Doelen side of the…

Pratika Dewi recently joined the Institute for History as a PhD candidate, as part of Carolien Stolte's ERC project 'Reconciling Peace: International Coalitions for Peace in the Era of Decolonization, 1918-1970'. The project runs alongside Carolien Stolte's VIDI project 'Peace Palms. International Coalitions…

Earlier this week, a working group of the United Nations, comprising all 193 of its member states, adopted a consensus report on norms for responsible state behaviour in cyberspace. Dennis Broeders, full professor of Global Security and Technology at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden…

The project will further the development of policies, practices, and capabilities in responsible academic career assessment.

The Student Living Room at the KOG will soon officially open its doors. All Leiden Law School staff and students are welcome to come and see this new space during the official opening event on Tuesday 23 May at 12.00 hrs. A free lunch will be provided for all, we’ll raise a toast with a glass of bubbles,…

Organisation

Timo Kos has been appointed Vice President of Leiden University’s Executive Board and will take up the role on 1 March 2025. He succeeds Martijn Ridderbos, who will join the board of the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) on 1 January 2025.

Bureaucrats appointed based on merit are not necessarily more professional or autonomous than those who have been, for instance, ‘politically installed’. Furthermore, patronage does not only have negative effects. These are two conclusions reached by Abdul-Nasir Abubakar, PhD candidate at Leiden University’s…

Joëlle Koning has been appointed as Head of Student Affairs (OSZ) in the Faculty of Humanities from 1 July.