On Friday 16 February 2024, Rudolf E. de Jong passed away unexpectedly in Cairo. Since 2012, he was the director of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC), which he skillfully managed for 12 years. He was laid to rest in Amsterdam on 27 February. Rudolf was 65.

No more ones, twos or threes, but focusing on development opportunities. This summer, the Faculty of Humanities will start a pilot for the new Performance and Development Interviews (PDI). HR adviser Marion Sluijs tells us more about it.

Karwan Fatah-Black, a historian at Leiden University’s Faculty of Humanities and senior researcher at the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, has been appointed as the UNESCO Chair holder in Comparative History of Slavery and the Transition to Citizenship.

Leiden researchers share their work with a global audience through the international journalistic platform The Conversation. What are the benefits? And how does it work? Two researchers talk about their experiences and why colleagues should consider taking the same step.

The Leiden Ranking – Open Edition is completely transparent. The ranking compiled by the CWTS uses open data and publishes the algorithms that are used.

A stronger focus on personal talents and team science. ‘Stop searching for those elusive hen’s teeth: they’d only get in the way’, says Professor Laura Heitman about Academia in Motion. ‘It’s unrealistic to excel in everything.’

Assistant professor Stephanie Noach has won the Dissertation Prize of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation. She is receiving this prestigious prize for her research on darkness in contemporary art from Latin America and the Caribbean.

The university has been shaping the city of Leiden for 450 years. A brief history of the university buildings that have helped define the city.

The Guggenheim Fellowship is a prestigious award for US nationals. There are more than 3,000 applications every year, and this year only 188 were honoured. Professor Jonathan Silk is one of these 188, the first ever at Leiden University, and he tells us more about the fellowship and what he will do…

In November, Intigam Mamedov joined the Institute for History as a postdoctoral researcher. Below, he introduces himself.

Male scientists owe their position to their brilliance, women to their hard work. Or do they? The Equalista app helps staff and students at the Faculty of Humanities to become aware of gender equality.

As of 19 April 2022, professor Jacobijn Gussekloo has been appointed Dean of the Honours Academy at Leiden University. Gussekloo is professor of Primary Care and director of the master’s programme Vitality and Ageing. Gussekloo succeeds professor Jos Schaeken, who has been Dean since March 2020.

The Executive Board of Leiden University has appointed Jan Kolen as the University’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Coordinator as of 1 February 2022. In this role Kolen will take the lead in regional and national cooperation relating to the topic of AI, data and digitalisation.

Education, Research

Help us develop and expand the recently established Leiden Chinese Queer Collection (LCQC, 莱顿华语酷儿文献收藏) at Leiden University Libraries (UBL).

In the University elections in April, the eight student seats on the University Council have gone to six parties, and newcomers the Liberal Student Party and the Party for Biomedical Students have each won one seat.

RARE-NL, a new collaboration between university hospitals, hopes to find treatments for rare diseases. Professor Teun van Gelder is representing the LUMC in the initiative.

Pablo Merayo Montes recently joined the Institute for History as a PhD candidate within the NWO-funded project 'Dutch guest workers in 18th century Spain’ under the supervision of Raymond Fagel. Below, he introduces himself.

From March 1, Alenka Prinčič will be the new Head of the Centre for Digital Scholarship (CDS) at Leiden University Libraries. Her expertise in the areas of Research Support, Research Infrastructures and Open Publishing as well as her longstanding experience as a manager are excellent starting points…

Herman Paul (professor of History of the Humanities) has been elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He will be officially installed on 30 September.

On 4 May, Leiden University remembered the victims of the Second World War from our university community. Alumni, students and present and former staff of the University came together for this Hour of Remembrance.

Professor Johan Rooryck, currently executive director of cOAlition S, will receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Tromsø for his commitment to open access in science. He will be awarded the honorary doctorate on 1 September.

