There was a lot of fuss last week about the ‘dragnet law’, in which intelligence services are now authorised to conduct large-scale tapping of cable communications. The public image here is that the privacy of innocent citizens will almost certainly be violated. Paul Abels, professor of governance of…

Our research regularly receives attention in the (Dutch) popular media. Here is an overview.

For most of the past ten years, Europe has been in a state of ‘crisis’. The bank crisis mutated seamlessly via the Euro crisis to the present migrant crisis. Whereas previously the general assumption was that even closer cooperation within the European Union was a foregone conclusion, the EU is now…

What can we learn from how maritime conflicts were managed in the past? What significance did Maritime Conflict Management have in shaping the standards of diplomacy and international law in pre-modern Atlantic Europe (1200-1600)?

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2018, as well as special appointments and royal distinctions.

Leiden University regularly confers honorary doctorates, and presents awards and prizes.

For decades, academic publishing has followed a familiar script: Conduct research → write a paper → submit to a journal → (wait) → peer review → (revise) → maybe get accepted → finally, publish. Yet, this traditional model is increasingly under scrutiny, as several structural issues have become difficult…

Learn how to apply for the MSc International Politics at Leiden University: step-by-step procedure, submitting documents via Studielink, and follow-up guidance.

Learn how to apply for the MSc International Organisation at Leiden University, including steps for submitting your documents, using Studielink, and following up.

On 28 November 2025, Leiden University and PLNT Leiden hosted “The Knowledge Orchard” - an event aimed at starting up/ enhancing interdisciplinary cooperation between academics at Leiden University, and improving collaboration between Leiden researchers and external partners in research and educatio…

Extensive research is being conducted at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology on developments in sentencing and punitive measures and how judges and other actors in the criminal justice system reach decisions. Another focus area is how punishments and measures are implemented and the effect…

Follow the step-by-step application procedure for the MSc Dutch Politics at Leiden University: start with Studielink, proceed via uSis, submit your request, and register once admitted.

Our selection and placement procedure starts with your application and ends with—hopefully—an invitation to you to enrol as an IRO student. This page tells you all you need to know about the steps to be taken in between.

Learn how to apply for the MSc in Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Development at Leiden University: step‑by‑step procedure, submission via Studielink, and next steps.

The Division of Systems Pharmacology and Pharmacy (SPP) aims to develop precision medicine approaches to characterise and predict variation in treatment response and enhance translational drug development strategies.

Learn how to apply for the Master's programme Political Theory: Legitimacy and Justice at Leiden University with step-by-step application instructions, document submission via Studielink, and next steps after applying.

On this page you will find an overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2025, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.

Learn how to apply for the MSc The Politics of Artificial Intelligence at Leiden University, including steps for submitting your documents, using Studielink, and following up.

Discover the application procedure for the MSc Democracy and Representation at Leiden University: step-by-step guidance, submitting required documents, and what happens after you apply.

Overview of granting opportunities in the wider digital humanities community. Follow links for the most up-to-date details on deadline dates/times and conditions for applying.

More than a thousand 17th- and 18th-century Dutch letters from seized ships are now available online. The letters are a gold mine for researchers wanting to study the everyday language used by men and women during this period.

Rosan Kuin started her PhD in July at the LACDR under supervision of prof. Gerard van Westen and Dr. Meindert Lamers. She completed a BSc. in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the VU University in Amsterdam in 2017. After that she started two master programs, Drug Discovery & Safety with a specialization in…

In the programme NWO Open Competition Domain Science - GROOT, twenty new consortia will start a large research project. This boost of more than 47 million euros will make new research possible in the science domain. Among the winners is the Nanoscale Regulators of Photosynthesis consortium in which…

It gives us great pleasure to report that the search for a University Lecturer in Christianity in the Modern World has resulted in the appointment of Corey Williams, starting January 2015.

