The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded an Advanced Grant to six Leiden researchers. It awards these significant grants to established principal investigators for ground-breaking, high-risk research.

The new welfare state is said to be close to its citizens and does not dominate, but cooperate. “But this paradigm has a hard time to acknowledge the power relation that shapes the relation between state and citizens,” says Anouk de Koning in the interview 'The Downsides of Equality Talk in the Welfare…

Can a robot rekindle the waning interest in Buddhism in Japan? University lecturer Peter van der Putten researches the philosophical and social questions related to artificial intelligence. He also investigates whether computers and robots can take over creativity, emotions and other human characteristics.…

In the new video series 'The World of Linguistics', alumni and researchers talk about their passion for their field. Professor of African Linguistics Maarten Mous explains the importance of hearing your language at school.

The Wall Street Journal reviews historian Eric Storm's new book 'Nationalism: A World History', which examines the complex history and development of nationalism and nation-states.

Jojanneke van der Toorn appears in several media trying to bridge science and society with the aim of contributing to effective and evidence-based diversity policy. Read more in English and Dutch media.

More European countries are introducing border controls, clashing with the ideal of free movement within Europe. Daniel Schade, Assistant Professor of EU Studies at Leiden University, analyses this development in The Washington Post.

The South African poet and author Antjie Krog gave the 37th Albert Verwey Lecture in the Great Auditorium in the Academy Building on 18 November. Inspired by Verwey’s poem ‘De zegger van verzen’, Krog’s lecture was a polyphonic and multilingual love letter to poetry.

Hundreds of students and staff from Leiden University gave a ‘whistle concert’ on 11 December against the planned cuts to higher education. Similar protests were held in other student cities on the same day.

During Cyberweek, from 17-24 October, the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA) highlighted its research and teaching on cybersecurity, digital developments, and their impact on society.

Assistant professor Carmen Van den Bergh has been nominated for the Leiden University Teaching Prize. ‘I combine literature education with social relevance and personal experience.’

Six projects from the Faculty of Humanities recently received grants of up to 750,000 euros from the NWO Open Competition. Researchers involved tell how they will spend this money.

Would you like to share your academic research with a diverse international audience? On the not-for-profit news platform The Conversation, academics and journalists team up to write research-based articles. Leiden University recently partnered with this platform, and two of our colleagues share their…

The Personal Professional Skills Lab (PPSL) is an elective programme for all FSW bachelor students that enter in 2024 and on. The aim of the PPSL is to encourage students to develop personal and professional skills during the bachelor, that will give them greater resilience and direction: both in their…

De Universiteit Leiden zet in op de versterking van de ondersteuning voor onderzoekers en onderzoeksgroepen bij extern gefinancierde onderzoeksprojecten.

Veelgestelde vragen privacy en security

How can you ensure that your research hits the headlines? How can you bring your research output, such as PhD research or a publication, to the attention of the public?

PhD, Staff

De Starting Grant wordt jaarlijks door de European Research Council (ERC) toegekend. Dit jaar zijn er in Nederland 51 onderzoekers die een Starting Grant ontvangen, waaronder 4 onderzoekers van FSW.

The winner of the Africa Thesis Award 2023 is Rachel Dubale, a graduate from the Research Master in African Studies at Leiden University, with her thesis “They think we can eat the condominium”. Chronicles of Economic, Social and Political Practices in Addis Ababa’s Condominiums.

A new government, conflicts around the world and obviously a lot of science: these are the five stories about Leiden University that you enjoyed reading in 2024.

They have known each other since they were small but Rianne and Tom first fell in love when working together at the university. That love culminated in a fairytale wedding amid all the revelry last 3 October.

A European team of astronomers, led by Leiden-based researcher Konstantinos Migkas, has uncovered a large filament — a long, thread-like structure — of hot gas connecting four clusters of galaxies. This filament is made up of what scientists call the warm-hot intergalactic medium.

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.

