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…

2025 was a year to remember at our faculty. We celebrated our 450th anniversary, launched new degree programmes and welcomed many inspiring speakers, yet we also felt the weight of budget constraints. Our year in a nutshell:

Carmen Gonsalves has been the Dutch ambassador to Chile since this autumn. She studied history in Leiden. How useful has her degree been and what’s it like to be an ambassador? ‘Diplomacy is fascinating.’ We spoke to her just before the presidential elections.

A number of young researchers recently took part in a knowledge mission to Indonesia, aiming to build a lasting relationship with the country. How did they find the trip, what did they do, and how are they creating new connections with scientists in Indonesia?

The LUCAS Impact Committee, consisting of Jan van Dijkhuizen, Rick Honings, Casper de Jonge, Angus Mol, Thijs Porck and Aafje de Roest, has offered this year’s LUCAS Public Engagement Award to Dorine Schellens and Peter Verstraten.

On January 16, 2022, our respected and beloved colleague Prof. dr. Bas Edixhoven passed away after a short period of serious illness.

On Tuesday 12 April Angus Mol and Aris Politopoulos have been awarded the fourth LUCAS Publieksprijs.

What can you do about sustainability in your immediate living environment? On Thursday afternoon, April 14, the Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden was filled with policymakers, researchers, entrepreneurs, citizens, students, and even the mayor of Leiden. Leiden University and the Association of Dutch Municipalities…

What started as pioneering work, has evolved over decades to become a renowned institute in 2025 with an internationally acclaimed master's programme. 'Almost everyone involved in the aviation and space sector knows us in Leiden.'

Maria Vasile's ethnographic fieldwork in Turin reveals that volunteering and citizen engagement may not empower residents or allow them to shape their cities. Her analysis of urban gardens, food markets, and food aid initiatives calls for a broader perspective on urban peripheral areas and a shift away…

How do you co-create with researchers in other parts of the world? LDE wants to gather and share knowledge on the grand challenges and to do so across national borders. A delegation of 27 researchers will therefore travel to Indonesia at the end of October to take part in the LDE-BRIN Academy.

Psychology alumna Inge Schilperoord works as a forensic psychologist in the Pieter Baan Centre, a psychiatric observation clinic. Her debut novel 'Muidhond' about a man struggling with his paedophilic tendencies, has received the Bronze Owl 2015 for best Dutch debut novel. Schilperoord: 'The detective…

“Very French and very impressive.” Those are the words drs. Isabelle van de Calseyde used to describe the reception at the French embassy residence in The Hague on 2 June 2015. There, she and dr. Sjef Houppermans were presented with an distinction for their remarkable services to the French language…

On 31 January 2024, Alex Schilin defended his dissertation ‘United in Distinctiveness: The Institutionalisation of Differentiated Integration in Economic and Monetary Union during the Sovereign Debt Crisis.’ What motivated him to research this specific topic, and how did he tackle this project? And…

Public procurement is not a hot topic for the average citizen. That’s a pity, says PhD candidate Erik Plas, who did research on the fair spending of public money: 'If a council project goes completely haywire, because it costs more than expected, it could even mean that local taxes will have to be r…

Several of the most important manuscript collections in the Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Special Collections, comprising 443 extremely rare and often unique volumes, have been made available in Open Access via Digital Collections. The available manuscript collections include the private collections…

Catherine Wood and Martijn van Ette recently joined the Institute for History as PhD candidates in the NWO Vidi-funded project "American foreign policy and liberalism", led by Andrew Gawthorpe. Below they introduce themselves.

This Thursday, January 18th 2024, our esteemed colleague Jan Zaanen passed away. Jan was one of our star scientists, larger than life, with an unabashed, boisterous drive for the best of physics at the Institute Lorentz, at the Leiden Institute of Physics and in the full international scientific community.…

Access to education for people from the lower socio-economic class has improved immensely in Europe from the 1950s onwards. Yet the Roma and Sinti were unable to reap benefits from this. PhD candidate Anita van der Hulst researched why so few Roma and Sinti went on to higher education. PhD defence on…

Following our Leiden Brussels Alumni Event, I (external officer M. Blaauw, ed.) met our very own Leiden Law alumna Helena-Loutas Paraskeva. An Australian who works for the European Commission. Interesting, how did she get this job, what does she do and how did her Master in Leiden affect or influence…

Mojan Samadi obtained her PhD in 2020 in Leiden and has since remained at the university as an assistant professor. Her research currently focuses on gender and criminal law, with a key question being how criminal law should address femicide.

Health conditions and social problems often go hand in hand. To address this complex issue in families in The Hague, researchers, managers, support services, policymakers and residents are joining forces. What are the results of this transdisciplinary approach?

