It was with great sadness that on 17 May 2021 we learned of the death of our dear colleague Paul Valk. Paul died from the consequences of COVID-19, having been diagnosed with coronavirus over three weeks ago. Soon after this he was admitted to intensive care, where he was kept in an induced coma on…

Wereldwijd worden veel samenwerkingsverbanden met Rusland stopgezet vanwege de oorlog in Oekraïne. Hoe zit dat met de ruimtevaart, waar de Russen ook een groot aandeel in hebben?

Many students who graduated during the pandemic were unable to celebrate their graduation in style. To make up for this, they were given the chance to sign their name in the Sweat Room on Friday 26 May.

For the annual Week of Classics, Dr Marike van Aerde and her team made a documentary about their research project Routes of Exchange, Roots of Connectivity. In the film the team touches upon the interactions of Greeks and Romans with the wider ancient world, ranging from the African kingdom of Aksum…

Numerous of enthusiastic administrators, professionals, policy makers, and citizens gathered last week for an assembly organised by ‘Gezond en Gelukkig Den Haag (in English: Healthy and Happy The Hague). They discussed a different approach to health, health care and society, while exchanging best pr…

Ayo Adedokun, Assistant Professor at Leiden University College (LUC) in The Hague, is one of the four finalists in the running for the title ‘Teacher of the Year 2022’. The yearly election is organized by the Interstedelijk Student Overleg, the largest national student organization in the Netherlands,…

Water damage, old restorations and copper corrosion in some illustrations. De Materia Medica has been through a lot over the centuries. The manuscript dates from 1083 AD and is one of the oldest illustrated Arabic manuscripts in the world. Due to intensive use, De Materia Medica was no longer in good…

The Leiden University Centre for the Study of Religion (LUCSoR) and the Beheerstichting Theologische Fondsen hand out two thesis prizes each year, one for the best bachelor thesis and one for the best master thesis.

Discovering what is inside giant planets and their atmosphere, that is one of the goals of astronomer Yamila Miguel. With an ERC Consolidator Grant of 2 million euro, she will study giant planets both inside and outside our solar system. ‘We want to know more about how planetary systems are born, how…

Are you thinking of applying for a Kiem grant but still tinkering with your idea for an interdisciplinary project? Let Leiden colleagues from the first Kiem round inspire you! Lydie Cabane invited researchers from all over the world for a workshop entitled ‘Protecting against disasters’.

The final meeting which took place on Wednesday 6 September marked the end of the third cohort of master students’ time participating in the The Hague Southwest Thesis Workshop. During this last meeting, master students presented their research results to residents and stakeholders from The Hague So…

The 16-year-old girl was staying in a closed juvenile care institution where, among other things, she was administered 'pain stimuli'. The charges are the first of their kind, says Mariëlle Bruning, Professor of Children and the Law, to Dutch newspaper the Volkskrant.

Everything is peaceful again in and around the Wijnhaven building at Campus The Hague. Earlier today, the location was the scene of a large pro-Palestinian protest. Lectures were cancelled. In the end, everyone left the building voluntarily.

When asked about the mission of the Leiden Jewish Studies network, Jürgen Zangenberg, Professor of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity at Leiden University, and one of the organizers of the event says: “We try to keep the network as broad as possible, and to attract as many people from the outside…

Self-employed workers’ hours have significantly decreased during the coronavirus crisis. Their average hours worked decreased most at the start of the crisis, by more than five hours per week. And it was difficult to return to their pre-crisis hours in the quarters that followed. This is the conclusion…

On Tuesday 5 September, the opening of the faculty year took place at the Kamerlingh Onnes Building. Staff and students gathered in the Cleveringa Room to take part in the interactive part of the programme.

Recently, the oldest parts of the Leiden University Archives have been preserved and digitised thanks to a grant from Metamorfoze. This makes an important source on the history of Leiden University – and academic life in the Northern Netherlands in a broader sense – widely available.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Argentina faced a severe dictatorship. The regime did not shy away from using brute force and torture. People who showed their dissatisfaction also regularly disappeared. For her PhD, Ana Saab researched how the memory of these disappeared people was kept alive anyway.

On Wednesday 6 July 2022 Leiden University College The Hague (LUC) celebrated the graduation of the Class of 2022. The 170 students received their Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree’s in LUC’s interdisciplinary honours programme Liberal Arts & Sciences: Global Challenges.

Law firm Ficq & Partners has pulled out of the Marengo trial in the Netherlands. It claims that the use of a crown witness entails ‘unmanageable risk’. Do the advantages of the crown witness scheme outweigh the risks? Jan Crijns takes stock in Dutch newspaper ‘Trouw’.

The Choose a Language Day was created to make high school students enthusiastic about choosing a linguistic profile and further education. Third-years were able to learn about different language studies at the Faculty of Humanities.

