Research

Starting this semester, Urban Studies students will be able to work on the urban development of the municipality of The Hague. A LUF incentive grant will enable them to put their knowledge into practice even more effectively. At the same time, a study will be started on the optimal use of urban spac…

Professor Dario Fazzi has been organising virtual exchanges for students with various American universities for a number of years. Now he has been awarded 400.000 euros from the Erasmus+ programme Cooperation Partnerships to further develop the virtual component of his teaching.

Three international research projects involving Leiden University researchers will receive funding from the Una Europa university alliance.

How should the Quran be read? The manuscript of this holy book makes different interpretations possible. Researcher Marijn van Putten has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant of two million euros to explore centuries-old recitations.

University lecturer Steven Lauritano has been awarded a Comenius Teaching Fellow grant. Lauritano will use the grant of 50,000 euros to improve hybrid education in classes featuring particular objects.

Two thousand years ago, the Middle East found itself caught between the rise of the Roman Empire in the west and the Parthian Empire in the east. PhD candidate Nolke Tasma has been awarded an NWO grant to investigate how local inhabitants experienced these changes.

Assistant Professor Anna Dlabacova has been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council. She will use this grant of around 1.5 million euros to conduct research on the Dutch vernacular ‘book of hours’.

In academia, the mention of Wikipedia might be met with suspicion. However, for Tsolin Nalbantian, university lecturer Modern Middle Eastern Studies, the encyclopedia is an opportunity to broaden the skills of her students and to increase public knowledge. She received a Teaching Comenius Fellowship…

Professor Mirjam de Bruijn will research digital warfare in the North African Sahel with an NWO Open Competition grant. The focus of the research will be on Fulani social networks in war and cultural violence.

Anne-Laura van Harmelen has received a Vidi grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This talent programme will enable Van Harmelen to research the social and neurobiological mechanisms of resilience in young people with childhood trauma.

Mariska Jung, Jasmijn Rana and Looi van Kessel receive a €10,000 KIEM grant for "Hope springs eternal" - an innovative project that brings together students, academics and social movements to investigate Dutch protest culture.

Dr Peter Webb (LIAS) has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant for his project Geo-Poetic Analysis of Pre-Islamic Arabia (GeoPo).

When we think of unethical medical experiments, we tend to think first of Nazi Germany. What is less well known is that experiments were also carried out in colonised areas without the explicit consent of the test subject. University lecturer Fenneke Sysling has received a European grant to research…

Should the background of the painting remain blue or be restored to its original gold colour? PhD candidate Liselore Tissen will be using 3D prints and eye-tracking software to answer this question. NICAS is giving her a grant of 18,000 euros to accomplish this.

Professor Nira Wickramasinghe will research forgotten lineages with an NWO Open Competition grant, in particular the afterlife of Dutch slavery in the Indian Ocean World.

Professor Antje Wessels has received an NWO Open Competition grant to research fragmentary texts.

It was a remarkable trend in 19th-century London: middle-class bourgeois bohemians falling in love with anarchism and its assassins. University lecturer Michael Newton has been awarded a NIAS subsidy to reconstruct the lives of three of these families.

Information briefing

Information session

Audio podcasts or audio recordings have a broad range of opportunities in education. Podcasts can be used to transfer knowledge (audio lectures), record interviews, record instructions for a field trip or to make a short radio documentary on location. Podcasts are a flexible medium, the small file size…

Dr. Sara Brandellero and Dr. Kamila Krakowska Rodrigues from Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society will lead a collaborative research project funded by Horizon Europe Work Programme on Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society. #DemocracyinAction studies arts and culture-based grassroots…

How do games help shape our perception of the past? Associate Professor Angus Mol receives a Vidi grant to answer this question.

In the nationalist nineteenth century, people developed an interest in medieval language and literature. The study of medieval material in one’s own vernacular was thought to reveal a great national past. But why, then, was Old English studied by Germans, Danes, Italians and many other nationalities…

When it comes to literature, people mostly talk about what characters see or hear. Rarely is it about what they smell. That’s a shame, thinks university lecturer Jan van Dijkhuizen. He has been awarded an Open Competition grant from NWO to expand academic knowledge about scent in literature, and to…

GIFs, memes and videos: anyone who opens a social media platform can be in no doubt that today we live in a visual culture. But the role of images in social communications isn’t new, says Associate Professor Marika Keblusek. She has been awarded a Dutch Research Council (NWO) Open Competition (Large)…

When are you (sexually) mature? A KNAW grant will enable associate professor Rafal Matuszewski to organise an interdisciplinary workshop on this question.

Professor Felix Ameka and university lecturer Maria del Carmen Parafita Couta have received an NWO Open Competition grant together with Enoch Aboh (University of Amsterdam) to do research on ‘code-switching’: switching languages by multilinguals.

University lecturer Lucien van Beek has been awarded a LUF Praesidium Libertatis Grant. He will use the sum of 75,000 euros to research the thinking of people in ancient and prehistoric times. To do that, he will look for unusual or striking metaphors in the earliest Indo-European languages.

It is one of the most famous moments in Dutch TV history: the twenty-three hour long marathon broadcast of Open het Dorp. But what happened to the commune for people with disabilities after that? Monika Baár and Paul van Trigt received a NWO grant of 750,000 euros to map the development of Het Dorp.

A consortium including economists, psychologists and public administration scholars from Leiden University will study public acceptance of the hydrogen transition in the Netherlands. They will look at the labour market impact, public perceptions of hydrogen and businesses’ willingness to invest.

The History programme has been working for several years to make the curriculum more diverse and inclusive. With a Comenius grant, university lecturer Kim Beerden wants to take the next step.

Dr. Rafal Matuszewski, assistant professor at the ancient history department of the Institute for History, has been awarded an Early Career Partnership by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

Informatiemiddag

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’.

A collaboration between linguists, geographers and anthropologists aims to uncover how languages spread across South America over thousands of years. Associate Professor Rik van Gijn is responsible for the linguistic side of this NWO project.

For decades, the trade in pocketbooks prescribing how to be a good Muslim flourished in East Africa, but in recent years the number of books in circulation has been declining. University lecturer Annachiara Raia is the recipient of an Impact Explorer grant to revive this tradition, in cooperation with…

At a festive gathering, 25 projects were awarded a Kiem grant 2025 - 2026 of 10,000 euros. Interdisciplinary teams from Leiden University will conduct innovative research into horror, international payments and fungi in historical collections, among others.

If a researcher has appeared on the TV or radio or in a newspaper, for example, you can create an ‘In the media’ page referring to this. How do you write a good ‘In the media’ page? Below are some guidelines.

Every year Leiden University organises a number of events where our researchers share their knowledge with an audience of all ages. We are also involved as a partner in a number of local and national events. Fancy joining in? See who to contact below.

Interest groups seem to be going to court more often to force politicians to act. How often do they do so? And how successful are they? The Kiem project ‘Litigation in the name of public interest’ is compiling a database on this.

How do you set up a successful collaboration between science and practice? That was the main theme of the final meeting of a triptych of symposia on how Leiden University can improve inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration.