The strangest things come out at night. This is the motto of the Leiden Museum Night due to take place on 28 May. Leiden University is once again playing a key part.

The university has been shaping the city of Leiden for 450 years. A brief history of the university buildings that have helped define the city.

In the summer there are three big introduction weeks for new students – EL CID, HOP and OWL – but students also begin their studies in Leiden or The Hague halfway through the year too. International students, for instance, who are coming for on an exchange for a few months. They got to know the University…

This event is in Dutch. De Verenigde Naties hebben 11 februari uitgeroepen tot International Day of Women & Girls in Science. De Universiteit Leiden viert deze dag met een open publieksevenement met vrouwelijke topwetenschappers van haar bètafaculteit. Iedereen is welkom vanaf 13:30 uur in het Kamerlingh…

On the evening of 11 September 2017, the first five-yearly anniversary of the master’s programme Child Law (Jeugdrecht) was celebrated.

Het NIMAR is een instituut van de Universiteit Leiden dat studenten van verschillende studierichtingen de mogelijkheid biedt om zich te verdiepen in de Marokkaanse cultuur.

On 25 April the Dutch Review Committee for the Deployment of Powers (in Dutch: TIB) presented its first annual report to the First and Second Chamber of the Dutch government. The TIB informs in the annual report on its findings and activities in the period from 1 May 2018 to 1 April 2019. The report…

It was a unique meeting at the Academy Building on 10 April. Around 200 local entrepreneurs came to a networking event hosted by Leiden City Centre Management and Leiden University.

On 12 September 2024, the official ceremony opening the academic year 24-25 for students of the European Law master’s programme took place at Leiden Law School, organised by the Europa Institute.

In a fiery Annie Romein-Verschoor lecture, Sylvana Simons opened up about her experiences as a woman in politics. The leader of the BIJ1 party is regularly the subject of belittling comments and threats. Writer Aafke Romeijn, who reflected on the Simons’ lecture, has also been threatened frequently…

Nominated as best Master thesis by the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (FGGA), Robin Neumann has received the second prize in the Leiden University best thesis competition.

Museum Boerhaave commemorated the hundredth anniversary of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity with the exhibition ‘Einstein & Friends’. The exhibition shined light on the famous physicist’s Dutch friends and his love for Leiden. A review featuring seven images can be found below.

It’s been a turbulent, bizarre and extraordinary year, 2020. Coronavirus turned the lives of everyone at our University upside down. Out teaching, research and all the events that are held in a year: nothing was the same as before. That this affected all of us is clear from the highlights and many reactions…

‘This lecturer’s aim is to challenge his students and to make sure that all of them understand the material,’ was the comment by Christel de Lange, chairman of the Leiden Student Council. Lecturer in Hebrew Studies, Martin Baasten, is the winner of the 2013 LSR Teaching Prize, the prize for the best…

The James Webb Space Telescope has found evidence of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere of a giant planet 700 light years away. This result provides insight into the composition and formation of this gas giant and shows what James Webb is capable of. The research by the international group of astronomers,…

Fifty years ago a group of students started the Leiden Student Working Group on LGBT. Today students can contact Leiden University Pride and for staff there is the LGBTQ+ Core Network. Five questions for Kirsten de Mare, student of linguistics and chair of LU Pride.

Minerva, which calls itself the oldest student association of the Netherlands, has the reputation of being an impenetrable bastion. A lustrum exhibition shows the turbulent history and points to a diversity of contacts: from close bonds with Leiden ‘coffee ladies’ to the visit of Sir Winston Churchi…

30 July is the International Day of Friendship. The student years are a time when many close friendships are formed, and a surprising number of them last a whole lifetime. Two of our alumni share their stories about a special friendship.

LUC The Hague Celebrates its 9th Birthday!

Our students and staff have strong feelings and deep concerns about the ties between Dutch universities and the fossil fuel industry. It’s a thorny issue and as a university we’re keen to chart our course for the future, but we cannot do so alone. I therefore hope to be able to discuss the matter with…

Your own food truck, working from the comforts of a tropical beach in Bali, or a permanent job? Children, living together, getting married, a registered partnership? Thirty-somethings have a lot to think about. On Monday 16 April, Psychologist Nienke Wijnants gave a popular lecture to 120 young alumni…

Environmental scientists Stefano Cucurachi and Paul Behrens and astronomer Jorryt Matthee have received prizes during the New Year's reception of the Faculty of Science on Tuesday 8 January. In addition, Kavli Prize winner Ewine van Dishoeck announced a new award.

‘Make more room for nature on farmland and you'll be surprised at the result.' This was the advice from Geert de Snoo in his Dies lecture.

‘It is a fantastic sum of money,’ enthuses classicist Professor Ineke Sluiter. ‘It gives me not just an award, but a task as well. And in all honesty, I prefer it that way.’ She is already brimming with ideas about what she will do with her Spinoza Prize.

Alumni who live and work in Brussels met on 18 February at the annual Leiden Alumni in Brussels Event. As well as celebrating Leiden University’s 450th anniversary, they also looked at the challenges Europe faces.

