The Institute for Philosophy further expands its knowledge: As of 1 September, Annemie Halsema holds the chair of Wijsgerige antropologie en de grondslagen van het humanisme (Philosophical anthropology and the principles of humanism, ed.). In the coming five years, she will study current societal issues…

What do gender identity and digital technology have to do with each other? Together they are the subject of research at Leiden University. Researchers Tessa Verhoef and Eduard Fosch-Villaronga of the faculties of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and Law will investigate the interaction between artificial…

Five Leiden research projects in history, law and AI have received SSH Open Competition M 2024 funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The researchers have up to five years to work on a promising idea.

During the corona pandemic, the Chinese government's digital communication with its citizens changed. Hard propaganda was increasingly replaced by ‘soft news’. PhD candidate Dechun Zhang mapped the developments in digital society.

De Verbranders, a podcast produced by PhD candidates Neske Baerwaldt (FdR/VVI) and Wiebe Ruijtenberg (FSW/CAOS), is online! You can now listen to the first episode on Soundcloud, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Episodes of the podcast will be introduced in various courses this year.

People in the Early Bonze Age used bronze artefacts as a means of payment. This is the conclusion reached by archaeologists Maikel Kuijpers and Catalin Popa in a PLOS ONE article published on 20 January.

AI is playing an increasingly important role in our lives, but that is not without danger. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga at eLaw warns that AI does not pay enough attention to the LGBTQ community.

LUCSoR is happy to welcome Verena Myer, researcher and lecturer in Islam in South and South-East Asia to the staff. In this interview she will discuss the course she is teaching, as well as her upcoming book.

Protests against textbooks on trans persons in America and against a reading hour by drag queens in Rotterdam: it has been raining protests recently against people with a gender expression that does not match their birth sex. Why does this evoke such resistance? We asked Professor by special appointment…

María Gabriela Palacio recently joined the Latin American Studies programme at the Institute for History as University Lecturer in Modern Latin American History. Below, she introduces herself.

Master's students Adam El Amraoui, Eesha Sheel, Frieda Chen and Lawrence Kurowski are organising a graduate conference. On March 26, students will gather to ponder definitions of belonging both within Asia and among Asian diasporic communities.

Matthias Lukkes recently joined the Institute for History as a PhD candidate within the NWO-funded project ‘Revisiting the Invention of Africa, 1590-1720’ led by Michiel van Groesen. Below he introduces himself.

In the seventeenth century, stereotypes about Africa and its inhabitants became deeply ingrained in European culture. PhD candidate Matthias Lukkes is going to investigate the role played by Dutch culture in this process.

On Architecture Day, residents of The Hague had the chance to take a look inside Spui Campus.

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…

On October 26, Gianclaudio Malgieri (Associate professor at eLaw) moderated a plenary panel about "Blockchain and Metaverse: Privacy and Data Protection" at the 44th Global Privacy Assembly in Istanbul, the biggest world institutional conference about privacy and data protection.

The Faculty Board has decided to close the HUM POPcorner as of 1 September 2024. Given the faculty's financial deficit in 2024 and the concerning long-term financial outlook, choices have to be made, including with regard to student facilities.

Thank you for celebrating Pride Month with us! 🌈 Over the past month, we have honored love, diversity, and inclusion together. We hope you had a chance to stop by a DEI team member to pick up a Pride ribbon and show your support for the LGBTQ+ community. Everyone is always welcome.

On Tuesday November 25, 2025, Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey traveled with students from her masters seminar on “New Approached to the Holocaust in Central and Eastern Europe” taught at the History Institute to Amsterdam for a unique opportunity. There, Ms. Lotte Sophie Groenendijk, an alum of the History…

In an interview with Jaap van den Herik, Professor emeritus Law and IT, legal magazine Mr. writes that The Hague municipality wants to attract more legal tech start-ups. The municipality has therefore commissioned the Leiden Centre of Data Science (LCDS) of Leiden University to conduct a study into…

In 1974 Professor Modderman (founder of the Institute for Prehistory Leiden; predecessor of the present Faculty of Archaeology) executed a small excavation in the city of Oss. The Middle Iron Age cemetery, built over by Roman Period farmhouses, proved to be the start of a unique archaeological regional…

On Thursday 26 June 2025, the Pavilion of the Wereldmuseum Leiden featured the first joint meeting of Leiden University and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam around the shared research theme Collecting Global Heritage. Some 50 researchers, students and collection managers came together to share knowledge,…

Prisoners who have little or no contact with the outside world are more prone to reoffend. What makes visits so important?

Bachelor, Master

The Caribbean as we know it today is fundamentally a product of colonial activity and globalisation. Practically everyone that inhabits the Caribbean has ancestors from different continents due to colonial activity, which profoundly affects the area to this day. Caribbean writers, both in the Caribbean…

It is with great sadness that we have learned of the passing of our former colleague dr. Karin Willemse, who passed away on Saturday 18 March 2023.

American anthropologist Rosemary Joyce will be awarded an honorary doctorate from Leiden University on its Dies Natalis on 8 February. Joyce has delivered important new insights into the ancient Mayan cultures of Central America.

A large group of researchers from Leiden University will convene a panel or present a paper at the 10th European Conference on African Studies (ECAS), which will take place from 25 to 28 June in Prague.

Master's student Vicente Fischer de Miranda Rodrigues is the winner of the KHMW Brewer Thesis Prize for History. He was awarded the prize for his research on donatism.

The Van Vollenhoven Institute is organising a year-long public lecture series entitled 'Reconsidering the Socio-Legal Gaze'. The lecture series aims to spark critical debates about the visions of justice and positions of power that inform Law and Society scholarship at Leiden and beyond.

Over the past few months, students and staff from the Faculty of Humanities have produced many wonderful podcasts - perfect for listening during a long walk or while preparing the Christmas dinner.

Labour market reintegration: what is working and what could be done better? These questions were at the centre of Dutch BNR Nieuwsradio's podcast ‘Werkverkenners’. The podcast makers interviewed Anke Ramakers, Assistant Professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, for answers…

Carlotta Rigotti, Postdoc researcher at eLaw, participated in the ‘Intersectional Fairness in AI: Legal Frameworks, Tools, and Learning Opportunities’ webinar on 10 December 2024.

Katharina Natter of the Institute of Political Science has been awarded the 2025 IMR Book Review Award for her book on migration politics in Morocco and Tunisia.

How can we sustain dialogue on a deeply divisive issue within our university community? On 16 February 2026, Leiden University hosted "Between the River and the Sea: An Evening with Yousef Sweid", marking the launch of the second season of the student-produced Radio Palestine/Israel podcast.

Leiden University researchers will be working more closely with colleagues at Una Europa partner universities this year. Three research projects have been awarded up to €40,000 in Una Europa seed funding to explore questions related to democracy and AI, web tracking technologies and clean energy.

Four projects led by the Faculty of Humanities have been awarded KIEM grants. The researchers will receive €10,000 to carry out their plans.

A group of astronomers led by Leiden PhD student Sebastian Zieba has discovered using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that the rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c has a thin atmosphere. Although the planet is nearly identical to Venus in size and temperature, and was expected to have a thick atmosphere,…

Inaugural lecture Marc Bruijnzeels

The rise of extremism in Europe has increased polarisation. The EU-funded DRIVE project, led by Tahir Abbas, Professor of Radicalisation Studies from Leiden University’s Institute of Security and Global Affairs, explores how social, structural, and individual factors contribute to radicalisation, offering…