On 21 April 2022, Cleveringa Professor Jan Grabowski visited Leiden. The theme of his visit was the role of law and historiography in shaping collective memories.

Mirjam de Bruijn has received a funding from the Research Council of Norway for the research project called 'Decoding Digital Media in African Regions of Conflict (DDMAC)'. The project is a collaboration with colleagues from Oslomet and Simula, Norway, Utrecht University, University of Addis Abeba,…

The Board of Governors of Leiden University is pleased to announce that the outgoing Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Robbert Dijkgraaf, has appointed Professor F.B.J. (Ferd) Grapperhaus as the new Chair of the Board of Governors.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has granted four grants to Leiden humanities scholars. They get to spend this money on research on a topic of their choice, without thematic preconditions.

A new book about Villa Isola in Indonesia reveals some of the shared history of the Netherlands and Indonesia. The book was presented on Thursday to Annetje Ottow, President of the Executive Board, and Mr Mayerfas, ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia in the Netherlands.

Research

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.

Leiden University has received a €50,000 grant from Open Science NL to develop a roadmap for integrating open science into the strategic priorities of various institutes and translating this into human resource (HR) policies.

Sophie Rose is one of the fellows of the Ammodo Science Fellowship 2024. She will use this fellowship to conduct research at Leiden University.

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has acquired a rare manuscript map of Suriname. The map from 1830 is almost 2.5 meters long and is highly detailed. It was hand-drawn by Helmuth Hendrik Hiemcke (1808-1858), one of the official surveyors employed by the colonial administration, and shows Suriname in…

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.

Mete Oguz recently joined the Institute for History as a postdoctoral researcher within the starting grant project 'Reevaluating Conceptions of Imperial Monetary Flow: New Methodologies and Frameworks’ under the supervision of Liesbeth Claes and Isaac Scarborough. Below, he introduces himself.

Organisation

Dutch municipalities are racing to digitalise, introducing virtual services, fraud-detection algorithms and more. The digital city may not always serve its residents. Professor Jiska Engelbert calls for civil servants who dare to push back.

Met een openingswoord, een paneldiscussie op de Spaanse Trappen in Wijnhaven en een druk op de rode knop voor het gebouw zelf, is POPcorner The Hague donderdagmiddag officieel geopend door rector magnificus Hester Bijl.

Maghiel van Crevel has been elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). The professor of Chinese Language and Literature will be installed on Monday 12 September 2022.

Editors: Irene Hadiprayitno and Rizal Shidiq (Leiden Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands)

Paul Gobée (LUMC), Kirsty Rolfe (Humanities) and Frank Takes (Science) have been nominated for the Leiden Teaching Prize 2023.

The Schoof cabinet has presented its budget. As expected, higher education is facing severe cuts. In the coming period, the Executive Board will regularly look at the consequences of what it deems an irresponsible policy.

The Executive Board of Leiden University has asked the University Council to advise on its proposed decision to reactivate the person counters/sensors in due course. The Council will now look at this carefully before the Board makes a final decision. The advice of the University’s participation body…

Having served on the Executive Board for over nine years, the last five of which as Rector Magnificus, Hester Bijl will leave Leiden University at the start of next year. In a new step in her career, she will become Rector Magnificus on the Executive Board of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft)…

Which teacher knows best how to inspire their students? Carmen van den Bergh (Humanities), Egbert Koops (Law) and Arjan Louwen (Archaeology) have been nominated for the 2025 Leiden Teaching Prize.

Latin America matters! With its rich history, culture, its impressive resilience and creative innovation in the face of such a diverse array of challenges, Latin America can indeed show the way forward inspiring for positive change. Working together with Latin American institutions, our researchers…

Many students who graduated during the pandemic were unable to celebrate their graduation in style. To make up for this, they were given the chance to sign their name in the Sweat Room on Friday 26 May.

Philosophy alumna Naomi Rebekka Boekwijt returns to Leiden University on 20 June to present her latest novel Stemmen (Voices) in Plexus. ‘I wanted to show that things could be done differently in psychiatric care.’

It has been preying on people’s minds: the outline agreement and its proposed cuts to higher education. Although the content is not yet set in stone − the outline agreement will be developed into a coalition agreement − we are certain that Leiden University should also expect substantial cuts.

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.

The 'Groot Nederlands Student Kampioenschap' student games have been held for the first time in two cities, Delft and The Hague. To make this happen our Campus The Hague worked together with The Hague University of Applied Sciences and Inholland University of Applied Sciences. Three students look back…

The KNAW has appointed 17 new members, including Leiden University's Vanessa Mak, Professor of Private Law, and Herman Paul, Professor of History. The KNAW has approximately members, who are outstanding scientists and scholars from all disciplines.

Two Leiden projects have been awarded Open Science NL funding to make science more accessible to academia and the world outside. The projects will strengthen the open science infrastructure.

The collection guides of archives and collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) have been made available via the portal Collection Guides. This has greatly improved the findability, visibility and ease of use of these collection finding aids.

Japanese newspapers, photo archives from the Dutch East Indies or information on gender and sexuality: all these can be found in the University Library's 621 humanities databases. A flyer campaign to raise awareness of them begins this week.

The design for the METIS instrument for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is final. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has given the green light for production of all parts of the instrument. It is the first ELT instrument, designed and to be built under Dutch leadership, to formally pass the…

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.

Sinds Februari, werkt Angus Mol als UD bij het Centre for Digital Humanities (LUCDH). Zijn aanstelling wordt gedeeld door het Instituut voor Geschiedenis en het Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). Hiervoor werkte hij voor het Prins Claus Fonds voor Cultuur en Ontwikkeling, deed NWO-Rubicon onderzoek…

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.

Just outside Leiden city centre is the Sylvius building. This building of the Faculty of Science houses no fewer than 25 labs where FGW and FSW scientists conduct their research.

Frans de Haas, professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy and Director of the Dutch Research School of Philosophy, will join the management team of the MI on a temporary basis, in any event until 1 January 2022, in the role of Scientific Director-Change Manager.

On 8 February, the Universities of the Netherlands (UNL) published the measures that universities themselves are intending to take to manage the influx of international students and enhance the Dutch language skills of lecturers and students.

The Yemen Amsterdam Library, or Maktabat al-Yaman al-Amstirdāmīyah, of eminent Yemen specialist Dr C.G. Brouwer has now been fully integrated in the collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL). Books and other documents from the collection are now available for loan via the UBL Catalogue.

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.

Four researchers from Leiden University have been awarded prestigious Vici grants the Dutch Research Council (NWO) has announced. The honoured applications are from researchers at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Leiden Observatory, the LUMC and the Faculty of Archaeology.

After seven months of hard work, the participants in the Research Traineeship Programme concluded their research on Friday 2 September with a pitch and a poster presentation.

Mayor Peter Heijkoop is busy getting to know his city better. On Monday 7 July, he visited the Faculty of Humanities. ‘A few hours and you can see how important this is.’

Education

A course that concludes with a video pitch, instead of a paper or examination: Italian Language and Culture students each recorded their own knowledge clip, speaking to a wide audience about Italian cultural expressions. We asked Goran Bouaziz, Cameron-May Bosch and Katja Timmer what they thought of…

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.

The Teaching Fair is coming up again. On Thursday afternoon, 20 June, you can be inspired by your colleagues about educational innovation. University lecturer Elpine de Boer will be at the information fair with her project on social issues and an external client.

The Leiden Africa Platform is pleased to announce that a partnership agreement between Leiden University and the University of Ghana was signed in November. The University of Ghana is a strategic partner of Leiden. Earlier this year, an agreement was also signed between LDE and the University of Nairobi…