Cyber-attacks, privacy-related problems or failures in functioning: many technologies that are used every day have security issues that are solved when the software is already in use. A new interdisciplinary project, in which Olga Gadyatskaya, Harry Wijshoff, Alex Uta and Kristian Rietveld from the…

Francien Dechesne, Associate Professor of Ethics and Digital Technologies, has been appointed by the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences of Tilburg University as Professor to the endowed chair of ‘Data and AI for the Rule of Law’, effective 1 November 2025.

The more than 370 sensors that have been hung up in Leiden University buildings to count the people present will not be switched on again. The equipment will eventually be removed from the buildings.

Lecture

Bert Koenders, professor of Peace, Law and Security at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, has been appointed chairman of the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV), or foreign policy.

Nineteen students who obtained excellent results in the minor Intelligence Studies received the annual Kluitersprijs.

PhD defence

Mums posting photos and videos of their child on Instagram and TikTok and also earning loads of money doing so. Kidfluencers, momvloggers and familyvlogs are very popular, in the Netherlands too. But the lack of legislation regulating these activities means that these children are barely protected.…

Tahir Abbas, Associate Professor in Terrorism and Political Violence at ISGA, explained how polarisation and social exclusion were at the root of radicalisation around the world. Papers ‘The News’ and ‘Dawn’ wrote articles about it.

Dr. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga from eLaw collaborates with researchers from the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIIT-Delhi) and University of Delhi (DU) in an effort to explore and reflect upon the potential legal, ethical and pedagogical challenges of deploying a social robot in…

More severe droughts that will also last longer: this will primarily be a problem for irrigated croplands, as discovered by environmental scientist Qi Chen. Mixed forests with a variety of plant species will be the least vulnerable. Chen compared the effects of drought on different ecosystems across…

How can staff help create a healthy and inclusive learning environment? How do today’s students differ from previous generations? And what does this mean for how we guide and support them? These questions were the focus of the ‘Today’s Students’ symposium on 25 March.

Leadership

Didactics

In two moving articles, Dutch newspaper Trouw has reported on the lengthy detention of Abu Zubaydah in Guantánamo Bay. Zubaydah was tortured over a period of many years. Helen Duffy, Professor of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and also Zubaydah’s lawyer, recently booked a major victory…

The EU proposal for a regulatory framework on artificial intelligence will not prevent the dangers of cybercrime or the spreading of fake news using ChatGPT. Cyber criminals can use the new technology to write harmful software, phishing mails and fake news.

Many primary school children suffer from anxiety and their numbers are increasing. Psychologists from the Knowledge Center Anxiety & Stress (KAS) are developing and researching preventive training.

Without academic freedom, we might not have antibiotics, nor a deep understanding of human behaviour. Literary criticism, climate models, and ecological restoration would be severely limited; just like ethical reflection on artificial intelligence, justice, trauma, parenting, faith and hope. All these…

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…

How to innovate education? In this series, the Honours Academy highlights examples from their educational testing ground that aim to inspire. Today: the liberating effect of pass/fail and ‘unessays’ at Honours College Law.

On Tuesday 30 September 2025, PhD candidate Kathleen Brown will defend her dissertation 'Deception, Risk, and Evasion: The Politics of Sovereign Debt in Emerging Markets' in Leiden’s Academy Building. Her research sheds light on the hidden world of sovereign debt politics, revealing how governments…

Two Leiden research projects that focus on increasing the biodiversity of Dutch production systems for food and ornamental horticulture have started thanks to funding from the Dutch Research Council's KIC research programme.

PhD defence

Lecture

Every year, the ‘Kluitersprijs’ is awarded to students who achieve excellent results in the minor Intelligence Studies.

Nikki Ikani, Assistant Professor Intelligence and Security at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), has recently published her latest monograph 'Crisis and change in European Union foreign policy' with Manchester University Press.

Dr. Elif Naz Kayran received the Best Dissertation Award from the Migration & Citizenship Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA) for her dissertation 'Political Responses and Electoral Behaviour at Times of Socioeconomic Risk Inequalities and Immigration'

‘Let’s get everyone home safely!’ This was the message of an estimated 750 demonstrators as they marched through the centre of Leiden on 18 November.

Pavel Durov, CEO of chat and messaging app Telegram, was arrested in France last week. The Russian tech billionaire flew into Paris by private jet and was arrested on suspicion of cybercrimes. Telegram allegedly facilitates criminal activities such as money laundering. This raises the question of how…

Education, Research

Conference, 2-day Workshop

The League of European Research Universities (LERU) was launched in Leiden 20 years ago. LERU is a partnership of 23 leading research universities, including the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Leiden, Leuven and Heidelberg. It celebrated this anniversary last week with a multi-day conference in…

Gianclaudio Malgieri, Associate Professor at eLaw – Centre for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University, was recently interviewed on the Legal 4 Tech (L4T) podcast. The discussion centred on legal vulnerability in digital platforms, including challenges individuals face in asserting their fundamental…

Research

During the second Arthur Docters van Leeuwen Lecture on 2 December, AIVD Director Erik Akerboom underlined how the changing threat landscape demands reflective leadership, transparency where possible and close cooperation to protect the democratic legal order.

PhD defence

Lecture

Lecture, Food for Thought

The Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) and the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) want to use private DNA databases in an effort to solve deadlocked murder cases. Bart Custers, Professor of Law & Data Science at eLaw, Center for Law and Digital Technologies, expects that this is permissible from…