Yousef Sweid was called a ‘stinking Arab’ in the sandpit at his Jewish kindergarten in Haifa. In a packed lecture hall, the Palestinian-Israeli actor performed a powerful excerpt from his show ‘Between the River and the Sea’.

Starting from the academic year 2024-2025, the entire university is using testing platform Ans for digital assessment. The Faculty of Humanities has made this switch from Remindo to Ans in the second semester (February 2025).

Brightspace is Leiden University's digital learning environment. With Brightspace you can share course materials, grades and updates with your students. You can create and evaluate assignments and quizzes, perform plagiarism checks, provide personalised feedback and peer-feedback, and start discussi…

For the academic year 2025-2026, nine (teams of) teachers will receive a Grassroots or Grass shoots grant. Here you can read about their projects.

What do you need to record a knowledge clip in the studio? You can find below a checklist of the materials you need to bring to a studio recording. Keep in mind that this checklist depends on the kind of video you want to record. Always discuss the specifics for producing such a video with your video…

Course, Summer School

Conference

One of the aims in the development of the university’s new strategic plan is to foster a dialogue between as many students, staff and external stakeholders as possible about which topics and ambitions should be included in the plan. At the beginning of May we therefore invited all our students and staff…

A grant from the JEDI Fund allowed university lecturer Jessie Morgan-Owens to design a lecture series on indigenous studies. ‘We filled a gap in the knowledge.’

What lessons can public leaders draw from crisis management? In the second Leiden Leadership Lunch in our series on ‘Leadership opportunities in times of crisis’ Dr. Jaap van Lakerveld and Dr. Jeroen Wolbers – experts in the field of crisis management – shared their insights from the recently published…

Three Leiden students will be sharing their knowledge of history while playing video games. The livestreams are part of the ‘Streaming the Past’ project and will be available on the popular streaming platform Twitch. The first livestream will be on Thursday 20 May.

It is mid-July and as I sit in my office in the Herta Mohr building, I notice how quiet it is around campus. Yet, this is in direct contrast with a flurry of activity by LUCSoR colleagues and students in recent weeks. I highlight just a few examples here.

Nerve pain is one of the most common side effects of chemotherapy. It is therefore one of the biggest reasons for cancer patients to stop treatment early. Darcy Reynolds worked on new drug candidates against this pain during her bachelor's thesis. She developed a new series of molecules that increase…

A fresh semester means a fresh faculty calendar. There is plenty to do at the faculty again in the coming months. Five interesting activities are listed below.

Hwæt! You've heard of the adventures of the mighty Beowulf. You've heard of the brave folk standing beside him, and the awe-inspiring foes standing against him. But where their legend still lives, their tale ended long ago... Let us begin a new saga, let us find new heroes, weave a new story - by the…

Leiden psychologists receive an Outreach Grant from the Young Academy Leiden (YAL) to talk about facts and fables in their field of research. Marieke Bos, Lara Wierenga, Marit Ruitenberg and Sanne Willems will receive up to €1000 to realise their project.

The symposium will be held on 11 June 2025 from 10.00-17.00 and is organized as a starting point for the publication of an edited volume – a selection of symposium attendants will be invited to submit book chapters.

In two weeks' time, the official opening of the Humanities Hub will take place in the Huizinga Building. The first projects have already begun. Professor Journalism and New Media Jaap de Jong and director of the AI and Digital Humanities Lab Jelena Prokic share their experiences.

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and researchers talk about their passion for their field. University lecturer Maria Del Carmen Parafita Couto speaks about bilingualism.

Hosts and creators of the Nebula tv series ‘Archeology Quest’ Lorraine Boissoneault and Stephanie Sammann compete to see if they could have survived during the Palaeolithic, and this time Dr. Andrew Sorensen is there to help. Every episode different archaeological experts are there to teach them the…

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and researchers talk about their passion for their field. PhD candidate Meike de Boer knows everything about the word ‘uh’.

The ‘University of the Netherlands’ is a series of lectures in which academics address topics based on their expertise. In the latest instalment, cultural historian Simon Willmetts discusses how intelligence services operate and what has changed since 9/11.

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and academics talk about their passion for their field. Student Aline-Priscillia is particularly curious about how language is processed in the brain.

The Hortus Talks is a podcast series as well as a botanical college tour, recorded in the greenhouse in the middle of the Hortus Amsterdam. The theme of the podcast was plant migration. In this context Anastasia explained the importance of understanding how hunter-gatherers impacted past landscapes…

Are you interested in working on your well-being, work-life balance or stress levels? Leiden Psychology students are offering a series of 5 individuals coaching sessions. The sessions are free of charge and confidentiality is guaranteed.