How can humans and computers learn from data? To research this, scientists often use so-called Bayesian methods. Although these methods are widely used, they also have limitations and are not always easy to interpret. In her dissertation Rianne de Heide describes some of these problems and introduces…

‘Om de problemen in de jeugdbescherming op te kunnen lossen heb ik de gemeenten nodig’, zei minister Weerwind van Rechtsbescherming onlangs in de Tweede Kamer. Maar volgens hoogleraar jeugdrecht Mariëlle Bruning moet het rijk stoppen met het verwijzen naar andere partijen en zélf nu zorgen dat de boel…

Organisation

Episodes 40 and 42 of the podcast Everyday Runners by Andy Fuller and Reading Sideways Press, feature a conversation with Jasmijn Rana, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Sociology of Development.

In a recent EUobserver opinion article, Salvador Santino Regilme, warns that Europe faces a crisis of legitimacy if it continues to ignore the structural influence of billionaires and oligarchic interests within its institutions.

Olaf van Vliet behoort tot de vier hoogleraren gespecialiseerd in migratie die worden benoemd tot Leiden-Delft-Erasmus-hoogleraar.

Jacqueline Hylkema, a cultural historian at LUC, will be appointed at Princeton University from January to June 2026. There, she will conduct research on the concept of truth in Dutch political forgeries from the 17th century.

Last week, Leiden University welcomed the rectors of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) to the autumn edition of the Rector’s Assembly. They discussed research, innovation and education policy within the European Union, the challenges and opportunities surrounding defence research,…

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has accused Finland of violating the rights of Finnish children by leaving them in life-threatening conditions in Syrian camps. Ann Skelton, member of the committee, calls the situation 'inhuman'.

At the end of 2024, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency stated that it is “highly unlikely that the Netherlands will achieve its statutory climate target of a 55 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030”. This is partly due to setbacks in policy implementation and measures that have been…

Chip war export restrictions for ASML are most likely in conflict with the Word Trade Organisation’s regulations, claims Anna-Alexandra Marhold. China will certainly contest them.

Dutch online news platform Mr. Online interviewed external PhD student Sjoerd Lopik about the development of environmental criminal law in the Netherlands and about his experiences combining his job as a researcher with his work in the legal practice.

Mees Vergouwen heeft op 28 oktober de Mitchell B. Carroll prijs van de International Fiscal Association (IFA) ontvangen. De fiscalist won de prijs met zijn proefschrift over ‘botsende belastingregels’.

Education

They are among the rarest and most extremely luminous stars in our universe: yellow hypergiants. Their spectacular eruptions have intrigued astronomers for decades, and now an international team led by Leiden’s emeritus professor Arnout van Genderen has gained new insights into the mechanisms behind…

In studies, it is an old acquaintance, the p-value. But mathematician Peter Grünwald wants to get rid of it. The p-value is too susceptible to fraud and can lead to a distorted picture of reality and chance. That is why he wants to work with the e-value. De Volkskrant spoke to him about it.

Paul Wouters has been reappointed as Dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. His second term runs from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2023.

During Cyberweek, from 17-24 October, the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA) highlighted its research and teaching on cybersecurity, digital developments, and their impact on society.

Five questions for James Shires, assistant professor at ISGA, about his new book, The Politics of Cybersecurity in the Middle East. The book is available to order now.

‘Let us not forget the power of genuine engagement,’ dean Sarah de Rijcke stressed at the New Year's Reception on 7 January 2025, which was also attended by Rector Magnificus Hester Bijl and addressed the Faculty of Social Sciences.

In the very first Korean class that teacher Eun-ju Kim taught, there were already students with dyslexia. With a background in special education and clinical developmental psychology, she developed a new method to help them, partly based on teaching methods from Dutch first language education.

The Veni grant is awarded annually by NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research). This year, multiple researchers from Leiden University and 2 researchers who will soon be working at the university will receive a Veni grant from the NWO. Thanks to this grant, which can amount to up to 320,000…

Assistant Professor Rens Pieterse has recently published a biography (in Dutch) on the late Dieter Brüll, author and tax consultant.

University Lecturer Andrew Gawthorpe provided commentary in several media outlets on the situation in Venezuela.

Eleven lecturers from Leiden University have been awarded Comenius grants that will allow them to work with their teams on an innovation project within their own teaching. They have been awarded three grants of 100,000 euros within the Senior Fellows programme and four grants of 50,000 euros within…

The Greek diasporic queer poet Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933) has been recognized as a central figure in world literature and literary modernism. On December 9th, a symposium around his work will take place at Leiden University Libraries. This will be combined with the launch of Maria Boletsi's book…