Are you an interdisciplinary researcher working on or with heritage? Do you struggle with faculty fragmentation and finding relevant colleagues to collaborate with? How can we at Leiden facilitate interfaculty knowledge exchange? These were some of the questions which inspired eight Leiden University…

Research

Through its Demonstrator Projects, the Dutch Oncode Accelerator consortium provides grants for preclinical cancer therapy development. The first call for these projects is open until September 2025.

Athanasios Stathopoulos is a University Lecturer at the Institute for History since August 2019, but has been a familiar face at Leiden University since 2015. He introduces himself below.

Rahul Gandhi, former president of the Indian National Congress, was on the Hague Campus on 10 September.

Education, Organisation

What is life like as an academic? Twelve PhD candidates will report on their daily work in videos and blogs on the Faces of Science website (in Dutch). They include three researchers from Leiden who are researching topics such as North Korean support for African liberation movements, how differently…

Last year, the Faculty of Humanities started organising onboarding afternoons, where new staff members can get to know each other. ‘All new staff members are welcome.’

Education, Research

Lukas Milevski is a lecturer in International Studies at the Institute for History. He introduces himself.

On the second floor of the Sylvius Laboratory, new labs are being built for researchers of the Faculties of Social and Behavioural Sciences and Humanities. After a successful tender construction has recently started.

Joëlle Koning has been appointed as Head of Student Affairs (OSZ) in the Faculty of Humanities from 1 July.

From Galileo Galilei to Albert Einstein and from Anna Maria van Schurman to Anton de Kom: only a selection of the 25 authors who's books and ideas had extraordinary historical impact, in some cases even to this day. Leiden University Libraries and the National Museum of Antiquities jointly present the…

Education, Research

The Durham Declaration was presented at the Climate Symposium marking the Coimbra Group’s 40th anniversary on 26 March. Leiden University is proud to be one of the first signatories of this declaration.

When professors become emeriti, it usually does not mean they stop working. The Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) will therefore soon have a first: a symposium is going to be organised where all the speakers are emeriti professors. 'Science will always be part of you are.'

We are living in turbulent times. Various conflicts in other parts of the world at times give rise to feelings of anxiety, unrest and anger in our country too. We also see this happening in our academic community.

It is almost two and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine, but the conflict between the two countries has been going on for much longer. Central to it is the question of what it means to be Ukrainian. Guest researcher Viktoriia Ryhovanova teaches a course on the subject. Last academic year, the…

The Academic Language Centre is organising an introduction to Ukrainian with the Russian Studies/Russian and Eurasian Studies programmes. This six-part course is meant primarily for people who are in contact with refugees from Ukraine.

External PhD candidate Liselore Tissen has been appointed ambassador for Leiden City of Science. As the youngest member and the only non-professor in the network, she will be working to raise Leiden's prominence as a city of science.

Since 1 November 2025, Prof. Dr. Luc Sels has been the new president of Leiden University's Executive Board. In a message to our university he introduces himself and shares his first impressions.

On Tuesday 27 May a first meeting was held in response to the demonstration and occupation at the Wijnhaven building on 6 May. The aim was to explore how the university can balance the fundamental right to protest with ensuring a safe environment for all students and staff.

Leiden University will set up further activities with the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

It was not light, but its absence that caught Stephanie Noach's attention a few years ago. With her research on darkness in art, she aims to show how darkness can question and sometimes even undermine colonial imagery.

End Fossil, Open Leiden and Students for Palestine incorrectly claim that a meeting will be held with the Executive Board on Friday 11 April. This statement is to correct these claims and clarify the situation.

As of this academic year, all our faculties will be using the same platform for digital assessment: Ans. While this platform is already familiar in many faculties, it will be new for the staff and students of Social & Behavioural Sciences (from 1 September) and Humanities (from 1 February), as they…

Salvador Santino Regilme has been selected for a fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) in Amsterdam. From September 2022, he will spend 5 months at NIAS working on his research project titled 'The Normative Order of the Global War on Drugs'.

The governance structure of Campus The Hague (CDH) will be altered. This has been decided in consultation with the University Council, which issued a positive recommendation about this.Ton Liefaard and Jan Crijns will become the joint holders of the CDH Education portfolio, and Rolf Oosterloo will become…