Last week, Professor of Law and Society Maartje van der Woude (Van Vollenhoven Institute) gave a lecture at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome.

The dissertation’s general aim is to investigate how a peer educator intervention can promote social acceptance of LGBT in pre-vocational education and whether the activities in this intervention ensure that students learn to respectfully deal with LGBT people in school.

Wrenching poverty, global inequality, violent political and ethnic strife, deadlocked, unresponsive or even collapsing governments, growing dissatisfaction with democracy and missed opportunities for innovation – these are merely some of the challenges of governance and development with which our programme…

Should the media refer to a criminal’s ethnicity? Law students held an online afternoon symposium on discrimination in the criminal justice system – and, while they were at it, society at large.

On 10 February 2025, Melanie Fink presented her recently awarded NWO Veni project at Leiden University’s SAILS Lunch Time-seminars.

Health psychologist Liesbeth van Vliet receives International recognition for her research on doctor-patient communication in the setting of advanced, life-limiting illnesses. She has been awarded the Post Doctoral Research Award at the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) World Congress…

In his PhD research in the field of public administration, Mark Reijnders looked at why people do not receive the help they need. They lose their way in the labyrinthine support system or become bogged down in bureaucracy. In public administration this is known as non-take-up of social care. PhD defence…

Music from a compostable cello, photographs and scents of fungi and a woven tapestry. With her upcoming multimedia project Super Organism, visual artist Suzette Bousema enables people to experience the underground fungal network with all their senses. Environmental scientist Nadia Soudzilovskaia and…

Performance, Subjectivity and Experimentation in Artistic Research: An Interdisciplinary Seminar

The TRI Leiden Second Chance Project aims to promote recovery and re-integration of entrepreneurs who have recently undergone bankruptcy. The Project Team, Jan Adriaanse, Mark Dechesne and Jennifer van Kesteren, have been accepted to speak at the Personal Insolvency Conference themed ‘A Fresh Look at…

On Thursday 10 January the annual Meijers prizes were awarded for the best published article, of each faculty research programme, written by Assistant Professors or other academic staff members. The winners received a certificate and a sum of money to spend on research.

The LUCDH foster the development of new digital research by awarding a number of Small Grants each year. These are our past awardees.

Leiden University College (LUC) staff and students collaborate with societal partners in The Hague through research, coursework, internships, and volunteering, fostering strong connections that continue even after graduation.

‘Islam in de klas’ is a new course targeting primary school teachers to go online on 18 March by the Leiden Islam Academy (LIA). The online course aims to help teachers get better equipped when dealing with Islam-related dilemmas in primary classrooms.

Two terrifying yellow eyes stared at eleven-year-old Francis Lesilau. In the evening light they changed colour: green, amber, back to yellow... The lion had just grabbed one of his camels and now turned to number two. For a moment Francis was nailed to the ground, then he ran towards the predator, screaming.…

Can students solve cold cases? In the elective courses ‘Introduction to Cold Cases’ and ‘Cold Cases’, theory is combined with practice and students investigate actual police files. 'Hopefully, we can add a fresh perspective to investigations.'

During a closing exhibition, participants of the Master Honours Class 'Leiden: City of Refugees?' present their invitation to an imaginary group of 'others'. By combining science with art, students learn to look at society in a different manner.

On November 1st, 2024, professor Johan Kuiper will retire and be appointed as emeritus professor at Leiden University. Since November 2008, Johan Kuiper was professor of Therapeutic Immunomodulation in the division of, at that time, Biopharmaceutics (which later on became the division of BioTherapeutics)…

Bernet Elzinga (Clinical Psychology) is one of the seven scientists from the Leiden University who has received a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros from NWO. Vici is one of the largest grants for individual scientists in the Netherlands. The funding will enable her to do research for the next five years…

Professor of Law and Society Maartje van der Woude is searching for innovative ways to facilitate dialogue about topics that are usually experienced as ‘difficult to talk about’ – such as racism, ethnic profiling, exclusion, crimmigration – with a wide audience.

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.

The lecture series

It is more myth than reality that people with migration backgrounds commit more crime. Leiden has successfully tackled anti-social behaviour by Moroccan youths, says former mayor Henri Lenferink. Good education forms the basis of a healthy and safe society, says ‘crimmigration’ researcher' Maartje van…

Young people are more likely to find long texts unappealing to read, particularly with all the digital distractions. To improve young people’s reading skills, Elise Swart and Hannah De Mulder are starting an innovative study to make reading fun again.

On Friday 16 February 2024, Rudolf E. de Jong passed away unexpectedly in Cairo. Since 2012, he was the director of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC), which he skillfully managed for 12 years. He was laid to rest in Amsterdam on 27 February. Rudolf was 65.

Aya Ezawa bade farewell as Diversity Officer of Leiden University at a celebration in the Academy Building on 11 June. Since her appointment in 2019, she has been a tireless advocate for culture change and a champion for diversity, inclusion and equal opportunities for all.

Synchrony in heart rate, skin conductance and pupil diameter plays a big role in human social interactions, such as gaining trust or being attracted toward each other. This is what Eliska Prochazkova found in several lab and field experiments. PhD defence on 4 March 2021.

The new Humanities Hub in the Huizinga Building was officially opened on Tuesday 3 December. In the different labs, researchers presented the options for using digital technologies in humanities research.

Master’s students in the Honours Class ‘Leiden, City of Refugees?’ were asked to contemplate the concept of ‘the other’ from both an academic and an artistic perspective. The result was the exhibition ‘The Invitation’ which was presented at Stadsbauhaus on 4 June.

Bonobos – just like humans – pay more attention to pictures that show other members of their species displaying emotional behaviour than to neutral scenes. Leiden researcher Dr Mariska Kret made this discovery while conducting research at Apenheul Primate Park.

In Poland the commemoration of acts of resistance is being misused to distort the history of the Holocaust. That is what Cleveringa Professor Jan Grabowski said in his inaugural lecture on 26 November. In her lecture, the second Cleveringa Professor, Barbara Engelking, pointed to the often indifferent…

How to innovate education? In this series, the Honours Academy highlights examples from their educational testing ground that aim to inspire. Today: the liberating effect of pass/fail and ‘unessays’ at Honours College Law.

Lecture

Tackling human trafficking has been a priority on international, national and local policy agendas for some decades now. Yet a number of knowledge gaps stand in the way of how the issue is approached. Interdisciplinary research is essential if we want to expand our knowledge to benefit policy and pr…

Lecture

On 15 May 2025, a roundtable '80 Years of Peace in Europe?' was convened with students and staff at Leiden University to reflect on the anniversary of the end of World War II.

On the 442nd anniversary of the foundation of Leiden University, and at the start of the Leiden Asia Year, lawyer Jan Michiel Otto, an expert in the field of law in developing countries, delivered the first Dies lecture. He compared demagogues in Asia who call upon Muslims to turn against their governments…

The postwar Liberal International Order faces grave challenges today mostly in the form of geopolitical competitions among great powers and exclusionary identity politics unfolding across different countries.

She stands out for the moderate tone she takes in discussions on Dutch talk shows. Without judgement you can have an open conversation, criminal lawyer Natacha Harlequin learned in her student days in Leiden. ‘What I personally think of the alleged act doesn’t matter so much.’

Lecture, Sociolinguistics & Discourse Studies Series

Speech Prosody 2024 includes several poster sessions, the description of which you can find below.

The biweekly Lunch Time Seminar is an online only event, but it is not publicly accessible in real-time. If you would like to attend one of the upcoming sessions, please send an email to sails@liacs.leidenuniv.nl.