As a result of the decentralisation of responsibilities in the public domain, most Dutch municipalities have created community teams. These community teams are tasked with providing easy access to care and support for citizens and with providing solutions to fit their individual needs. This requires…

On 1 August, Jelly Reinders was appointed head of the Education and Student Affairs (OSZ) department at the Faculty of Humanities. ‘It's a wonderful continuation of my career after some fantastic and interesting years at VU University Amsterdam.'

To foster interfaculty collaborations and explore common ground for working interdisciplinary on health-related themes in Leiden and beyond, the Leiden University Medical Anthropology Network has been set up.

The importance of a healthy lifestyle does not receive the attention it deserves, as the coronavirus pandemic made painfully clear. Twelve behavioural scientists, including Professor Behavioral Interventions in Population Health Management Marieke Adriaanse and Professor of Health Psychology Andrea…

Research

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) announced on 25 April that it has appointed 18 new members. These include Leiden professors Andrew Webb and Jos Raaijmakers.

Children are suffering disproportionally from the coronavirus measures. They feel depressed more often compared to other age groups. But what about the legal perspective? Are children’s rights being violated?

ICT

The article “Anticipating an unwanted future: euthanasia and dementia in the Netherlands” by Natashe Lemos Dekker is the winner of the first Interdem Academy Publication Award. Lemos Dekker is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC project ‘Globalizing Palliative Care’ at Leiden Leiden of Cultural Anthropology…

Recent developments in AI mean nobody is anonymous nowadays. The search engine PimEyes can find any photo of anyone that’s ever been placed online. No more Tinder Swindlers… or personal privacy. Everyone’s findable now. But is that even allowed?

On 3 November 2022, Mariëlle Bruning, Professor of Children and the Law, spoke as an expert on child protection at a roundtable discussion with Dutch Lower House members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Security.

Ontwikkelingshulp- en migratiedeskundigen zien dat er lessen zijn geleerd in het nieuwe regeerakkoord op het gebied van asielbeleid. Maar aan veel toezeggingen kleven cynische voorwaarden.

There's a myth that people with autism avoid eye contact in conversations. This can come across as indifferent. Unjustified, stresses Jiayin Zhao, who is doing her PhD research on the socio-emotional development of children with autism. 'That people with autism don't care is anything but true.'

Quite a lot went wrong during the virtual hearings that courts held during the coronavirus crisis. Researchers from three universities, including Leiden University, concluded that citizens did not always feel heard and that their legal position was compromised.

Organisation, Security

Education

Facility, Organisation

The Schoof cabinet has presented its budget. As expected, higher education is facing severe cuts. In the coming period, the Executive Board will regularly look at the consequences of what it deems an irresponsible policy.

The past few days we interviewed several of our researchers about their various studies during Dutch Bio Science Week. They answered questions such as what impact their research has on our future and with whom they have established valuable collaborations.

How safely do you handle your data? Privacy officer Eric van Hoof assists researchers and staff with this. 'The biggest mistake people make is thinking they have nothing to hide.' He has some useful tips.

Four researchers from Leiden University will receive funding from arthritis foundation ReumaNederland over the next five years. This should facilitate long-term research into arthritis.

On average, the residents of The Hague Southwest (Zuidwest) are poorer, have more health problems and a lower level of education than the residents of other districts in The Hague. With the Southwest Pact, the municipality, the state, residents, entrepreneurs and professional parties are joining forces…

Security seems to most people a basic necessity of life, a prerequisite for a good life. But if you think about it a little longer and deeper, as political philosopher Josette Daemen has done, you realise that security sometimes comes at the expense of other important goods, such as freedom and equality.…

Our students and staff have strong feelings and deep concerns about the ties between Dutch universities and the fossil fuel industry. It’s a thorny issue and as a university we’re keen to chart our course for the future, but we cannot do so alone. I therefore hope to be able to discuss the matter with…

‘To be honest, I don’t really care about what type of research is going on. Just let me do my own thing and everything is fine,’ according to biotechnical officer Davy de Witt. In this interview, he tells about his tasks and experiences at the Institute of Biology Leiden, where he has been employed…

A basic income would not necessarily mean that people would work less. This is the conclusion of a series of behavioural experiments by cognitive psychologist Fenna Poletiek, social psychologist Erik de Kwaadsteniet and cognitive psychologist Bastiaan Vuyk. They also found indications that people with…

Leiden University has recently received various petitions from students and staff concerning our ties with Israeli universities. We have also held extensive discussions with the University Council in response to questions raised on the subject. We think it important that our partners and research projects…

On January 1st Jasper Knoester started as our new dean. How is he finding it? What kinds of things is he doing and what does his day look like? In each newsletter Jasper gives a peek into his life as dean.

