Keynote speakers: Jennifer Gaynor (University at Buffalo SUNY) and Sue Peabody (Washington State University)

If you had something important to write down in ancient times, you would usually write in Greek in the eastern Mediterranean. University lecturer Joanne Stolk has been awarded an ERC grant to explore the kinds of spelling mistakes that were made in these scripts. And, more importantly, what improvements…

Amphorae are usually associated with the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. ‘​​​​​​​Yet, in some cases, such as Byzantium, amphorae existed for centuries after Antiquity. Another, even later instance of the amphora's afterlife can be found in the Iberian Peninsula, from where the latest specimens…

Samen met andere studenten bracht Fien Lurvink hulpgoederen naar Oekraïne en nam vluchtelingen mee terug.

An incredible quantity of archaeological reports are stored in digital archives. If you want to search for information in them, you have to do this manually. And that is a real chore. Archaeologist Alex Brandsen has now used deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to develop a search engine…

PhD candidate Daniël Gomon has developed statistical methods that could significantly improve research in fields like medicine and demography. ‘Mathematicians don’t like unrealistic assumptions,’ he says. Gomon will defend his PhD thesis on 19 June.

Receiving a gift is nice, but giving a present also makes you happy. Development psychologist Mara van der Meulen former member of the Leiden Consortium on Individual Development (L-CID) answered four questions about giving gifts.

Are you working full-time? In that case you are entitled to 152 hours of leave per year. However, at Dutch universities, an additional 80 hours are added thanks to the collective labour agreement (cao). How does this work exactly? Emiel Turlings explains how leave works.

On September 5, at the festive opening of the Faculty Year, a range of new murals will be officially presented in the Van Steenis’ Reuvens Hall. The wall paintings reflect a variety of Dutch soil stratigraphies, from Oss to burial mounds. Aside from being a striking new addition to our Faculty building,…

The Dutch conservative VVD party plans to make the right to family reunification more difficult for people with temporary residence permits. In Germany, this restriction led to several lawsuits which were won by status holders. Mark Klaassen, Assistant Professor in Migration Law, believes this is a…

The Russian threat to Europe, pro-Palestine protests, the passing of psychologist Andrea Evers and speculations on extraterrestrial life. These were among our most popular articles of the year.

Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration can be tricky. We don’t all speak the same ‘language’ or know how to find each other. At the Knowledge Orchard anniversary event on 28 November, academics made and strengthened connections.

Astronomers at Leiden University have detected rare isotopes of carbon and oxygen in our neighbouring stars for the first time, providing a new window to better understand the chemical evolution of the cosmos.The results are published today in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Modified viruses can both kill cancer cells and activate the immune system. This is what an LUMC team discovered while researching a new prostate cancer therapy.

Synchronised heart rates and skin conductance tell us that people are attracted to each other. This explains why we feel a romantic ‘click’ with some people and not with others. This is the result of research by psychologist Eliska Prochazkova from the Leiden Institute for Brain and Recognition, which…

Three years ago, Associate Professor Alicia Schrikker published 'De vlinders van Boven-Digoel', in which she chronicled several stories about colonial life in present-day Indonesia. Now there is a translation, by Rianti Manullang, who is also an assistant professor at Universitas Indonesia and doing…

Russian military concepts developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries still exist and have not lost their strategic relevance. The Russians used them to annex Crimea and are now applying them in the war in Ukraine. Although the concepts have been around for a long time, it does not mean they…

Rogier Hartendorp is professor by special appointment of social effectiveness of justice at Leiden University and a judge at The Hague District Court. So, the perfect person to liaise between our faculty and the Court. We asked him some questions about this role.

Organisation

What is the effect of a certain regime on a country’s migration policy? Political scientist Katharina Natter compared the migration policy of autocratic Morocco with that of democratising Tunisia. Her findings challenge some of the core assumptions.

Tamsin Prideaux recently joined the Institute for History as postdoc. Below she introduces herself.

Feeling good doesn’t just lift our mood—it also helps us stay flexible and resilient. A new study by an international team of neuroscientists shows that natural brain opioids released after rewards play a key role in broadening attention, offering fresh insights into stress, cognition, and well-bein…

On Saturday, May 4, Dr. Verena Meyer delivered opening remarks at the International Webinar 'Santri, Literacy, and Indonesia', organized by the Bali Santri Literacy Community (Sanubari) Nurul Ikhlas Islamic Boarding School in Jembrana, Bali, Indonesia.

Fifteen hundred years ago, the north-west of what we now call China was a jumble of peoples. How did those Indians, Khotanese and Tocharians influence each other and each other's languages? Associate professor Michaël Peyrot has been awarded an ERC grant of almost two million euros to unravel this 'web…

The third and final participation session was held on 20 September; the evening was attended by local residents, business owners, students and other stakeholders.