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and researchers talk about their passion for their field. Professor of African Linguistics Maarten Mous explains the importance of hearing your language at school.

For over six centuries, the Tatars have been part of Poland’s social and cultural fabric. In this 8-episode series, released weekly, professor Maurits Berger and assistant professor Ewa Górska explore how this Muslim minority has maintained its identity across generations, how Islam is practiced in…

The magazine 'De kracht van (on)macht' was published in January 2025 as part of the NWA research project 'Crafting Resilience'. It marks the start of a series of seven publications. This edition focuses safety and security for vulnerable groups in society.

Organisation

The Leiden Papyrological Institute celebrates its 90th year anniversary

Online, hybrid, on campus... It was an unpredictable year, also for the Faculty of Humanities. Luckily, there were also non-corona related stories. Let's review 2021 with this list of the most-read news articles per month.

Four prints, ten years of research. Not that she got bored of them, on the contrary. Corrie van Maris, who receives her PhD this week, has always remained fascinated by her 17th-century series, for which she feels so much love. ‘I kept seeing different, new things.’

In his art, Rafael Martig shows how drastically human activity changes nature. Fieldwork during his studies reinforced this view. ‘On Ameland I found masses of meadow birds, but the greenery on the mainland was often a grass desert.

He studied Dutch Studies, did Dutch literature research for his internship, and worked at HEMA: Hungarian Márton Biró (26) came to the Netherlands on exchange and decided to stay.

Writer and columnist Nicolien Mizee will be Leiden University’s new writer in residence from autumn 2023.

Over 600 manuscripts and early prints have been made digitally available by Leiden University Libraries (UBL) via the Europeana platform. In the project 'The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages’ (ARMA), seven European heritage institutions added 30,000 digitised medieval items to Europeana’s database…

Back to university to attend lectures with master's students: that's what professionals did at the Leiden Leadership Programme. Conclusion of the experiment? Learning about leadership leaves one wanting more. 'Great that this is possible.'

Missing legends, illogical connections or three-dimensional graphs. There are many ways in which data can deceive. Five students took up the fight against misleading statistics. Their lesson series can now be found online.

Starting September 2022, Foteini Tsigoni is tasked by the Faculty of Archaeology to bring the different nationalities within the faculty community together. Herself an international student, she experienced culture shock wile adapting to the Dutch way of life, and is committed to help out new and current…

Leiden University is featured by French magazine L’Express as one of Europe’s leading ‘schools of power’, highlighting its Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs and the Institute of Security and Global Affairs in The Hague and its role in training future leaders in politics, diplomacy, and securi…

Are you thinking of applying for a Kiem grant but still tinkering with your idea for an interdisciplinary project? Let your Leiden colleagues inspire you! Dario Fazzi successfully applied for a Kiem grant with his workshop ‘Understanding the threat of the Anthropocene’.

From films, video games and historical novels to Nordic folk bands, Old English from the early Middle Ages is experiencing a revival in the 21st century. Together with international colleagues, university lecturer Thijs Porck (LUCAS) made a book about the 'resurrection' of this dead language.

2024 was an eventful year for the Faculty of Humanities. Despite becoming the centre of political discussion and budget cuts as faculty ourselves, exceptional research projects were carried out and new initiatives were launched.

Are you looking for some listening material for the upcoming long weekend? Staff members and alumni of the Faculty of Humanities have been creating various podcasts over the last few months. A selection is shown here:

University lecturer Gerlov van Engelenhoven was to be a guest in one podcast by culture maker and anthropologist Yanise Zijlstra on intangible heritage. The collaboration went so well that they are now making a short film together for young people.

Leiden Law School is celebrating its 450th anniversary and we have lots of special events planned to showcase what our faculty has to offer. For example, a series of ‘450-talks’ to be held at a unique location in the KOG.

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…

Young people being deployed to carry out explosive attacks: how do they come into view, and what motivates them? The podcast 'Action/Reaction: From Attack to Approach' by the research project Close Protection and Surveillance and researcher Sheila Adjiembaks takes a closer look at why and how young…

At the symposium ‘Diversity and Inclusion in the Police: from Aspiration to Reality’, the central question was how organisations can truly embody diversity and inclusion. The high level of interest (it was fully booked in no time) demonstrates that the topic is pressing—both in academia and in pract…

In 2025, Leiden University College (LUC) celebrates its 15th anniversary with the theme 'Global challenges, local impact'. To kick off this anniversary year, we have shared fifteen stories over the past few weeks showcasing how LUC students, researchers, and alumni contribute to societal challenges…