The 2015 Dissertation Prize of the Global Neutrino Network has been awarded to Tri Astraatmadja, who was part of the Leiden/Nikhef ANTARES group during his PhD research. Astraatmadja receives the award for his thesis 'Starlight between the waves: In search of TeV photon emission from Gamma-Ray Bursts…

On 6-8 and 10-13 November 2020, the Network for Migration Law (Netzwerk Migrationsrecht) organised their 14th annual conference on the topic of ‘law at the border’.

The Joan van der Waals colloquium is an ongoing bi-weekly lecture series.

PhD Research Projects:

The Board of Governors of Leiden University has initiated the process of finding a new Vice-Rector Magnificus who will take up the position on 1 August 2016. Executive search agency Van der Kruijs is assisting with the search.

Five Leiden astronomers tell about science in the podcast Astronomy et al. This podcast was set up by Ricardo Garcia Soto in September 2016 and is focused on anyone who is interested in science.

This header image was once elected Image of the Week by De Volkskrant and won second place in the LION Image Award. The research behind it is no less successful if we’re counting prizes. Last August, group leader Tjerk Oosterkamp was awarded an NWO Projectruimte grant, and now NWO-TTW grants him an…

To what extent is astronomy woven into our culture? Starting the 16th of October, you can visit the Shared Sky exhibition at the Old Observatory and search for the answer to that question. The exhibition explores the knowledge, colours and the beauty of the nightsky as seen by the eyes and expressed…

The Index of Middle English Prose, of which twenty-three volumes have been published since 1984, now has an online presence at imep.lib.cam.ac.uk. Thanks to the kind co-operation of Cambridge University Library and of the publishers, Boydell & Brewer, the indexes to all the volumes are now available…

On Thursday 19 October, the Crisis and Security Management programme welcomed back six alumni for an alumni panel.

An international team of scientists including Leiden's Joe Callingham has discovered nineteen red dwarf stars that unexpectedly emit radio waves. The outbursts possibly originate from interaction with exoplanets. The results of the research appear in two scientific publications.

Plants love favourable microbes such as bacteria and fungi: they grow better and become healthier. Jos Raaijmakers, Professor of Microbial Ecology, is in search of the right microbes to be used in agriculture. Inaugural lecture 13 November.

Castles, monasteries and bridges, but also city profiles, history prints and water management works. Leiden University Libraries (UBL) manages one of the most important collections of topographical images in the Netherlands. The collection, bequested to UBL by Johannes Tiberius Bodel Nijenhuis (1797-1872)…

Artificial intelligence systems are smart. They can recognize patterns better than humans, for example. Yet humans are still very much needed. How can you better steer those AI systems? LIACS lecturer Jan van Rijn wrote a book about this together with a number of colleagues. We asked him a few quest…

Leiden PhD student Peter Koymans has been declared ‘best mathematics PhD student’ by the Royal Dutch Mathematical Society (KWG). He received the prize at the Dutch Mathematical Congress (NMC) on 24 and 25 April. With his talk about his research into the Cohen-Lenstra conjecture, Koymans left eleven…

Isabel van Vledder and Dieuwertje van der Vlugt, 2 astronomy students from Leiden University, have mapped the entire Milky Way galaxy in dwarf stars for the first time. This result is the most comprehensive model ever for the distribution of these stars. The findings appear in a new paper in Monthly…

Last week, aviation professionals and leaders from around the world gathered in Chicago to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Chicago Convention, the landmark treaty that laid the foundation for modern international civil aviation and established the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).…

Majorana particles have been getting bad publicity: a claimed discovery in ultracold nanowires had to be retracted. Now Leiden physicists open up a new door to detecting Majoranas in a different experimental system, the Fu-Kane heterostructure, they announce in Physical Review Letters.

On Thursday 3 November Leiden University will celebrate the official opening of two wall formulas in the city centre. As of now, Snell’s law and the Lorentz force formula shine on two walls in the heart of Leiden. They are part of a project to display at least ten groundbreaking formulas with a Leiden…