On Thursday 10 November, the Night of the Lobbyist was held. During this public event, organised by Leiden University and the Public Affairs Academy, many insights were shared regarding the different aspects of lobbying and the diversity of the world of the lobby.

Generations of Leiden students and academics have done archaeological research into the early medieval history of Oegstgeest. This makes this old settlement one of the best-documented sites from that era. In a new book Leiden researchers take stock.

Online dating is hard enough on its own, but these days you also need to know what terms like ‘zombieing’ and ‘prela’ mean. Alumni Milou Andree and Vivien Waszink wrote ‘Swipen voor een kwarrel, a book that discusses all the dating jargon, from the ‘scharrel’ to ‘pigbutchering’.

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,…

Tim van de Meerendonk explores how farmers, insurance advisors and local politicians in India try to make sense of insurance figures through their moral convictions.

Whereas most outgoing professors are offered a congress, Nico Kaptein's former students and PhD students took a bigger approach. They treated him not only to a farewell congress, but also to a two-week tour of Indonesia, filled with lectures, and trips.

What was life like for people with disabilities in the Middle Ages? University lecturer Krista Milne delved into medieval manuscripts and found more than thirty images of assistance dogs of all shapes and sizes. Now, a Vidi grant is enabling her to expand her research to include the question of what…

Much research into the colonial past of scientific institutions stops as soon as a colony gains independence. In two new projects, university lecturer Anne-Isabelle Richard focuses on the decolonisation period. How did universities deal with the changed reality?

Give Nikki IJzerman a football and she’s happy. The midfielder was named Player of the Year by ADO Den Haag last season, as well as obtaining her master’s degree in Journalism and New Media.

Career Services of the Faculties Governance and Global Affairs, Social Sciences, and Humanities joined forces to organise the ‘Meet the Employer’ Week held from 6 – 10 December 2021!

A small cat with a big personality has captured the hearts of students and staff at the Faculty of Science. The black-and-white Bobby even has his own Instagram fan account. Who are the people behind Bobby ‘the astrocat’? ‘He helps connecting people on campus.’

Over a century ago, Alexandra van Elroy's great-grandfather left for Japan, where her grandmother was born. Together with her mother, Maaike van der Loon, she reminisces about her family history, through which a key thread is the study of Japanese and Chinese.

Persian stories with beautiful miniatures, letters on papyrus from Egyptian traders and medicinal manuscripts translated from Greek and edited in Arabic. Studium Generale organizes a lecture series on the world-famous manuscripts from the Middle East collection of Leiden University Libraries (UBL).…

Dr. Josien de Klerk, Associate professor in Global Public Health at Leiden University College The Hague recently published some of her work on HIV/AIDS. In collaboration with a team of interdisciplinary researchers from the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development she came to the conclusion…

Leiden alumnus Luc Amkreutz is a curator at the National Museum of Antiquities. His exhibition about the submerged landscape of Doggerland highlights what we can learn from prehistory. ‘Just like the people of Doggerland, we are confronted with climate change, but we are responsible for the speed of…

The Faculty’s traditional New Year’s reception, like everything else these days, was transformed into an online event this year. Dean Paul Wouters as the host led us through the programme filled with the Casimir Teaching Award, the Pieter de la Court Medals, the Master’s Thesis Prizes, and a short lecture…

In Harper’s Magazine, reviewer Dan Piepenbring discusses the latest book by professor Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman. ‘Spycraft’ showcases how and why messages were ciphered in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.

The reconstruction of a dress worn in the Netherlands nearly 3000 years ago has gone on display in Oss, and shows that, contrary to popular opinion, woman from that time liked cheerful colours. Leiden archaeologists were involved in both the find of the dress as well as its reconstruction.

University lecturers Pepita Hesselberth and Joost de Bloois (UvA) were interviewed in a Hermetix podcast about their co-edited book Politics of Withdrawal: Media, Arts, Theory.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Professor of International Relations and Diplomatic Affairs at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, says we must block and expel Putin wherever possible.

The Leiden Digital Scholarship Blog explored two different ways of opening up research at an early stage: preprints and pre-registration. How to go about making your research or research plans publicly available at an early stage, and what can you expect to happen after you have done so? Among others,…

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.

When following a course on archaeology of the Crusaders, five archaeology students were presented the unique opportunity to create a small exhibition at the National Museum of Antiquities. The coronavirus situation made a complex task even more challenging. ‘We had to work through the lockdown with…

During the New Year’s reception of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FSW) on 12 January 2026, Sarah de Rijcke said farewell as our dean. She will become the new Rector Magnificus of Leiden University. It was not the only change of leadership announced that afternoon.

Three enormous maps of China, created during the reign of three different emperors of the Qing dynasty, have now been made available in open access and are downloadable via Leiden University Libraries’ (UBL) Digital Collections. The rich maps are an early example of academic collaboration between the…