History student Mitchell Wiegand Bruss is taking part in the water council elections. Whereas until recently he had no idea what the governing body stands for, he now wants to create awareness among other students about the political body.

A few weeks ago, Dutch pension giant ABP decided to divest from fossil fuels. But is this actually going to help the climate? Natascha van der Zwan, Arjen van der Heide and Philipp Golka (Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University) address this question in our new article for S&D.

Sterre ter Haar has won the Rachel Carson Graduation Prize for her thesis on how rising levels of CO₂ affect the nutrient content of plants. For the Industrial Ecology student, the award is a crowning achievement after a difficult period of recovering from long COVID.

Six alumni of the Crisis and Security Management – Governance of Crisis master’s programme shared their experiences and career advice with students on 15 October, during a panel discussion.

A team including staff from Leiden University won the Open Initiative Trophy on 11 February, a prize for the best open science initiative in the Netherlands. The winners developed Reprohak, a hackathon-like event where participants repeat research to see whether the results were reproducible.

Leiden University and African Child Policy Forum hold ‘ground-breaking’ workshop on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and human rights in Africa

The energy transition is already a huge challenge for society, but sustainable use of resources is even more complicated. Yet it is at least as urgent. Ester van der Voet has been working on it for decades, for example within the United Nations. Since February, she is a professor at the Centre for Environmental…

At Leiden University College, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer urged Europe to show unity and strength in a world defined by fear, power politics, and uncertainty.

First-year Public Administration students write consultancy report for municipality The Hague

A degree in the Humanities provides a strong start in the labour market, according to research conducted among alumni who graduated between 2020 and 2024.

With a healthy dose of logic and creativity, mathematics student Lance Bakker shows how computers can prove complex mathematics. His method proves intricate formulas without calculating every intermediate step. It earned him a nomination for the Leiden Science Young Talent Award 2025.

Every student learns about science, but those of the Master Honours Class ‘The Academic Life’ went an extra mile. They learned all the ins-and-outs of academia and rounded off this successful lecture series with a final session on evaluating scientific research.

The FGGA starter grants provide researchers with the opportunity to launch innovative projects that contribute to both scientific knowledge and societal impact. In this article, Allard de Graaf and Joy Lee share their experiences and ambitions for their research, made possible by this funding.

On 5 May we celebrate freedom, a basic human right that should not be taken for granted. We asked international students and staff what it means to them.

Physicist Milan Allan will build an instrument that will bring superconductivity research further. He has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant of 2 million euros over the next five years. With his PairNoise programme he aims to detect paired electrons as they occur just above the temperature at which…

The Schoof cabinet has presented its budget. As expected, higher education is facing severe cuts. In the coming period, the Executive Board will regularly look at the consequences of what it deems an irresponsible policy.

Nicky Boer is enrolled in the Educational Master’s Programme in Social Studies/Social Sciences at ICLON, the Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching.

The Faculty of Archaeology is pleased to announce that Dr Sarah Schrader has been appointed as the new Head of the Department of Archaeological Sciences (DV). In April 2026 she succeeds Dr Jason Laffoon, who has led the department for the past six years.

The jury of the Africa Thesis Award is delighted to announce that the 2025 prize has been awarded to Yonwaba Matshobotiyana of the University of the Free State, South Africa, with a thesis on Black women's poetry in South Africa.

Research

Ammonia has been feeding the world for decades as a fertiliser and is now rapidly emerging as a carbon free fuel for shipping and industry. But if we focus only on CO₂ emissions, we risk creating new nitrogen problems, warns nitrogen expert Jan Willem Erisman in the journal One Earth.

On 17 October, a representative from the ERC Safe & Sound project attended the first edition of WE ROBOT Europe in Berlin. At the conference, speakers and participants from the academic world, policy bodies and industry shared and discussed their thoughts on robotics regulation in the EU and the US.…

The SENSYN project has found a solution to few public datasets for criminological research: synthetic datasets. Marieke Liem talks about this unique innovation

Middle East Studies Lecture

The POPcorner, Career Service en Community Engagement Service are here to support you during your studies. This monthly newsletter provides an overview of all our activities in May!

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…

Festival

Career and apply for jobs

The POPcorner, Career Service and Community Engagement Service are happy to support you during your study career. Every month you will find an overview of our activities here!

The Aernout van Lynden Global Citizenship Award award is a recognition given by the LUC community. Each year a student who has demonstrated the qualities of active engagement, responsive and responsible participation in civic and/or community building, within and/or beyond LUC is presented with the…

Last semester, bachelor’s students in Religious Studies spent a lot of time in community centres in Leiden. The reason: field research into loneliness in the city.

The Ecuadorian Pachakutik party is one of the oldest indigenous political movements in Latin America. Despite not being very successful at the polls and hardly having organisational resources at its disposal, Pachakutik is still part of Ecuador’s political landscape. In her dissertation, Political Scientist…

Should Leiden University cut its ties with the fossil fuel industry forthwith? This was the main question in a debate between students and staff. The answer was clearer for some than for others.

Today, 13 May 2024, Leiden University’s Executive Board is publishing the advice of the committee that investigated reports of unacceptable behaviour and breaches of academic integrity. These reports were about a professor from the university and their partner (a former member of the university staf…

Lecture

Most people talk about truck drivers rather than to them. That’s an error of judgement, says PhD candidate Anke van der Hoeven, who explains why we should be making their lives easier. ‘People just don’t realise it, but they’re an invisible group that keeps the European economy running.’

How can you find an internship or research project and what arrangements do you need to make?

Welcome to Leiden University

An international visitation committee has judged the research programme of the Institute of Public Administration of Leiden University as excellent. The report, which looked at the period 2014-2019, was published last week.

Cultural anthropologist Sabine Luning, cultural historian Paul van de Laar and professor of architecture and urban development history Carola Hein say that the things that are not shown in images are also worth studying.

Leiden criminologists have co-developed an artificial intelligence technology that tracks firearms incidents by scanning over 350 news sources.

High-quality education, research involving multiple faculties, collaboration between universities and central government funding to make all this possible: these were the topics covered in a working visit of the Standing Committee for Education, Culture and Science (OCW) to the Association of Universities…

Lecture

Daniël Vredenberg did his master’s internship at the communications department of the Rijksvastgoedbedrijf. In this interview, he talks about his internship and the difference between actually working at an organisation, as he is currently doing, and doing an internship.

With lab tours, presentations and an information fair, Leiden University’s Master’s Open Day gave students a good impression of our master’s programmes and the career prospects that come with them.

For thousands of years, the prehistoric communities of the Low Countries followed their own path, compared with the rest of Europe. An international research team has now published these findings in Nature.

Leiden University and four other Dutch universities will appoint 51 PhD candidates to conduct solution-oriented research for and with the African continent.

In August 2022 we welcome our new colleague Dr Letty ten Harkel as Assistant Professor in Roman and Post-Roman Archaeology. For the past ten years she has built up an impressive track record in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. Read the interview about her background and research…

Researchers from the Institute of Psychology have secured NWO Open Competition XS grants, each worth up to €50,000. One of the projects explores how making music together can enhance cooperation. Discover more about all five research projects.