Sebastian Diessner, assistant professor at the Institute of Public Administration, has won a grant from the Leverhulme Fund together with three researchers from the United Kingdom. The grant, worth 350,000 euros, is for the research project: 'The Political Economy of Knowledge-Based Growth.'

A study by an international group of scientists headed by Prof. Michael Richardson showed that asymmetry in the snake lungs manifests itself early in development.

Have you had a busy week at work? If so, it’s better to take a walk in a natural environment than to go shopping in the city.

The introduction of market forces in the field of youth protection has failed. This is clearly demonstrated by the unrest and problems surrounding the dismantling and splitting up of youth care organisation Intervence in Zeeland, says Professor of Child Law Mariëlle Bruning.

The number of life sentences in the Netherlands is rising sharply. This is a clear response to the serious drugs violence and brutal attacks on our rule of law. However, criminal justice experts do not believe that this will deter future offenders from carrying out liquidations.

The Executive Board has appointed Professor Harold Linnartz as Professor of Laboratory Physics with effect from 1 June 2011. Linnartz has worked since 2005 as senior lecturer at the Leiden Observatory.

On 15 March 2023, the GLOBTAXGOV team at Leiden Law School met with the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations (CIAT) to explore opportunities for cooperation, to discuss the needs of tax administrations in the field of international taxation and evaluate ongoing projects and new initiatives where…

Diplomatic relations between European countries and Russia are on edge due to ongoing satellite disruptions. Tanja Masson-Zwaan, assistant professor, spoke to Dutch public broadcaster NOS: ‘It’s difficult to prevent this happening.’

Dimiter Toshkov, Olaf van Vliet, Alexandre Afonso and Zouheir El-Sahli from the Institute of Public Administration (FGGA) and the Department of Economics (Faculty of Law) have been commissioned to carry out research for the European Asylum Support Office.

Dr Suliman Ibrahim of the Van Vollenhoven Institute (VVI) will conduct research on problems concerning real property in Libya. The project is commissioned by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Today, February 6th, the new course Wicked Problems Lab (in full: Wicked Problems Lab: working with governance, leadership and social innovation) started. This new course for third-year Honours students is part of the Honours Track

By the time you read this message, it will already be February. But since this is our first newsletter of the year, I still feel compelled to wish all of you a very happy New Year!

From prow to stern, this little boat measures 30 micrometers, about a third of the thickness of a hair. It has been 3D-printed by Leiden physicists Rachel Doherty, Daniela Kraft and colleagues.

Bart de Smit has been appointed to the position of Vice Dean of the Faculty of Science for four years, as of 1 January 2019. After Han de Winde stepped down as Vice Dean in September, De Smit already took over his duties ad interim.

Jasmijn Rana has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska Curie Global Fellowship for her research project “The Embodiment of Racialization: Running Muslim Women and the Sense of Non-Belonging”.

Mehmet Kentel has been named co-winner of the prize, which is given out yearly by the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, for his article “Ruin and Knowledge in Pera: Discovering Istanbul’s Genoese Heritage at the Moment of Its Destruction,” which was published in the fortieth-anniversary volume…

The Netherlands Council of State ruled at the end of March that WhatsApp and text messages on the work and private cell phones of civil servants are considered to be official records. This decision puts the government in a difficult position. How are you going to store millions of texts and WhatsApp…

On Energiepodium.nl, Rob de Wijk, Professor of International Relations and Security at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, states that the Nord Stream 2 Project, a pipeline for Russian gas into Europe, causes a conflict between geopolitics and commerce.

Valentina Carraro gave a presentation titled "Strengthening the Human Rights Council and the UN Treaty Body System" at the 'Reinvigorating the United Nations' Conference organized by the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna on January 27th and 28th. During the conference Valentina presented her research on…

Italian PM Meloni’s election promise to limit the number of boat migrants entering the country looks like being fulfilled with help from Albania. A deal was recently approved that provides for two reception centres for asylum seekers in Albania. Dr Mark Klaassen, an expert in immigration law, questioned…

In the interests of knowledge exchange and research, a delegation from the China Academy of Chinese Medicinal Sciences (CACMS) in Beijing paid a visit to the Hortus botanicus in Leiden. The visit was part of a joint research study on herbal medicine.

On December 1, the Faculty of Archaeology hosted the LANCE internship and job market 2022 for our BA2 and BA3 students. No less than 14 Dutch commercial archaeology firms and 13 faculty staff members informed some 170 students about the archaeological research projects they are carrying out.

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga and Hadassah Drukarch from eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies, recently published the book ‘AI for Healthcare Robotics’, published by CRC Press from Taylor and Francis Group in their AI for Everything Series.

Dr. Joanita Vroom (Near Eastern and Mediterranean archaeology) has been invited to join the prestigious French POMEDOR Project as co-applicant and regional coordinator for Greece and Turkey. The POMEDOR Project focusses on the interaction between population, pottery and food in the Medieval Eastern…

Jacqueline Hylkema, a cultural historian at LUC, will be appointed at Princeton University from January to June 2026. There, she will conduct research on the concept of truth in Dutch political forgeries from the 17th century.