Challenge yourself, broaden your horizon and meet people from different background. Curious if the Honours College is right for you? Rebecca and Pepijn from the track 'Bèta and Life Science' share their doubts, experiences, and what they find so appealing about the programme. Rebecca: ‘I enjoyed one…

The new SSH labs will offer great opportunities for FSW and FGW staff engaged in experimental research. The labs will be a place of inspiration, not only because of the state-of-the-art equipment, but also as a result of the increased interaction with colleagues in other disciplines.

On 4 December Professor Emile van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal passed away. Van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal worked at the African Studies Centre from 1967 to 2002, when the ASC was not part of Leiden University yet. He became professor by special appointment at Leiden University on behalf of Leiden Law School in…

The university bid farewell to its Rector Magnificus, Hester Bijl, on 13 January during the ‘Hester’s Highlights’ symposium.

The "Care and the Jewish Experience" Conference, organized by the Leiden Jewish Studies Network, hosted many talented young researchers alongside established scholars of different fields. Our guests got a chance to listen to a great presentation titled “Women of Valor: Tradwives and the Sacralization…

The making and tracing of lineages has been an important feature in Muslim communities since the early phases of Islam. Many early Arab tribes boasted about the superiority of certain lineages and taunted others for their lower or weaker ancestries. ʿIlm al-nasab or the science of genealogy emerged…

Join us and meet your fellow research support colleagues at the third Leiden Research Support Conference in PLNT Leiden on Monday 5 June. The conference in Leiden for and by research support professionals.

Workshop

In this Connect& Protect session, Manon Osseweijer, will share her insights with us on her work as Secretary of the FGGA Ethics Committee. The FGGA Ethics Committee established its regulations in 2019 and aims to evaluate all new research projects by FGGA researchers that directly…

Career development

Do Humanities students have a good understanding of what is acceptable and inacceptable use of Generative AI (GenAI) in making assignments? Whose responsibility is it to set clear rules and guidelines; the Faculty or the examiners themselves? And should the use GenAI in assignments be fully banned in…

True to tradition, the Association of Former Leiden Observatory Students and Staff (VO-S) has an informal gathering prior to the annual Oort lecture.

European Strategic Dialogue seminar series: Redefining the EU-Poland relationship: the implications of the Polish electoral shift

Lecture

Study information, Webinar

Photo credits: Kandukuru Nagarjun (via Wikimedia Commons). This event will be held physically in Leiden. For registrees who cannot travel to Leiden a link to an online platform will be sent one day before the start of the event. The Maasai pastoralists have for eons been famed for astute bravery…

Extended Reality (XR) encompasses augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality, and is reshaping how users, scholars, and teachers engage with the world. One notable application is the Mixtec skull from Museum Volkenkunde in Liselore Tissen’s research (LUCDH Small Grant), which showcases…

Introducing the Leiden Academia in Motion programme - Embracing Open Science and Recognition & Rewards Leiden University is investing in various programmes to support and facilitate the change towards Open Science, and the recognition and rewards that go hand in hand with this cultural change.…

Since 1 January 2024, Leiden University is a contributing member of The Conversation, an international not-for-profit news platform, which focuses on sharing scientific knowledge with a wide audience. This involves both science news and interpreting current affairs and developments in the world…

Lecture, Lunch Research Seminar

Water, the embodiment of yin femininity that complements yang masculinity, has been the most enduring element of Chinese cosmological thought since the Book of Changes. It is the metaphor of the supreme yin in Laozi’s Daode jing, venerated as the highest…

Expositie

Lecture, Workshop

The dissertation explores the complex interplay between financial scarcity and its psychological effects, shedding light on its impact on decision-making, avoidance behavior, and perceived control. Through a series of experiments, we found that financial scarcity increases temporal discounting,…

Talking about suicide is important, but anything but comfortable. To make this difficult subject easier for students and staff to discuss, the university is organising a campaign week in line with the national campaign ‘1K Z1E J3’ (I see you) being run by Stichting 113 Zelfmoordpreventie (113 is the…

The fact that university education is about more than mere knowledge transfer, is now commonplace. Besides knowledge and insight, students must have the right skills to apply that knowledge and insight in education and on the labour market. We are currently working hard at faculty and university level…

Please join us for our next LUCDH lunchtime talk presented by Dr. Gijs Wijnholds on (the new date) Tuesday, 19 December 2023 at 12:00 – 13:00 (CET). Large language models have become a staple in NLP research; labelled revolutionary by some due to their remarkable adaptive capacity, labelled 'stochastic…