Elsevier has extended its co-operation with Leiden University Libraries’ Centre for Digital scholarship and the Scaliger Institute for two more years on a fellowship programme to support the study of digital collections.

Since the demonstration over a year ago on the Wijnhaven campus, Leiden University has developed plans and initiatives to create the safest possible work and study environment for our university community. The Executive Board would like to explain what has happened since and what else we can expect…

Historians recently started preliminary research on Leiden University’s role in colonialism and historical slavery. Our knowledge about this is too limited and fragmented. They are looking with fresh eyes at Leiden’s archives and collections. An interview with historians Alicia Schrikker and Ligia G…

Houses, warehouses, wells, a mooring and even a stable. All of this can be seen on the oldest known map of the island of Dejima acquired by Leiden University Libraries (UBL). The map provides a highly detailed picture of a tiny living environment on the isolated island.

From Monday 21 December onwards, the Reading Room Special Collections will be accessible only to Leiden University researchers and students relying on the Special Collections. This way, the library can meet the government's wish to continue conducting research while limiting travel movements. The Reading…

Leiden University contributed to colonialism and slavery through its research and teaching. And governors and residents of Leiden had an active role in colonial networks. These are the findings of two explorative studies presented on 3 April.

Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker will head a delegation that is visiting Indonesia at the end of June. The visit is to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘Leiden’ institute KITLV-Jakarta. What does this institute do and why is Indonesia important to the University?

From March 1, Alenka Prinčič will be the new Head of the Centre for Digital Scholarship (CDS) at Leiden University Libraries. Her expertise in the areas of Research Support, Research Infrastructures and Open Publishing as well as her longstanding experience as a manager are excellent starting points…

An extra-long cortège, three honorary doctorates, a quiz about 450 years of university history, a Dies Natalis rap and a call to defend academic freedom: these all featured in Leiden University’s 450th Dies Natalis celebration and the official start of its jubilee year.

Are you curious about how the human skeleton works? Discover this and more on 3 October in Leiden and on 4 October in The Hague.

Leiden University celebrated its 444th anniversary with a historical procession on 8 February. It celebrated this year’s Dies Natalis in time-honoured fashion with a ceremony in the Pieterskerk, but broke with tradition by sending professors out to primary schools.

Leiden University Libraries has been elected to the Executive Committee of the IIIF Consortium. The term of office is two years starting from January 2022.

Starting in September, 55,000 books from the Leiden University Libraries will be digitized. This marks Leiden University’s contribution to the successful partnership between the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) and Google.

Private collectors John Steegh and Harrie Teunissen from Dordrecht have donated their entire collection of maps, city plans and atlases to Leiden University Libraries (UBL). In almost 40 years they brought together circa 17,000 map sheets and 2,300 atlases and travel guides. Especially the thematic…

On December 3rd, AI4LAM (Artificial Intelligence for Libraries, Archives, and Museums) was launched in London. Leiden University Libraries (UBL)is a founding member, along with more than 40 leading international heritage and knowledge institutions. Together with our partners in AI4LAM, UBL aims to promote…

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…

A collection of uncatalogued books from the Middle East is now available through the Leiden University Libraries’ (UBL) catalogue. The collection contains over 12,000 books mainly written in Arabic, but also in multiple other languages from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, including Persian,…

An international consortium of research institutes, universities and non-academic partners in six European countries, including Leiden University, has been awarded with a research grant from ERC Marie Curie ITN for the project Mediating Islam in the Digital Age (MIDA). On behalf of Leiden University…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) in partnership with Elsevier hosted a series of online seminars on the challenges involved in achieving reproducibility in research. The seminars aimed to identify best practices that can help to overcome central challenges around reproducibility, and to convey several…

The board of the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO) has agreed on June 27 on a plan for closer collaboration with Leiden University and the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO). The plan includes the launch of a NINO research institute with an annual budget of approximately 300.000 euro.

In his leaving interview, Martijn Ridderbos doesn’t have to think long when asked what he is most proud of. ‘Bringing people together; creating things together. Reducing the gap between researchers and the staff who support them because the latter are essential. We’ve achieved that and the seeds have…

We are living in turbulent times. Various conflicts in other parts of the world at times give rise to feelings of anxiety, unrest and anger in our country too. We also see this happening in our academic community.

Library, Research

Open Access will be on the international agenda from 22 to 28 October 2018. Dutch Minister for Education, Culture and Science Ingrid van Engelshoven says she is proud the Netherlands is in the vanguard of the Open Access movement. ‘Publicly funded research should also be publicly accessible. That is…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been able to acquire an extraordinary Chinese manuscript at auction in Hong Kong. It concerns an Imperial Edict (dated 1582) from the Ming dynasty period, at one time part of the former collection of well-known sinologist and author of detective-novels Robert van…

Leiden fulfills a special role in Dutch literature: as a setting for stories as well as a place of work and residence for leading authors. It is the city described by Willem Bilderdijk as "O Leiden, Flower of Cities," but depicted far less glamorously by F. Bordewijk. The same city where Boudewijn Büch…

An impressive 22 research projects by Leiden researchers have been awarded Veni funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

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.

Dick Schoof kan ook wel de buurman van de Haagse faculteit worden genoemd. Vooral vanuit zijn rol bij de NCTV werkte hij veel samen met de Universiteit Leiden en hielp hij onderwijs en onderzoek vooruit, vertelt hoogleraar Terrorisme en Contraterrorisme Edwin Bakker. ‘Voor een kritische vriend was altijd…

To celebrate the formal launch of the Leiden Chinese Queer Collection (LCQC, 莱顿华语酷儿文献收藏), promote Chinese queer studies scholarship, and raise the visibility of Chinese queer history and culture, the LCQC steering committee will hold a workshop on 24-25 July 2025, under the aegis of the Leiden University…

An evening program in the University Library and Middle Eastern Library in Leiden for everyone who has something to do with the Middle East; from Tajikistan to the Mahreb and from Istanbul to Sanaa. View the oldest books and clay tablets from the collection and listen to the most fascinating stories…

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Urban Studies

New Report Launched by ACPF with the support of the Department of Child Law and Health Law

The Leiden Law Blog is celebrating its first anniversary. The blog attracts many visitors and scores well in Google. Tips for bloggers: link to previous blogs, post them on social media and respond to comments.

They might not have had Twitter, but they did have brochures (pamphlets), the Roman Catholics and ‘modern’ Protestants between 1840 and 1870. In these, they launched a passionate attack on each other’s ideas. Ineke Smit has catalogued the brochures from the collection of the University Library and outlined…

Researchers from Leiden and Delft have found a way to look inside early-modern bookbindings. An x-ray technique has allowed them to search for remains of medieval manuscripts hidden inside the bindings.