Book historian Erik Kwakkel found an intriguing snippet of text earlier this week, that bears unexpected evidence of some of the problems encoutered by early printers: censorship and the affiliated fuss of seeking and printing Church approval.

Researchers found a way to run programmes that should be impossible to carry out on an imperfect quantum computer. Such programmes are very computationally demanding and the quantum computers that currently exist are not yet up to that task. Unless you use a clever trick, Simon Marshall and Vedran Dunjko…

The study ‘From Law to Practice: Towards a Roadmap to Strengthen Children’s Rights in the Era of Biomedicine’ written by experts from Leiden Law School and submitted to the Council of Europe’s Committee on Bioethics is now available online.

In 1970, compulsory voting was abolished in the Netherlands. It wasn’t functioning at the time, and it was abolished for practical and ideological reasons, says Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, on a BNNVARA podcast.

The Netherlands is facing criticism after a tanker carrying sanctioned Venezuelan oil docked in Curaçao. Hilde Woker, assistant professor and an expert on the law of the sea, calls the incident 'contentious' in NRC newspaper and disputes the US interpretation of international law.

In 2021 a record number of researchers obtained a PhD at Leiden University. Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the number of PhDs conferred was 448, one more than the previous record year of 2018.

In opvanggezinnen voor alleenstaande minderjarige vluchtelingen komen veelvuldig misstanden voor, blijkt uit onderzoek van Zembla. Hoogleraar jeugdrecht Mariëlle Bruning reageert geschrokken tegenover BNN VARA: ‘We moeten zorgen dat we die kinderen in veiligheid brengen.’

The waiting lists in youth care are alarmingly long. This has been confirmed again by a study carried out by a Dutch foundation The Forgotten Child.

Krekels received both the Thesis Award and the TOP Publication Award for her thesis 'Size does matter: drug glucuronidation in children'. Her research led to a new dosage regimen of morphine for babies and toddlers. Both prizes were awarded during the scientific meeting of the NVKFB on Friday 11 Apr…

On Thursday, November 20, 2025, the Leiden Jewish Studies Network celebrated the launch of the book Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) co-authored by Ofer Ashkenazi (Jerusalem), Sarah Wobick-Segev (Hamburg), Shira Miron (Basel) and Rebekka Grossmann…

Leiden biophysicist Stefan Semrau was granted an NWO Vidi earlier this month. He will use the grant to study the role of electricity in embryonic development and tissue regeneration.

Minister Judith Uitermark proposes that 125 seats will become electable through provincial electoral lists and only 25 seats through a national electoral list, according to Dutch RTL news. Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional Law, comments on the plan.

Groenlinks-PvdA has reported two PVV MPs to police for spreading fake images of party leader Frans Timmermans. Bart Schermer spoke to the Volkskrant about the AI images: 'Freedom of speech ends when you threaten others with violence or incite violence.'

The Leiden bachelor’s programmes in Linguistics, Religious Studies and Ancient Near Eastern Studies have received the accolade of ‘top study programme’ in the Keuzegids (Study Guide) 2019 for Universities.

Together with prof. Ton Liefaard, Eva Schmidt was granted a prestigious scholarship from the Research Talent programme of the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

The updated MRI scanner at the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC) will become operational on 29 September. The new version is faster and better than the current model.

On Wednesday September 20th, Diamanto Fragkiadaki received her MSc degree in Psychology. She is the first student to complete the master’s specialisation School Psychology, which started in September 2016.

In August 2010 the Faculty of Archaeology conducted an excavation in the Maashorst-area, situated in the northeastern part of Brabant.

As of 1 February prof. Mariëlle Bruning, dr. Stephanie Rap and Denise Verkroost LL.M. will start the second part of the research project concerning the participation of children in youth care.

Professor Ingrid Tieken (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, LUCL) and Dr Herman Siemens (Institute for Philosophy) have each been awarded an NWO Free Competition award in the Humanities for their research projects.

New website on interdisciplinary, international research on migration and border control.

Never before has so much research been carried out on the therapeutic effect of psychedelic drugs. Researchers at the LIBC Public Day are happy about the effect the drugs can have on depression, anxiety and PTSS, but at the same time they have some doubts. ‘The hype is bound to crash before long.’

From travel stories, travel guides and hotel vignettes to postcards, drawings, menus, brochures, posters and photos. The collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) hold many sources that provide insight into the development of tourism in the Dutch East Indies, present-day Indonesia, from 1870…

Algae are not what immediately spring to mind when people think of threatened species. But even among algae there are species that have a difficult time, such as ‘Aegagropila linnaei’. In the magazine BioScience Christian Bödeker describes the worldwide decline of this species. He calls for the species…

The use of a new type of detector has generated a strong improvement in the resolution of electron microscopes. The 'low-energy electron microscope' (LEEM) can now be used for research on the thinnest possible materials. The tests with the detector represent the first result of the ESCHER project.