To underline the urgency: Our faculty faces a significant financial challenge. With a structural reduction of €5 to €6 million in annual income, dark clouds are gathering on the horizon. Added to this are the uncertain consequences of budget cuts from The Hague, including the Balanced Internationalisation…

Interviewing pupils and brainstorming with judges and lawyers. Students from the Trust in the Rule of Law honours course discovered how pupils at the Edith Stein College school in The Hague see institutions and how the law works in practice.

Limburg lawyer Roger Cox has caused a legal revolution. With high-profile cases against the Dutch state and Shell oil company, he transformed the law into a tool to enforce climate policy. Leidraad alumni magazine spoke to him about a life defined by radical choices for a better world.

‘Everyone’s talking about it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, but the reality is disappointing,’ says biochemist Gerard van Westen in his 3 October University lecture in the Van der Werfpark. In the full marquee, he gets a laugh with this suggestion that artificial intelligence is comparable…

Luca Giomi has the first results of his ERC consolidator grant. He discovered that epithelial cells move collectively but in different ways, depending on the scale you look at. It is hexatic at small scales, and becomes nematic at larger scales: it is a multiscale order. This collective movement of…

When and how to use the concept of “culture” . To medical anthropologists this is a core question, but also a challenging one.

The LUMC has become the first institution in the Netherlands to treat a patient with an autoimmune disease using CAR T-cell therapy.

What determines healthy behavior and how do you promote healthy choices and routines? These are a few questions currently being addressed by Marieke Adriaanse, recently appointed Professor of Behavioral Intervention in Population Health Management at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC).

‘Raising awareness of the disorder is crucial since borderline personality disorder (BPD) still faces considerable stigma ’, says Anne Krause-Utz (Clinical Psychology) . Together with an international team of excellent scientists, Krause-Utz provides an update of current knowledge about this disorder,…

For the third year in a row, the bonfires in the Duindorp and Scheveningen neighbourhoods in The Hague during New Year's Eve have been cancelled. According to Professor Henk te Velde, the fight for the bonfires represents something bigger: angry citizens.

‘Yamila Miguel brings along immense enthusiasm that sparks over to the students in the lectures,’ her students say about her. ‘She inspires us as scientists-to-be.’ The astronomer teaches master’s students with great passion and interactivity about exoplanets. She has been nominated for the faculty…

Starting with the ‘why’, putting herself in her students’ shoes and providing structure. These are three ways in which environmental scientist Ranran Wang tries to make her course as interesting and manageable as possible. With success: she has been nominated for Science Teacher of the Year 2022.

As part of the LIAISON Research Project, Eduard Fosch-Villaronga and Hadassah Drukarch organised a workshop at the European Robotics Forum (ERF 2021) to engage the broader community in the projects’ goal of liaising robot development and policymaking.

How can the people of Leiden age as well as possible? And what is needed to reduce health disparities? That is the mission of Leiden Healthy Society Center, a new partnership between the Municipality of Leiden, Leiden University and many other partners in the city.

Most students of Psychology want to work in mental healthcare (GGZ). This makes the master’s specialisation in Clinical Psychology a logical choice. It was an option for alumna Ruth van Vugt for a long time, but she decided to explore further and has since successfully completed the Health and Medical…

The EU’s programme for research and innovation Horizon Europe is funding the ISGA project ‘NET-ROL: Networks and the Rule of Law: Uncovering Socio-Economic Outcomes’. The funding amounts to 3 million euros, with 760,000 euros going to ISGA. Researchers Antoaneta Dimitrova and Jaroslaw Kantorowicz are…

Health and well-being staff spend at least 25 per cent of their working hours on admin.* Time that could be used for care. Much of this work could be automated with artificial intelligence. The LUMC is the first in the Netherlands to offer medical students AI language model programming internships.

Police killed Eric Garner 9 years ago (‘I can’t breathe’) when he resisted a search. Now everyone will consent to stops and searches. Law Professor and author Josephine Ross looks to feminism: what police call consent, feminists would call submission. During the lecture on Wednesday 31 May, Josephine…

In mid-March 2020, the global coronavirus outbreak changed everything in the Netherlands. Staying at home as much as possible and the 1.5 metre rule became the standard. One year on, we reflect on the past year with four Leiden Law School ‘insiders’. What kind of year did they have? And what are their…

The digital society is vulnerable, as we have seen over the past weeks. Our Dean Paul Wouters shares his thoughts and encourages to recover during the time around the holidays.

In November 2024, Dr. Hana Kubatova (Charles University, Prague) visited Leiden to talk with students and our community about academic freedom and neutrality at the university. This meaningful event was planned by student leaders from CIROS (Community for International Relations and Organisations Students)…

The need for knowledge among practitioners and the lack of an academic knowledge base for specifically collective arrangements of social work in the Netherlands were the reason for Anouk de Koning, Femke Kaulingfreks and Maartje van der Woude to start working on a Dutch Research Agenda (NWA) application…