This month, ten teachers received a Senior Qualification Education (SKO), including Marcellus Ubbink and Daan van der Es from our faculty. Why did they go through the process of getting qualified, and should all teachers have an SKO?

The university is exploring how to improve our educational logistics. Deputy Director of Operations and project leader Joop van Pijkeren answers five questions about the project.

Facility, Organisation

Since 1 October 2022, Sarah Nelson is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for History. Below she introduces herself.

It is an area of expertise that often remains invisible, but has a huge impact on the day-to-day operations of our faculty: education logistics. Program manager Erik Reinders has a passion for this work that goes beyond processes and procedures. 'We want to keep improving continuously.'

The fact that scientists are increasingly better able to access molecular cell and tissue data also brings with it a new challenge: how can scientists find the information they need for research among the vast amount of data available?

Western countries still tend to view Africa as the periphery, says anthropologist Mayke Kaag. In her inaugural lecture, she calls for a shift in perspective: to see Africa as a mirror of global developments.

Antoaneta Dimitrova, Professor Comparative Governance, presented the Cleveringa Lecture at the Vaclav Havel Library in Prague last week. We spoke to her about her experience.

The Digital Lab is open! This new lab is meant for staff and students who are looking for a place to work, experiment, and find support for their digital research. There’ll be a kickoff event, with live digital demos and a roundtable on “the Humanities in a Digital World” on Friday October 29 in the…

From 12 to 16 April the joint Career Services of the faculties present on Campus The Hague organised the Online Campus The Hague Career Event. Around 600 students signed up! Every day of the week, they could join presentations, webinars and workshops presented by alumni, professionals and Career advisors,…

Ben Kuipers is benoemd tot hoogleraar Publiek Leiderschap bij FGGA. De leerstoel Publiek Leiderschap (0,2 fte voor een periode van vier jaar) wordt extern gefinancierd vanuit het samenwerkingsverband VPL (Verder met Publiek Leiderschap) en is ingebed in het Leiden Leadership Centre (LLC)

Green spaces boost mental health—especially in busy cities. A new study from Leiden and Stanford University reveals how nature benefits urban well-being and offers low-cost ways to make city life healthier for everyone.

VVIK Lecture

Lecture, Workshop

Lecture, This Time for Africa series

How do we prepare our students for a future labour market in which flexibility, resilience and adaptability are essential?

Lecture

Jan Joosten studied civil and tax law in Leiden from 1985. After exchanges and an internship, he became infatuated with the United States. He is now a partner and co-founder of a new law firm in New York: Pierson Ferdinand.

Fancy seeing how your job is done at a university abroad? Project Managers Christina Schlüpen and Jeannette de Wolf from the Leiden Institute of Chemistry did just that. They both spent a week shadowing a European colleague: one in Bologna and the other in Berlin. This was through the Una Europe alliance,…

Sky-high energy prices and a climate that keeps getting warmer: it’s clear that we have to turn down the heat. Sustainability Day on 10 October will mark the start of our five-month Energy Campaign and we’ll be making the switch. Sustainability Coordinators Aranka Virágh (Real Estate) and Marlies Nijemeisland…

In the coming years, Hilde De Weerdt gets to spend over three million euros. She received grants from both the European Research Council (ERC) and the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for research on Chinese infrastructure. ‘It is great that it is also possible to develop large projects in the social sciences…

The book ‘Geleerde Zorgen: twee eeuwen academische geneeskunde in Leiden’ (‘Learned Care: two centuries of academic medicine in Leiden’) was presented on 16 December to Annetje Ottow (President of the Executive Board of Leiden University) and Pancras Hogendoorn, Dean and member of the Executive Board…

Fat is a very valuable food component, packed with calories, especially important when other resources might be scarce. Our earliest ancestors in Africa already cracked open bones to extract the fatty marrow from bone cavities. But now a new study published in Science Advances demonstrates that our…

Monique Koemans werkt sinds 2,5 jaar op de Nederlandse ambassade in de Verenigde Staten. 'Leiden is een opvallende rode draad in mijn leven.'

‘What if we switch off all the lights one evening? That idea crossed my mind from time to time. And when I mentioned it to a taxi driver one day, he said: “Oh, you mean: lights out, stars on!” That’s not completely true, of course, because the stars are always on, but his phrase summed up the idea n…

Bringing the community together, doing up the community centre or researching how to make gardens greener. Students now have a base in Leiden-Noord where they can work with local residents and partner organisations to make the city a better place to live. It was the official opening of ‘Learning with…

A new study carried out by Leiden archaeologists Hadar Ahituv and Amanda Henry, together with international colleagues, reports the identification and analysis of 650 starch grains preserved on basalt percussive tools (anvils and hammerstones) found at an early Middle Pleistocene site in Israel. These…

Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing, what exactly does he do and what does his day look like? In each newsletter, Jasper gives an insight into his life.

