Lecture, China Seminar

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

Leiden University has a wide range of buildings for teaching, research, and meeting. Here you will find practical information regarding access, layout, and usage of these locations, as well as answers to questions such as: How do I reserve a meeting room? Where can I report a defect? And what are the…

Security

Leiden University guides PhD candidates step by step from the start to the defence. You will find more information here about admission, the PhD track, and completion, as well as answers to questions such as: What conditions must I meet? What requirements must my dissertation meet? And what is involved…

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.

Long evenings and closed university buildings make a perfect combination for listening to podcasts. Over the past six months, staff, students and alumni of the Faculty of Humanities have once again produced some great work.

PhD defence

Leiden University supports the new Zuid-Holland Acceleration Programme, which builds on the Growth Agenda for Zuid-Holland and focuses on accelerating innovation, sustainability and economic growth in the region.

Full-day International Workshop

Leiden University strives to accommodate research talent, which is why it does its best to create an inspiring environment for PhD candidates. Therefore, we offer a training program for PhDs that is both complete and challenging. That is why we offer a training program for PhDs that is both complete…

Professor of Cognitive Psychology Mariska Kret studies how humans and animals express emotions. Comparisons between humans and great apes offer important evolutionary insights, Kret will say in her inaugural lecture on Friday 9 September.

In this episode, we talk with Mariska Kret about the expressions of emotions in humans and animals. Mariska explores the similarities and differences in emotion expression in humans and primates. Want to learn more about Mariska's research and discover why it's important that we learn more about animal…

Subtle changes in eye appearance can influence how people perceive others and affect their generosity. Articles from PsyPost and The Washington Post highlighted two experimental studies in which psychology researchers from Leiden University, including Mariska Kret, explored this phenomenon.

We need to dispel the arrogant and misguided idea that modern humans are superior to earlier human species. It is thanks in part to all our predecessors such as Neanderthals that we are who we are today. This is what Marie Soressi, Professor of Hominin Diversity Archaeology, will argue in her inaugural…

Leiden University and African Child Policy Forum hold ‘ground-breaking’ workshop on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and human rights in Africa

Conference

2025 was a year to remember at our faculty. We celebrated our 450th anniversary, launched new degree programmes and welcomed many inspiring speakers, yet we also felt the weight of budget constraints. Our year in a nutshell:

Facility, Organisation

This year's London Hellenic Prize is awarded to Caroline Vout for her excellent study of representations of the human body in sculpture, Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body.

Automated government decisions can be cost-effective. But using algorithms also makes understanding the reasons behind decisions particularly complicated. Dr Melanie Fink, Assistant Professor at Leiden Law School, has received a Veni grant to fund her research into this.

Education

We do it every day but barely give it a thought: chewing our food. But the ‘simple’ process of masticating food may have played a crucial role in the evolution of our jaws, facial muscles and teeth.

Six researchers from Leiden University have received an ERC starting grant. This grant of on average 1.5m euros will enable the researchers to launch their own project, form their own research team and develop their best ideas.

Leiden University joins the Just Transitions for AMR Working Group, an interdisciplinary team of social science and humanities researchers who are exploring ways to mitigate the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance in a just and equitable manner, with due consideration to the human rights of present…

Every year the National Centre for Study Choice asks students to evaluate their degree programme via the NSE. Data from the survey helps improve programmes and prospective students can make a well-considered choice of which programme to follow. 2,892 students (38.4%) from the Faculty of Humanities took…

At an international high-level conference, Valentina Carraro, Deputy Coordinator of the interdisciplinary programme Global Transformations and Governance Challenges (GTGC) presented her research on human rights in the UN Human Rights Council and Treaty body systems. One of the most practical recommendations…

Mike Schmidli has been awarded a fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS). From September 2021, he will spend 5 months at NIAS working on his research project titled 'Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and U.S. Interventionism in the late Cold War'. Read the abstract of his…

Research

PhD candidates Mohammed Saleh and Berfin Gülave (Division of Systems Pharmacology and Pharmacy) published their research paper on “Using the LeiCNS-PK3.0 Physiologically-Based Pharmacokinetic Model to Predict Brain Extracellular Fluid Pharmacokinetics in Mice”.

In six months' time, Leiden City of Science 2022 will begin. Rob Zwijnenberg, chairman of the Faculty Steering Committee, talks about the plans.

Climate and human rights will again become major issues on the world stage by the end of 2023. The new series of lunch seminars by the interdisciplinary research programme Global Transformations and Governance Challenges (GTGC) seamlessly tie into these events. All Leiden researchers and students are…

Almost 3,000 students from the Faculty of Humanities completed the National Student Survey (NSE) in the spring of 2022. With a response rate of 38%, the Faculty scored slightly above the national average.

Five projects with researchers from Leiden University have received a grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to build or upgrade existing research facilities.

There are more molecules that could conceivably be candidate drugs than there are stars in the universe. How can we ever efficiently identify those molecules? Professor of AI and Medicinal Chemistry, Gerard van Westen: ‘I’m going to use artificial intelligence as the co-pilot to make an automated search.’…

In her inaugural lecture Susanna Linberg will ask how philosophy should respond to global warming.

Salvador Regilme recently joined the Institute for History as a lecturer in International Relations.

When the tokay gecko loses its tail, a new one grows from resident stem cells at the stump. Each tissue type - muscle, bone, blood vessels and skin - develops from specific stem cells. This discovery by Luthfi Nurhidayat holds potential implications for advancing regenerative medicine in humans. Nurhidayat…

A web lecture is a lecture that’s recorded on campus and available online. You can decide for yourself whether to offer the lecture via a livestream and/or make it available for later viewing.

The SSH labs accommodate many types of research. The different types of labs were created after close consultation with researchers and offer a wealth of possibilities.

The academic year officially commences on 1 September and ends on 31 August. On collective closing days the university is closed and no lectures take place. The academic calendar applies to the whole university and to all study programmes with the exception of medicine.

Leiden University offers a broad range of support for finding, writing, and applying for research funding. The first point of contact is your local grant adviser at your faculty/institute, who can guide you through the application process and answer any questions you may have. If your faculty/institute…

Making use of social media is a good way to meet others or to hear about the latest news and developments. But it also has its downsides: disinformation, trolling, disrespectful comments and even the misuse of (personal) data.