Salvador Santino Regilme received Honorable Mention for the 2022 Best Scholarly Article Award from the Sociology of Human Rights Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA). He won for his paper “Visions of Peace Amidst a Human Rights Crisis: War on Drugs in Colombia and the Philippines,”…

In recent months, a number of academics, a sounding board group and the relevant directors of education, in collaboration with Campus The Hague, have been working on the development of a new Master’s programme: Environmental Humanities. With this programme, we aimed to offer a new and necessary perspective…

On Monday 14 March, the members of the Humanities Campus Think Tank came together for their first meeting in the restaurant of the Pieter de la Court building at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FSW).

Scientists from the consortium behind the Euclid space telescope, including researchers at Leiden University, have created the largest and most detailed visible-light image ever taken of the centre of the Milky Way. The image shows more than 60 million stars.

An international team of researchers led by Leiden archaeology professor Marie Soressi and Leipzig senior geneticist Matthias Meyer has recovered the DNA of a woman belonging to an Ancient North Eurasian population from a 20,000-year-old pendant. This is the first time DNA analysis has been used to…

As of 1 July, toxicologist Mirjam Luijten from the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) starts as professor by special appointment at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR).

There was a lot of interest. In front of nearly a hundred researchers, supporting colleagues and Martijn Ridderbos, the Vice-Chairman of the Executive Board, Lotte van Dillen, Research Director of Psychology and Saskia Goedhard, Director of Humanities Operations jointly opened the new lab with a classic…

The volume, Heritage Destruction, Human Rights and International Law, co-edited by Grotius Centre, Associate Professor Joe Powderly, and Dr Amy Strecker (Associate Professor, UCD), has been published by Brill/Nijhoff.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has awarded a €1.6M contract to an LACDR-led consortium to assess how sensitivity to toxicity caused by chemicals varies among individual people. Currently these toxicodynamic differences are an unknown source of uncertainty when carrying out risk assessment…

The tour for programme chairs through the new Humanities Hub covered just one corridor. Previously, the labs were spread across the campus, but now most of them have been consolidated in the Huizinga Building.

Ten participants and two observers from the Faculty Council and the University Council attended the third and final meeting of the Humanities Campus Think Tank.

The university is committed to providing an accessible learning and working environment for students and staff. They should be able to feel at home at our faculty. That is why there is now an all-gender toilet in every humanities building to contribute to that feeling of recognition and safety.

On June 30, eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies of Leiden University organised the annual Hans Franken Lecture. This year the lecture was delivered by Jan Kleijssen, former Human Rights Director at the Council of Europe.

Since the publication of the article in the interdisciplinary journal Nature, over 200 news outlets have showcased the pioneering research.

In 2024, Professor Joanita Vroom received a substantial grant from the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) in support for her Hinterlands of Medieval Chalcis Project (HMC Project) in Greece. PHI, a California-based non-profit organization, is dedicated to archaeological research as well as to the preservation…

Deep-brain stimulation (DBS) is the most promising surgical treatment for movement and neuropsychiatric disorders, but is accompanied by unwanted side effects. Birte Forstmann, professor by special appointment, has been awarded a ERC Proof of Concept Grant to create an atlas of the human deep brain…

Buried beneath a Suffolk forest, archaeologists have uncovered the earliest known human-made fire. A fire that was sparked 400,000 years ago. This stunning UK discovery may rewrite our evolutionary story, potentially pushing fire-making back by more than 350,000 years.

External PhD Candidate Liselore Tissen was interviewed by Leiden Global about her work, in which she uses 3D printing. Recently she made a copy of a decorative human skill this way.

On 12 April the Humanities Campus Think Tank held its second meeting in the Lipsius Building. In a Q&A session with Elisa Meijer, the Facilities project leader, the members asked about the context and room for manoeuvre in the development of the new Humanities Campus work environment.

What do ten-year-old children and chatbots have in common? PhD researcher Bram van Dijk studied language development in both children and AI language models. ‘It’s actually quite practical that we attribute human traits to a chatbot.’

How should the municipality of Eindhoven organise the reception of asylum seekers? What is the best electoral system for the Dutch Parliament? Governments regularly ask citizens for their opinions. Computer scientist Michiel van der Meer has improved the method used for citizen assemblies. He will defend…

In zoos, at festivals and in a mobile lab at the market: everywhere, Mariska Kret tries to understand human and animal emotions with her distinctive behavioural research. Now she has received the Mercator Sapiens Stimulus of €1 million for her efforts.

Lecture

Maria Moser, Mischa de Jong, and Ander Damiano Delliturri are the newly appointed student representatives on the Programme Committee (OLC). This committee provides advice to the Executive Board and the Faculty Board on various educational issues, including the development of Course and Examination Regulations…

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.’

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, Associate Professor at eLaw, contributed to 'Cyber–Physical–Human Systems', a book exploring the latest developments in interactions between cyber–physical systems and humans.

Leiden University is announcing its approach for sensitive collaboration with external partners. This has been prompted by the ongoing, troubling situation in the Middle East and the recent advice from the Committee on Human Rights and Conflict Areas regarding current collaboration with Israeli part…

In a new episode of The Digital Period podcast, Gianclaudio Malgieri, Associate Professor at eLaw, discusses vulnerability and data protection. He explores how power, intersectionality, and value-based design can support more empathetic and participatory technologies.

Staff from eLaw – Center for Law and Digital Technologies contributed to the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT), held in Athens from 25 to 27 June 2025. The ACM FAccT conference is one of the world’s leading venues for interdisciplinary research on responsible and ethical…

The International Studies and Urban studies study programmes have moved to a new address. After five years in the Wijnhaven building they have moved to the Schouwburgstraat. ‘It is nice to have our own place in The Hague as the Faculty of Humanities.’

This year, an NWO PhD in the Humanities grant went to Mink van IJzendoorn, enabling him to investigate the disappearance of amphorae. ‘We take means of packaging and shipment for granted, but they are deeply ingrained in our daily lives; they are crucial.’

A patent for what may be a potent, new antibiotic. And: a clear overview of promising approaches to overcome a crucial resistance tactic employed by bacteria. In the span of one week, two researchers from Leiden are receiving their PhDs, each of them on an important step in the battle against bacteria…

A newly opened museum in China appears to be devoted to the origins of the Austronesian-speaking peoples, who some 5000 years ago spread from East Asia across the Pacific, seeding it with a distinctive culture and some 1200 languages. But those displays are also a statement in the long-running dispute…

Lecture

Lecture, Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series

Beads are among the oldest types of human artistic expression. Even so, the small ornaments have a bad status record regarding archaeological investigation. PhD candidate Mette Langbroek, usually at home studying early medieval beads, had the opportunity to work on a publication and exhibition on 5000…