Humans and bonobos show striking similarities as well as differences when they see pictures of conspecifics. Both are more interested in photos of conspecifics that show emotion. But while our human attention is more easily drawn to photos of family members and friends that express certain emotions,…

How does digitalisation affect the humanities? The introductory course for the Honours College Humanities Lab challenges students to reflect on this through the production of their very own short film.

On 13 May 2025, Melanie Fink presented her latest research on the role of the duty to reason and other explanation rights to safeguard human dignity in the automated state at the AI & Law Summer School hosted by the University of Tübingen.

The Leiden archaeologist Wil Roebroeks has been awarded the Spinoza prize for his original observations about early hominins and the development of human society, NWO (Netherlands organisation for Scientific Research) announced on Monday 4 June.

Houben and Ten Oever investigate the relationship between public service obligations in EU law (PSOs) and human rights. PSOs served mainly as a correction to free market forces and did not originate from a human rights perspective.

Salvador Santino Regilme, Jr. Associate Professor of International Relations and Program Chair of MA in International Relations, has been honored with the Cecil B. Currey Book Award for 2023. The accolade, presented by the Association for Global South Studies (AGSS), recognizes Regilme’s exceptional…

Lecture, China Seminar

The NYU Abu Dhabi Humanities Research Fellowship for the Study of the Arab World (HRF) invites early-career scholars who wish to contribute to the vibrant research culture of NYUAD’s Saadiyat campus to apply for a residential postdoctoral fellowship, starting September 2026.

Wim Willems and Hanneke Verbeek were awarded with the Die Haghe Prize of 2016 for their book ‘Hier woonden wij. Hoe een stad zijn Joodse verleden herontdekt’ (English: ‘This is where we lived. How a city re-discovers its Jewish past.’) It is an exciting book about the rise and fall of the Jewish community…

External PhD Candidate Liselore Tissen was interviewed by Leiden Global about her work, in which she uses 3D printing. Recently she made a copy of a decorative human skill this way.

Young Dutch people’s reading skills have been declining for years. The main reason for this is that many have difficulty with reading at greater depth. Teach pupils to read actively in order to construct meaning is what Leiden researchers Paul van den Broek, Christine Espin and Anne Helder write in…

On 6 June 2023, Melanie Fink gave a ‘conférence’ at the University of Liège, Belgium in the context of its EU Studies Seminar Cycle, organised by Ljupcho Grozdanovski.

Last week, Humanities Lab honours students presented their research through creative posters and pitches at the Capstone Conference in PLNT Leiden. It was a special edition, where alumni and teachers reminisced over the programme’s 10-year history.

On 27 and 28 April, Simona Demková participated as a panelist at the conference 'A

Economic law, environmental law and human rights are important fields of law for sustainable development. But they do not interact sufficiently, which makes it difficult to implement sustainable development.

It is a familiar phenomenon: you ask the assistant on your phone to call your mother, but it calls a friend instead. Tom Kouwenhoven, PhD student in the SAILS programme, investigates how humans and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can better communicate with each other, so that these kinds of situations…

It is a familiar phenomenon: you ask the assistant on your phone to call your mother, but it calls a friend instead. Tom Kouwenhoven, PhD student in the SAILS programme, investigates how humans and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can better communicate with each other, so that these kinds of situations…

In Spring 2023, Simona Demková and Daniel Mândrescu from the Europa Institute secured the new Leiden University Starting Grant, valued at EUR 240,000, for a collaborative project: ‘The EU’s Human-Centred Digital Transformation.’

In a world beset with war, climate problems and skyrocketing energy prices, it is good to have some 'slack time' now and then. That was Dean Mark Rutgers' message at the Faculty of Humanities' New Year reception.

Many students dread writing a thesis. Master’s student Laura Robustella's practice-based thesis shows that it is well worth the effort. She developed an art exhibition based on her master’s thesis.

Is the possibility of computers making decisions for us in the future realistic? Holger Hoos, professor of Machine Learning, gives his opinion about the future of artificial intelligence in the television show ‘The future is fantastic’ on NPO3.

‘You are the last generation that will have an effective influence on the future of the world.' This was the message given by guest speaker Maurits Groen to the 135 students who graduated at Leiden University College in The Hague on 6 July.

Can smart suggestions help translators work better with machine translation? As machine translation becomes the norm, professional translators are asked to correct its output; a process called post-editing. But how can we make this easier and more effective?

Leiden University's humanities have one of the top places in the Times Higher Education Rankings. This year, we were placed 26th.

An in-depth history of Large Language Models—and what their ubiquity, disruption, and creativity mean from a wider sociopolitical perspective.

Researchers at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) have managed to culture human heart muscle cells on a massive scale. This is an exceptional achievement because it is very difficult to replicate heart muscle cells outside the body. Using a special technique, the researchers have now created…

There was a lot of interest. In front of nearly a hundred researchers, supporting colleagues and Martijn Ridderbos, the Vice-Chairman of the Executive Board, Lotte van Dillen, Research Director of Psychology and Saskia Goedhard, Director of Humanities Operations jointly opened the new lab with a classic…

The goal of the MODOMA-project is to create a computer model of language acquisition.

Architect Elisa Meijer is the face of the Humanities Campus. She knows all the buildings, from the Reuvensplaats to the Matthias de Vrieshof, like the back of her hand. In her role as Housing Adviser she has now spent more than three years dealing with everything necessary for the development of a new…

The lecture series

The Faculty of Humanities will introduce a new assessment system in the next academic year. Marcel van Brunschot, the project leader for the digital assessment migration, is responsible for overseeing the transition to ANS.

Salvador Santino Regilme received Honorable Mention for the 2022 Best Scholarly Article Award from the Sociology of Human Rights Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA). He won for his paper “Visions of Peace Amidst a Human Rights Crisis: War on Drugs in Colombia and the Philippines,”…

Dr. Katharine MacDonald (Faculty of Archaeology) sketches the background to a recent paper in Science Advances, co-authored by her and other members of the Liveable Planet team.

Our humanities graduates are doing well: 70% of our bachelor’s and master’s students find their first job within two months of graduation. And for 83% of our master’s students that first job is at a higher professional or academic level. These are some of the results of the Faculty of Humanities labour…

At high doses, drug candidate BIA 10-2474 binds not only to the protein that it targets, but to other proteins as well. It thus deactivates proteins that are involved in the metabolism of nerve cells. This is what an international group of researchers from Leiden University and Erasmus MC, among others,…

A new position has been created at the Faculty of Humanities. On 1 September, Marian Klamer became the first Director of PhD Programmes at the Graduate School. ‘I want to find the balance.’

In 2018 the Central Asia Initiative at Leiden University offers several fieldwork grants to a max of 7,500 EUR. Only MA or MA Research students enrolled at Leiden University are eligible. The fieldwork should be carried out in one of the Central Asia countries by the end of 2018. The money can be used…

Maxine David is a lecturer in European Politics in the Institute for History and is a busy bee when it comes to teaching. When countries started locking down due to the corona virus, she was in the United States. After some difficulty getting a flight back to her home country, the United Kingdom, she…