Sarah Cramsey was appointed professor by special appointment of Central European Studies at the Institute of History on 14 September. 'I am keen to incorporate different scholarly approaches into my work and raise the profile of Central European Studies in Leiden.'

With the passing of Henk Jan de Jonge on 16 April 2022, Leiden University has lost one of its most characteristic, learned and devoted professors.

Dr Valentina Azzarà, an honorary research fellow at the Faculty of Archaeology and an expert on prehistoric Oman, was recently invited to feature in a National Geographic documentary that aired last year. The opportunity came after a series of discussions and preparations that saw her engage with the…

Since 2009-2010, the West viewed China as more assertive. Especially after Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the country abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s ‘low profile’ foreign policy. Friso Stevens explains in his dissertation where this change has come from. The dissertation defence is on 28 March.

Prisoners who are visited regularly by family or friends are less likely to be reconvicted in the short term than inmates who rarely or never receive visits. Visits should therefore be encouraged and facilitated, according to PhD candidate Maria Berghuis, who will defend her doctoral thesis on 23 June…

Data about COVID-19 were everywhere during the pandemic, but how will all this data continue to be managed and kept open so that it is usable in the future? We spoke with Kathleen Gregory, researcher at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), who will study this question in a new project…

Costanza Franceschini discusses the Sea-ing Africa project, offering unique anthropological research opportunities in Ghana and Morocco for Masters students.

Luning and Hein receiving a LUF grant to research the intricate relationship between infrastructure projects and their impact on geopolitics, economics, politics, and culture in Africa

Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing? 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.

In the nationalist nineteenth century, people developed an interest in medieval language and literature. The study of medieval material in one’s own vernacular was thought to reveal a great national past. But why, then, was Old English studied by Germans, Danes, Italians and many other nationalities…

Lecture

Workshop

Debate

Lecture

Lecture

Ten Leiden social and behavioural scientists have successfully applied for the NWO Open Competition. With this Open Competition, NWO gives researchers the chance to start small, high-risk, innovative or promising research projects.

Caroline Schep and Bianca Angelien Claveria recently joined the Institute for History as PhD candidates in the ERC-funded project “Human Subject Research and Medical Ethics in Colonial Southeast Asia”, led by Fenneke Sysling. Below they introduce themselves.

More focus on diversity in Antiquity, workshops for students with disabilities, and a card game to share stories about diversity: these and other projects will receive funding from the JEDI Fund in 2023.

The LUCAS Dissertation Prize has been awarded to Dr. Renske Janssen for her PhD thesis Religio Illicita? Roman Legal Interactions with Early Christianity in Context.

What started as pioneering work, has evolved over decades to become a renowned institute in 2025 with an internationally acclaimed master's programme. 'Almost everyone involved in the aviation and space sector knows us in Leiden.'

Several of the most important manuscript collections in the Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Special Collections, comprising 443 extremely rare and often unique volumes, have been made available in Open Access via Digital Collections. The available manuscript collections include the private collections…

Mojan Samadi obtained her PhD in 2020 in Leiden and has since remained at the university as an assistant professor. Her research currently focuses on gender and criminal law, with a key question being how criminal law should address femicide.

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) in partnership with Elsevier hosted a series of online seminars on the challenges involved in achieving reproducibility in research. The seminars aimed to identify best practices that can help to overcome central challenges around reproducibility, and to convey several…

Harriet Zurndorfer passed away on 18 March 2026 in Leiden.

Op dinsdag 10 januari 2022 zijn tijdens de facultaire nieuwjaarsreceptie de jaarlijkse Meijersprijzen en de scriptieprijzen uitgereikt.

Conference

Conference

2021 was an eventful year once again for the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA). Hybrid, working from home, online education, on-campus education, face masks, self-tests, keeping distance, quarantine and the coronavirus. Words that have now become a standard part of our vocabulary when…

2024 was a remarkable and eventful year for the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs. In this year overview, we look back month by month at the key events and developments.

2025 was a year full of impact and milestones for FGGA: From a record number of graduates and new programmes to international collaborations, prestigious awards and research that pushes boundaries and provides insight into current challenges.

Lecture, Global Histories of Knowledge Seminar

Workshop

Festival

Workshop

Conference

Yusra Abdullahi, Maha Ali and Felipe Colla de Amorim recently joined the Institute for History as PhD candidates. Together they work an an integrated, collective project. Learn more about them below!

In 2022, every euro in the Netherlands lost about 10% of its value, price increases comparable to the stagflation period of the 1970s. In the same year, the value of the Argentine peso halved, while prices in China only rose by 2%. How well do we understand the economic mechanisms behind inflation?…

Workshop

Lecture, COGLOSS Seminar

Conference

Lecture, Sociolinguistics & Discourse Studies Series

Eighteen researchers from Leiden University have been awarded a Veni grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This grant gives promising young researchers the opportunity to develop their ideas for a period of three years.

Sixteen researchers at Leiden University are to receive a Veni grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). These awards offer promising young researchers the opportunity to further develop their own ideas over a period of three years.

Book Launch

Arts and culture

Conference

My colleagues and I have been devastated to learn that our good colleague and friend Stefan Landsberger (born 1955) passed away unexpectedly, on 26 September 2024. Stefan had been a fixture of China Studies in the Netherlands, where he had been Associate Professor of contemporary Chinese History and…