Sacrificing yourself for the greater good: in China, martyrdom and hero worship have been strongly encouraged by the Communist Party for the past decade or so. University lecturer Vincent Chang tells us more about this far-reaching development.

Neanderthals were able to outwit straight-tusked elephants, the largest land mammals of the past few million years. Leiden professor Wil Roebroeks has published an article about this together with his German colleague Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser in the Science Advances journal.

On the eve of World War II, Leiden was home to the largest Indonesian student community in the Netherlands. Many of these students joined the resistance against the German occupation, and later some fought for Indonesia’s independence.

PhD candidate Alex Tutwiler, from the Faculty of Archaeology, has received a grant from Archol, via the P.J.R. Modderman Foundation, to investigate how child labor shaped the bones of Dutch children between the 17th and 19th centuries. Using CT scans, she aims to build a more comprehensive picture of…

Theft, prostitution, fortune-telling or murder. Historian Manon van der Heijden and a group of students are researching court records from The Hague from 1600 to 1800. They are tracing crimes and offenders and shedding new light on The Hague’s Gevangenpoort (or Prison Gate). Among their many discoveries…

Het faillissement van zorgonderneming Co-Med stelt de curatoren voor dilemma’s. Want wie krijgen voorrang: patiënten, personeel of de schuldeisers? Universitair docent Jessie Pool, gespecialiseerd in het ondernemings- en insolventierecht, pleit voor insolventieprocedures die beter zijn toegespitst op…

Four researchers from Leiden University will receive funding from arthritis foundation ReumaNederland over the next five years. This should facilitate long-term research into arthritis.

From memorials to the armed forces to memory stones for individual victims. It was only later that the Holocaust took a central role in Western remembrance culture, Cleveringa Professor Frank van Vree notes. ‘Nationalists and human rights activists both invoke the experience of the Holocaust.’

According to a new study, for half of the world population the answer would be yes. For the other half: maybe? Leiden environmental researcher and head author Nicolas Navarre explains: ‘With improvements to crop yields, reductions in food waste, and changes in consumption patterns, 90% of people could…

Transdisciplinary education, in which students work with external parties, is getting more popular. How do you start such a programme as a teacher? The Honours Academy and the Leiden Learning Innovation Centre have written a guide for all Leiden colleagues.

From a meaningless block of plastic to an advanced component that contributes to the energy transition. The technicians and scientists of our faculty think it out in detail and make it a reality. This special project shows that they need each other.

The past two years, Laura van der Knaap and Professor Karsten Lambers worked on creating open teaching materials on agent-based modeling, funded by Erasmus+ and in collaboration with Danish, Irish and Dutch partners. Programming is an important skill involved in this, which is often seen as intimidating…

Rapid developments in DNA techniques allow researchers to find out more and more about human genetics. An international group of scientists has drawn up five ethical guidelines to ensure that this DNA research is better regulated. Leiden archaeologist Marie Soressi – one of the signatories - explains…

December 2020 saw the crowning publication of the Landscapes of Survival project by Professor Peter Akkermans. Its main topic is human habitation in marginal environments like the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. ‘The people living here built their own society, and they would not have viewed it as…

On 22 May, astronaut André Kuipers opened the new Mediterranean garden in the Hortus. With this water-efficient garden, the Hortus aims to offer inspiration for future- and climate-proof garden planting. Prefect Paul Keßler and scientific director of the Leiden Observatory Ignas Snellen also signed…

While all European nations have condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is one country Russia can still count on: Belarus. Russia even used its territory as a stepping stone for the invasion. We spoke with Matthew Frear, Assistant Professor and expert on contemporary Belarus, to shed light…

Over hundreds of thousands of years, our region witnessed the comings and goings of various types of hominin. This depended on the temperature as ice ages alternated with warmer periods. In ‘De eerste mensen in de Lage Landen’ (‘The First Humans in the Low Countries’) Leiden archaeologists Yannick Raczynski-Henk…

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?

Students gain practical experience while clients receive a solution to their software needs: the student software company LUdev hits two birds with one stone. ‘Through LUdev, students learn what else is involved in software development besides programming.’ Interested? You can now submit new projects…

While the Netherlands was in lockdown because of the coronavirus, PhD candidate Koen Rijpkema began his research into the same virus. In the lab, he developed molecules that can inhibit an important viral enzyme.

A staff exchange to Oxford gave academic editor Helena Lysaght new insights and inspiration for communicating about research. Read what a staff exchange could mean for you!