Associate Professor Lettie Dorst has received a Vidi grant to research how machine translation programmes such as Google Translate and ChatGPT translate words and expressions used metaphorically. This still regularly goes wrong, resulting in far too literal, incorrect and sometimes incomprehensible…

Generative AI presents journalists with new options for image use but also raises ethical questions.

Technology and privacy, trust and mistrust. A discussion about this broke out when the University installed scanners and students protested. On Wednesday 2 February experts from Leiden University will explore this topic at the eponymous symposium. We called Roy de Kleijn, as a computer scientist and…

An incredible quantity of archaeological reports are stored in digital archives. If you want to search for information in them, you have to do this manually. And that is a real chore. Archaeologist Alex Brandsen has now used deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to develop a search engine…

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…

Researchers have used AI to reconstruct the rules of a board game carved into a stone found in the Dutch city of Heerlen. The team concludes that this type of game was played several centuries earlier than previously assumed.

From 6-8 April 2026 the conference "From the ground up: The politics of burial and memory in the early Islamic world" will take place in Cairo, Egypt. Deadline for sending in your abstract: 21 June 2025.

As part of the celebrations around the 25th birthday of the Faculty of Archaeology, a panel discussion on the future of archaeology was organised on December 13th. For this discussion an international panel of scholars was invited to give their perspective and enter into conversation with our Faculty…

Lecture, COGLOSS x GLOBALISE Webinar

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga from Leiden University has been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant of 1.5m euros enables talented early-career scholars to start their own pioneer project, lead a research team, and implement their best ideas at the frontiers of their…

PhD defence

From 13 to 16 July, Leiden will host the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF), the largest multidisciplinary scientific conference in Europe. Lars van Doorn from Leiden Law School will give a presentation.

Professor of Modern China Florian Schneider researches what people do with technology and what technology does with people. Social media, for example. And then mainly in China.

‘In the field of AI, Leiden is still a relatively unseen university,’ says Thomas Dohmen. The brand-new Director AI Collaboration Center, would like to forge a Leiden AI collaboration network, with sustainable and impactful relationships between the university and civil society organisations. The question…

On 7 and 8 November 2024, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), the Institute of Security & Global Affairs at Leiden University, and The Netherlands’ National Coordinator for Security and Counter Terrorism (NCTV) partnered to host a ‘Blue-Sky’ Terrorist Exploitation of Artificial…

In this ‘Educatips’ column, Psychology lecturers share their most important lessons about teaching. This month: Zsuzsika Sjoerds and Sebo Uithol teach students critical thinking with their app 'Family Dinner'. With success: 'The old exams have become too easy.'

Stephan Raaijmakers has been Professor of Communicative AI since 1 May. Prior to this, he had held this position for five years as professor by special appointment. How has his approach to AI changed in that time?

Professor Sjef Barbiers is leaving his job as scientific director of LUCL for the position of scientific director of the Institute for the Dutch Language (INT) from 1 September.

Lecture, Digital Archaeology Group

Working conference

LiDAR, a laser-based remote sensing technology, is transforming archaeology by uncovering hidden landscapes beneath forests, vegetation, and shallow waters. Though initially designed for land management, its applications in archaeology have grown rapidly.

Who is the real creator when a musician uses AI? This was the burning question for Adam Lukawski, himself a composer. During a fascinating premiere at Amare, The Hague’s cultural hub, he demonstrated what cocreation sounds like.

Conference, 2-day Workshop

Video conferencing from your sitting room and algorithms on social media that know your interests: new technology is an increasingly integral part of our lives. At the same time there is a growing call to protect our privacy, and this is causing friction, at the University too. In part because of the…

Weekly Workshop

Lecture

Lecture, LUCDH Lunch Lecture