What development pathways support teaching faculty members in research-intensive universities in becoming informal educational leaders?

Arco Timmermans, Professor by special appointment Public Affairs at Leiden University, brought sience to practice by designing an “ideal” academic education programme on public affairs, to be embedded and taught at the graduate level.

What mechanisms shape faculty members' perspectives on their teaching role in research intensive universities?

Central in this thesis are the various forms the research-teaching nexus can take in the university, especially in the Faculty of Humanities. The importance of a strong relation between research and teaching is advocated by many academics, but debate is going on about the forms this strenghthened relation…

One person can already make a difference, and if all students and academics were eco-friendly, the world would be a much more sustainable place. Plastic Soup Surfer Merijn Tinga opened the academic year in Leiden with this message.

On 27 september historian Adam Zamoyski held a captivating lecture on his new book Napoleon: the Man behind the Myth. During this lecture, which was an initiative by Polen in Beeld and the Central and Eastern European Studies Center, Zamoyski answered the question: ‘what were the Napoleonic Wars really…

For the first time in the 441-year history of Leiden University, students will be the keynote speakers at the opening of the new academic year. Their talks will focus on refugees.

When we think about ancient Egypt, the first things that come to mind are usually mummies and sarcophagi. According to researcher and Rijksmuseum van Oudheden curator Lara Weiss, that impression is unjustified. She made an audio tour for the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden that focuses on living Egyptians…

Connecting worlds, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. In that respect, a huge amount happened at Leiden University in 2023.

On the 3rd of September, Adrian Stenton successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Adrian on this achievement!

Sex and power are closely linked, and this was certainly true in the former Dutch colonies. PhD student Sophie Rose investigated how sexual and love relationships influenced eighteenth-century power structures there. 'You can see that there was constant fighting over who stood where in the social hi…

The Catholics were by no means pitiable victims over the two centuries that they had to practise their religion underground, Caroline Lenarduzzi writes in her PhD dissertation. They managed to keep their faith alive from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. PhD defence 25 October.

As a result of the current corona measures, attendance at the Opening of the Academic Year on 6 September will be restricted to a maximum of 75 persons. The ceremony can, however, be viewed online by taking part in a video wall.

The project “Optimizing the responsible researcher” (see below) has enriched the knowledge base about the shared values of responsible biomedical research and the various ways in which these ideals are (or are not) put into practice.

The decolonisation war in Indonesia was violent partly because the Dutch military operated on the conviction that ‘an uprising had to be forcibly suppressed.’ This what historian Christiaan Harinck from the KITLV discovered in his PhD research.

The interdisciplinary, English-taught minor ‘Violence Studies’ looks at violence from very diverse scientific perspectives. What are the benefits from this approach? Students and lecturers evaluate: ‘This minor’s a goldmine’.

Student cooperativeness underlies high quality teacher-student relationships, and has been positively associated with students’ school engagement. Fostering cooperative rather than oppositional student behavior might be especially helpful for protecting at-risk students against academic failure.

The war between Ukraine and Russia is playing out not just on the battlefield but also on the geopolitical playing field of gas. Conflicts at the start of this century about this energy source were, says PhD candidate Ilia Barboutev, a precursor to today’s war.

Today, anyone wanting a new look for their living room watches a home decorating programme or buys an interior design magazine. In the eighteenth century, people went to an upholstry specialist, who would provide you with new wall coverings, curtains and much-needed accessories. PhD candidate Aagje…

The stadtholder’s court in the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands has long been underestimated. Real courts and the associated court culture were to be found elsewhere in Europe. PhD candidate Quinten Somsen is trying to reverse this image. ‘The stadtholder’s court was actually very lively.’

Cambridge History of South Africa, volume 1: From early times to 1885 (edited by Carolyn Hamilton, Bernard K. Mbenga, and Robert Ross) made Choice magazine's list of Outstanding Academic Titles for 2010.

What does academic freedom mean? And how do we give shape to it in Leiden? The Academic Freedom Core Team considered these questions and presented its final report on 17 June.

Between November 2022 and December 2023, 45 one-off and 14 structural security measures were taken for academics or university staff. This is what it says in the External Intimidation, Hatred and Threats against Academics Monitor published by the Universities of the Netherlands (UNL), the Dutch Research…

Connecting scientific fields, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. What did the university achieve in 2024? A small sample.

Senior university lecturer Willemijn Waal was quoted in a National Geographic Portugal article about Hittite culture.

Important dates in the Academic Language Centre calendar

Everyone agrees that university students need to learn academic skills. But what exactly are we talking about? The Leiden Teachers’ Academy organised a conference on 7 November on this topic.