Read all about YAL membership and the members of the Young Academy Leiden.

Rietje Knaap’s (83) PhD was a real feat of endurance, but she persisted. ‘You’re married so you don’t need a pension, do you?’ What are the experiences of Knaap and women who followed in her footsteps? In the run-up to International Women’s Day on 8 March, three generations of female doctors look back…

Many people have fled to the Netherlands since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, including students. But even before this war, students with refugee backgrounds were eager to study at Leiden University. How does the University help young people from various backgrounds find their way around the Dutch…

Twenty-two year old student of Leiden University College The Hague, Sara Kemppainen on her role as European Union Delegate at the G(irls)20 Summit, founder of WIL, UWC Alumni, Summit Coordinator and Bachelor student committed to bringing human welfare to the center of tech policy.

Lecture, Tuesday Talks: Science Insights

Seminar

Debate

Book Presentation

Debate, Symposium

Seminar

Seminar

Lecture

Symposium

Lecture

Van Vollenhoven Lecture 2025

Conference

Conference

Lecture, Lunch Research Seminar

The experiential expertise of people with a disability needs to be integrated in diversity & inclusion policy. This message was the common thread at the annual Diversity & Inclusion symposium. Students and staff members engaged in conversation about how the university can become more accessible.

In otherwise energetic desserts at the bottom of the sea, researchers have found oases where microbes can harvest energy. Remarkably, the microbes first have to be buried under starving conditions for 80,000 years. An international group of researchers, amongst them José Mogollón from the Insitute of…

Xander Tielens, Professor of Physics and Chemistry of the Interstellar Space, has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant to study polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in space. The combination of astronomical observations, computer models and lab research makes the research highly interdisciplinary.

In March 2022, a considerable number of non-Western countries abstained (35) or voted against (5) a resolution deploring Russia’s aggression, its violation of the UN Charter and demanding the withdrawal of its forces from the territory of Ukraine. Even fewer countries subsequently actively supported…

How to address loneliness during quarantine, keep healthcare workers healthy, and deal with social distancing in a person’s final hours? Before we can tackle such challenges, it is crucial to understand the perspective of those who suffer from them, say the teachers of a new Master Honours Class: “It…

113 Suicide Prevention gave a guest lecture about suicide prevention at the Spanish Steps in Wijnhaven

Authors: Michèle Bos and Jan Melissen

As schools in the U.S., students have to enter through security gates; schools in Belgium were forced to remain closed for several days after the attacks there; and even in the Netherlands various bomb scares have led to children having to stay at home. And yet fear of terrorism remains a difficult…

Before founding their American colony, the Pilgrim Fathers first lived in Leiden in the early 17th century. This group has no fewer than nine American presidents among its descendants. The University played an important role in the Pilgrims’ life in Leiden.

Sixteen researchers at Leiden University have received a Veni award from the Netherlands Organisation for Academic Research (NWO). This award offers promising young researchers the opportunity to further develop their ideas for a period of three years.

The Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies (NOG) hosts the annual National Research Day, held this year at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. The NOG Research Day is a dedicated platform for sharing the work of junior and senior researchers of Dutch universities in the fields…

In this blog post Saskia Postema and Jan Melissen claim that Chinese UN celebrities’ activism under Xi Jinping has become aligned with the Chinese leadership’s ambitions.

How did the Arabs manage to maintain an empire based on Islamic principles for three hundred years? Arab expert Petra Sijpesteijn and her team will be examining this question over the coming five years, focusing on the correspondence of ordinary people. The research is being funded by an ERC Consolidator…

An international research team is to search for invisible life in the Galápagos Islands. The diversity of bacteria and other microscopic organisms may not be evident to the naked eye, but it is essential to nature. To the islands' giant daisies, for instance: unique endemic plants that are currently…

Tommy Hopstaken and Jochem Haverhoek run an escape room in Kruithuisje, a medieval tower on what was once the perimeter canal in Leiden. They are also secondary-school teachers and make good use of their escape room experience in their lessons. How do their degrees in Dutch and Astronomy come in use…

Three projects with Leiden researchers are to receive a subsidy from NWO for the construction or renovation of large-scale research facilities. They will be working on electron microscopy, an X-omics initiative and an X-ray telescope. The projects are part of the National Roadmap for Large-Scale Scientific…

Nearly 100 students from Leiden University, University of Applied Sciences Leiden and mboRijnland worked together to improve the health of Leiden-Noord. They presented their ideas in Het Gebouw community centre.

If universities want to open their doors to more students and staff from minority groups, good intentions alone will not suffice. That is what Frank Tuitt, Diversity Officer at the University of Denver, has to say. He will speak at the University’s annual Diversity Symposium on 22 January 2020.

Palestinian national Abu Zubaydah was captured by the CIA in March 2002 and has remained in detention ever since, without any form of trial. Leiden professor Helen Duffy is doing all she can to secure his release or a fair trial. Her hopes now lie on international pressure and the UN Working Group on…

Over the past year and a half, China’s diplomacy has attracted attention from media institutions, policy makers and scholars around the globe.

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…

Space diplomacy, defined as ‘processed of dialogue that result in outcomes of cooperation or conflict on a given space issue’ [1], has shielded space from great power conflicts playing out elsewhere – both during the Cold War and in the decades that followed.

Working towards a more inclusive and diverse society, next to your studies. Humanities students Aline-Priscillia Messi and Ruşen Koç devote a considerable amount of hours to this every week. Now they have been nominated for an ECHO Award.

Fourteen of the candidates for the European parliamentary elections on 23 May studied at Leiden University. We ask four of them about their motivation and ambitions. In this article: Conny van Stralen, who studied German, and Maurice Hoogeveen, who studied history.

How do you set up a successful collaboration between science and practice? That was the main theme of the final meeting of a triptych of symposia on how Leiden University can improve inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration.

You check out Facebook to see if one of your friends or someone in your family has done something interesting. Your attention is drawn to a holiday advert. That’s a coincidence, you think, because just before you went to Facebook you had been searching internet for a holiday destination. But this is…

All countries have turned into a global no-go zone and in the Covid-19 crisis flying citizens back home is an unprecedented logistical operation. More hidden from view is that helping people is one thing, but getting through to an elusive public with the objective of inducing behavioural change, is…