How can we manage our natural resources more sustainably? That’s the key question behind the United Nations’ International Resource Panel (IRP). The panel recently welcomed a new member: René Kleijn, Professor of Industrial Ecology at Leiden University. We asked him three questions about his new rol…

Baleseng Maeneche (University of the Western Cape) has won the Africa Thesis Award 2024 with a master's thesis on media representation of male perpetrators of violence against women and children in South Africa. Her research challenges dominant narratives and emphasises the need for fair media representation…

On Tuesday the 5th of September the Faculty of Archaeology officially opened its academic year. All staff and students were invited to this festive occasion.

The first settlers of the Caribbean have long been regarded as bands of highly mobile groups who subsisted exclusively by hunting, gathering, and fishing. In recent years, however, there has been increasing evidence for the cultivation of domesticated plants by early groups and a lower degree of mobility…

The South Cluster - the former Van Wijkplaats/Van Eyckhof on Witte Singel - is currently undergoing an impressive transformation. On 25 October, more than 100 enthusiastic colleagues witnessed the progress of the renovation during a series of tours of the building.

Four researchers from Leiden University have been awarded prestigious Vici grants the Dutch Research Council (NWO) has announced. The honoured applications are from researchers at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Leiden Observatory, the LUMC and the Faculty of Archaeology.

On World DNA Day 25 April, Leiden University is pleased to focus the spotlight on Rosalind Franklin, whose name was given earlier this month to the Campus Square on the Leiden Bio Science Park. This square will now be known officially as the Rosalind Franklin Square.

Loes Janssen would like to foster well-being of families by using an app and sending families short and fun activities each day to do together. For the Synergy Award ’21, PhD candidates were invited to submit their innovative idea on how to create societal impact. Watch the final on 4 February and vote…

The Faculty of Humanities’ On-Campus Master’s Experience Day was a pleasantly busy event. The information sessions and corresponding information market went down well with interested undergraduates.

The winners of the JSVO teaching prizes for academic year 2020-2021 were announced at the opening of the faculty year on 7 September 2021.

On 19 June, the grounds of the Kamerlingh Onnes Building were transformed into LAWLANDS! It had everything: sun, music, science, beach, games, quizzes and, above all, an enthusiastic audience of staff and students.

The Leiden University team representing the International Institute of Air and Space Law (IIASL) won the World Finals of the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition that took place in Paris on 20 September 2022.

At the end of the 7th century something curious occurs in Northwestern Europe. Suddenly, people start burying the dead next to their dwellings instead of in communal cemeteries. Professor Frans Theuws recently published a book on this phenomenon. ‘We wanted to know if the study of these farmyard burials…

What happens when you ask students and staff how they’re really doing? On Tuesday 14 April, FGW members were able to share what was on their minds at the (s)Tattoo pop-up studio. Three artists turned their stories into drawings or poems.

Sport brings people together. This became clear on 9 April during the official opening of the new University Sports Centre. In a varied programme with live sports acts and even a basketball session with an Olympic champion, sport, history and human connection came together in a building designed for…

On 2 April, the final of the Legal Tech Challenge 2026 took place in the Academy Building of Leiden University. During the final, teams of students pitched their technological solutions to societal challenges.

Yousef Yousef is a 'self-made man'. But he first obtained his bachelor's degree in tax law in Leiden. 'A CEO needs to have a basic understanding of the principles of law', he says.

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.

What are the advantages of a day’s work at home? Were we happy working from home during the pandemic lockdowns? And who is actually responsible for a healthy and happy homeworker? The employee, or the employer?

Most of us know that Venice, Genoa, and Florence were major Mediterranean powers during the Renaissance. But did you know that in terms of trade and sea power, Barcelona was probably more powerful than two of these three?

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.

On the 8th of March the first "introduction to entrepreneurship" boot camp was held at PLNT specifically for PhD researchers at the LACDR. During the two hour block topics such as "the core of entrepreneurship", "spotting opportunities" and "what is your value proposition" were discussed.

PhD candidate Divakar Budda (Division of Systems Pharmacology and Pharmacy) and Solen Gousset (UCLouvain) shared were the shared winners of the best poster award of the 5th QSPainRelief General Assembly meeting held early December in Leiden.

The faculty introduction morning was held on Tuesday 31 August as part of the University’s OWL activities. Our new international exchange, master’s and advanced master’s students from more than 50 countries were welcomed to the faculty.

Leiden University's humanities have one of the top places in the Times Higher Education Rankings. This year, we were placed 26th.

Neanderthals were able to outwit straight-tusked elephants, the largest land mammals of the past few million years. Leiden professor Wil Roebroeks has published an article about this together with his German colleague Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser in the Science Advances journal. The breakthrough takes…

At the Leiden University Thesis Awards ceremony, law student Bettina Schmiedler won third prize for her socio-legal study on corporate social responsibility.

University Lecturer Andrew Gawthorpe discusses on The Conversation how Trump's Greenland proposal overlooks the historical discrimination faced by Indigenous Alaskans.

Eric De Brabandere, Anna Marhold and Nico Schrijver of the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies have been included as arbitrators and Trade and Sustainable Development experts in the newly established European Commission pool in the framework of EU free trade agreements enforcement.