Saskia Goedhard was previously director of operations at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam and the UvA. Since April, she has brought her expertise to the Faculty of Humanities as director of business operations. 'Good business management is like water from a tap. You only notice it when it’s no longer th…

Today, Leiden University announces who the new Cluster Zuid on the Witte Singel will be named after. Summer 2023, a ballot determined the name of the complex on the former Van Wijkplaats/Van Eyckhof, which is expected to be completed in March. It was already established that the complex would be named…

Gert Oostindie, Emeritus Professor of Colonial and Postcolonial History, is this year’s Cleveringa Professor at Leiden University. He was appointed by the University on 4 October. In his inaugural lecture on 24 November, entitled Courage and Disregard, he will talk about (academic) freedom in relation…

Luis is a third-year bachelor’s student Security Studies. During his elective space, he did an internship at the German Ministery of Labour and Social Affairs.

Translating ancient texts, filling in missing parts of clay tablets: articles are popping up more and more often about the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence for researching documents in the oldest scripts. Are we better off leaving the deciphering of ancient texts to computers from now…

Cut marks on the bones of bears show that people in North-West Europe used bearskins to keep warm 300,000 years ago.

Board members Annetje Ottow and Hester Bijl recently visited the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL, Faculty of Humanities) and the Mathematical Institute (MI, Faculty of Science). This was the start of a series of visits to institutes at our university. The focus is on talking to researchers…

The LUCL has a new Scientific Director. Professor Sjef Barbiers took over the reins from Lisa Cheng with effect from 1 January. 'This is a great opportunity to contribute to a wonderful institution.'

This masterclass examines the idea of disegno in relation to the early modern decorative arts by investigating the collection of Italian design drawings in the Rijksmuseum. Meaning both design and drawing, disegno was a fundamental concept in the development of artistic theory in early modern Europe…

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.

Why use Google Maps when you can also calculate your bike route based on your own data. Statistician and cyclist Alexander Dürre sees statistics in everything around him. He analyses data of soccer games and calculates the possible winners of cycling races. ‘When I have too much time, I apply statistics…

For 2022, The Iranian-German project 'The Iranian Highlands: Resilience and Integration of Premodern Societies' announces the second round of fellowship grants. The fellowship is open for both iranian and non-iranian researchers, especially in archaeology but also in other interdisciplinary fields focussing…

After having been cancelled in 2020, this year the Summer School in Languages and Linguistics is going online. From 12 – 23 July, language and linguistics enthusiasts from all over the world can once again learn about a variety of rare languages and linguistics topics. Director Sasha Lubotsky tells…

More than 1.3 million people worldwide die of tuberculosis (TB) each year, making research on its prevention and control essential. Researchers from various disciplines in Leiden are studying TB. A symposium on 24 March will highlight different activities in the hope of boosting nationwide collabora…

Lawyer and human rights activist Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You is the new Cleveringa professor.

On 26 November 1940 Professor Cleveringa held his courageous speech protesting against the dismissal of his Jewish colleague, Professor Meijers. Cleveringa was arrested and the university was closed. Every year the university honours Cleveringa with a chair and meetings throughout the world.

Frank van Vree, Emeritus Professor of War, Conflict and Memory Studies at the University of Amsterdam (UVA), is the new Cleveringa Professor at Leiden University this year.

Leiden University has six top bachelor's programmes according to Keuzigids universiteiten 2025, a consumer guide to university programmes. This puts Leiden in fourth place of the broad-based universities.

About one and a half million people worldwide die each year from tuberculosis. For thirty years, therapy with antibiotics has been the same, while it takes far too long and can lead to resistant pathogens. Leiden researchers from four institutes are now joining forces to develop more effective and efficient…

Introducing prof. Scott Nelson, the Legum Professor of the Social Sciences at William and Mary, and on the spring exchange at the University of Leiden.

The French political theorist Hélène Landemore has been appointed as the new Cleveringa Professor. She will deliver her inaugural lecture on 26 November.

Bernhard Rieger recently joined the Institute for History as our new Professor of European History. He introduces himself.

Our dear colleague and friend Kathy MacDonald passed away unexpectedly on August 9th, 2022, a few days after her 46th birthday. Her sudden passing came as a tremendous shock to her colleagues and friends at the Faculty of Archaeology and to colleagues and former students both in The Netherlands and…

Looking for a different approach in the ongoing discussions on the ethereal matter of Romanisation, Ana Zora Maspoli joined Miguel John Versluys’ research group as a postdoc guest researcher. While she has been active in our Faculty since February 2022, you may not have met her yet due to the Covid-19…

A memorial stone honouring professor and resistance hero Ben Telders was unveiled on 12 September at the site of the former concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.

On Tuesday 12 January 2021, the annual Meijers prizes and thesis prizes were awarded at the online New Year’s event broadcast from the Old Observatory.

Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been conducting a covert sabotage campaign against Europe. The ‘Bewaken en Beveiligen’ (Surveillance and Security) project team at Leiden University has investigated the scale of these operations and compiled its findings in the report Russian Operations…

If you had something important to write down in ancient times, you would usually write in Greek in the eastern Mediterranean. University lecturer Joanne Stolk has been awarded an ERC grant to explore the kinds of spelling mistakes that were made in these scripts. And, more importantly, what improvements…

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.

The nominees for the IRO thesis prize 2023 and the Prof. Dr. J.Th.J. van den Berg-prijs 2023. Who wrote the best bachelor theses in Political Science?

PhD candidate Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart has received the Stichting Elise Mathilde Fonds grant from the Leids Universiteits Fonds (LUF) to work on a research project focusing on the landscapes of the Second World War. ‘We will combine citizen science with deep learning to uncover traces of the c…

Een kort filmpje over inclusie van migranten vermindert vooroordelen minstens drie maanden. Maar mensen ervaren fysieke stress als zij conservatiever tegenover migranten staan dan de groepsopinie dicteert. ‘We moeten mensen aanmoedigen, niet confronteren.’ Sociaal psycholoog Feiteng Long promoveert…

Met haar spannende onderzoek naar strafrechtelijke waarheidsvinding in Europa sleept Linda Geven dit jaar de Gratama Wetenschapsprijs voor jonge talentvolle wetenschappers in de wacht.

Amid rising polarisation and discrimination, lawyer and human rights activist Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You wants to show in her Cleveringa Lecture on 26 November how dangerous exclusion is.

Brian Shaev recently joined the Institute for History as a lecturer in International Studies. He introduces himself.

For too long the Dutch collective memory has judged the Jewish Council too harshly. This perspective needs to be adjusted, Bart van der Boom argues in his new book ‘De politiek van het kleinste kwaad’ (lit. ‘The Politics of the Lesser Evil’).

Michaël Peyrot has been appointed professor of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics with retroactive effect from 1 January. He is looking forward to passing on his love for the subject to a new generation of students.

What does a student member of the Faculty Council do? What is it like to be a member of this representative body and how useful is it to be a member? Students Rassoul Coelen (FC 2020-2021 and presently member of the University Council) and Max Garcia Hoogland (FR 2021-2022) talk to us about their experiences.…

PhD defence

Arts and culture, Pianoconcert

An impressive 22 research projects by Leiden researchers have been awarded Veni funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Writers are not just storytellers: with their novels, tales and critiques they broaden the social imagination, reflect on societal developments and sometimes put new themes on the map. This can easily lead to a conflict because writers and literati often think very differently about issues such as…

Lecture, Conversation

Research Director Judy Veldhuijzen, who started her new role this month, answers questions from colleagues. What is her vision for the institute? How does she view open leadership? And: how healthy is the GMN researcher herself?

Lecture