Rosalien van der Poel has worked in every nook and cranny of the University over the past 30 years. Now, as institute manager, she is the lynchpin of the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA), the only institute in the Netherlands where artists can obtain a PhD from a university. 'This is where…

'Academics who share their knowledge with the outside world on social media are often insulted or even threatened. Especially female academics and academics of colour seem to regularly be the victim of sexist and racist comments.' This is what Ineke Sluiter, Professor of Greek Language and Literature…

‘It is a fantastic sum of money,’ enthuses classicist Professor Ineke Sluiter. ‘It gives me not just an award, but a task as well. And in all honesty, I prefer it that way.’ She is already brimming with ideas about what she will do with her Spinoza Prize.

The Leiden University’s Program for Cyber Norms, a research platform to investigate the development and implementation of law and policy applicable to uses of ICTs, in cooperation with the think-tank ICT4Peace conducted a global open consultation on how to implement the UN Group of Governmental Experts’…

The aim of this project is to study the influence of Longinus’s treatise ‘On the sublime’ on practice and theory of architecture and theatre in seventeenth-century Paris and Amsterdam.

Fancy burning off some calories after a day’s studying? Or perhaps you’d prefer to spend your evenings on the stage? Either way, the good news is that Leiden also has a lot to offer in the areas of sport and culture.

From 14 to 29 PhD candidates, seven actively involved faculties and, above all, lots of innovative interdisciplinary research, all with data science as the common denominator. The university’s Data Science Research Programme (DSO) has proven so successful that after five years on a start-up grant it…

In 1960, Albert Winsemius started to help the city state of Singapore achieve its rapid rise out of economic misery. He helped the Singaporean government understand how the Netherlands had managed to rebuild so quickly after the Second World War, with the help of the American Marshall Plan. PhD defence…

Islam has a rich and fascinating history, but if you talk about it in the classroom, all kinds of opinions and emotions come up. 'How do I incorporate these responses into my lessons?' The Netherlands Institute in Morocco is organising a study trip on ‘Islam and Citizenship’. Fourteen teachers from…

Psychologen laten zich horen over de plannen om de internationale bacheloropleidingen op te heffen in de Randstad en Tilburg. Het inititatief #Ikbeneenpsycholoog van Judith Schomaker op LinkedIn vindt navolging. Lees een selectie van de posts en ook het blog van Eiko Fried over de consequenties.

Jaïr van Rhenen studied Medicine in Leiden and is now a GP in the largely religious Veenendaal. Before this, he worked as a tropical medicine doctor in Lesotho. ‘If you have the prospect of an afterlife, you often respond differently to illness.’

So many interesting programmes, but which one suits me best? It was the Bachelor’s Open Day in Leiden and The Hague on Saturday 12 October. Among the many things to do in The Hague, prospective students could find out more about three new bachelor’s programmes: Science for Sustainable Societies, Cybersecurity…

Ten Leiden social and behavioural scientists have successfully applied for the NWO Open Competition. With this Open Competition, NWO gives researchers the chance to start small, high-risk, innovative or promising research projects.

Scientists of the faculty of Governance and Global Affairs research completely different subject, among which terrorism, cybercrime and migration. In the upcoming weeks we will give the floor to several of our very best researchers. In this episode: Constant Hijzen researches secret services.

Morning yoga, having your resumé checked at the information market, or dancing for inclusiveness: just a small selection of the activities of the first Science PhD Day on Thursday 18 April. Around 120 PhD candidates from all eight institutes of our faculty attended the day. 'A great success', according…

A Dutch-Italian-German team of astronomers has observed a huge glow of radio emission around a cluster of thousands of galaxies. They combined data from thousands of LOFAR antennas that were focused for 18 nights on an area the size of four full moons. This is the first time astronomers have been able…

The new book, ‘Njord in de Oorlog’ (Njord during the War), describes how the Leiden student rowing club was affected by the Second World War in a detailed series of personal stories. On Monday 16 November, Njord president Rosalie ten Wolde presented the first copy to Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker.

Rianne Vink, one of the student counsellors, explains what a student counsellor does.

Researchers from Leiden University are working with Ouwehands Zoo to improve our understanding of emotions and intelligence in orangutans. Visitors to the zoo can now watch orangutans as they play with computer touch screens.

Global versus local, democracy versus dictatorship, tradition versus modernisation: such contrasts make it difficult for anthropologists. They look in detail at what really happens and can therefore add some nuance to blueprints and debates, is what Frank Pieke, Professor in Modern China Studies, will…

Rowie Stolk ontving op 16 mei Rowie Stolk de VAR-Lex Michiels prijs voor haar proefschrift ‘Procederende belangenorganisaties in de polder: Een interdisciplinair perspectief op de toegang tot de rechter’.

A European team of astronomers has discovered the largest stellar black hole in the Milky Way. It is more than thirty times as massive as our sun and is located in the constellation of Aquila, about two thousand light-years from Earth. The astronomers stumbled upon the black hole by chance while preparing…

The bacterium Vibrio cholerae is a serious threat to our health because it is the causative agent of cholera. Worldwide, over a billion people per year are at risk of cholera infection. New strains of V. cholerae are resistant to the multiple drugs used to treat cholera, meaning that new types of drugs…

In many student cities, the number of corona infections grows, and in Leiden we can also see rising figures. Especially in student housing, it is sometimes difficult to keep your distance, how do you do that? We asked students about mutual agreements in their student housing.