Leiden University offers ambitious students the freedom to develop their own area of expertise.

The Dutch temporary bridging measure for self-employed professionals (known as Tozo) was set up to help Dutch self-employed professionals who are experiencing financial difficulties due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Last week, the ombudsman announced an investigation into the scheme for the self-employed.…

At 1 January 2019 NISIS will move from Leiden University to Utrecht University. Dutch research schools have to change host universities after a certain period and now it is time for NISIS to move.

The Netherlands Bureau of Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) has reappointed Professor Koen Caminada as Academic Partner for the sector Public Finance, and specifically Government Finance, as of 1 January 2017.

At the end of November/early December a delegation from Leiden Law School, led by Dean Joanne van der Leun, will a number of various partner universities and organisations in Indonesia.

Annelien Bouland, PhD candidate at the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society, was interviewed by VPRO Bureau Buitenland (NPO Radio 1) about the Senegalese TV Series 'Mistress of a married man' (‘Maîtresse d’un homme marié’).

The government is investing 646 million euros and has set aside a further 3.5 billion to drive economic growth in the Netherlands. Much of the National Growth Fund will be used for scientific innovations. Leiden University is involved in three of the projects.

Leiden’s beadle, Willem van Beelen, is retiring on 29 February. How does he look back on his career and what do those in the know have to say about him?

Wouter Moerland is on a two-year secondment as ecology adviser at the Municipality of Leiden. This biology alumnus talks animatedly about his work. ‘We’re working hard to increase nature’s chances in town.’

TEXTS FROM ANCIENT EGYPT. Highlights from the Collection of the Leiden Papyrological Institute. Online exhibition on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the foundation ‘Het Leids Papyrologisch Instituut’ in 2015.

An international team led by Leiden astronomers has, after years of searching and defying the boundaries of a telescope, for the first time directly captured polarised light from an exoplanet. From this light they can deduct that a disk of dust and gas orbits the exoplanet. In this disk moons are possibly…

With new algorithms and supercomputers, an incredibly detailed radio map of the universe was created. Now astronomers can look at radio data of galaxies with much more precision. This was published in Nature Astronomy by Leiden PhD student Frits Sweijen and colleagues.

Astronomer Frans Snik searches for extraterrestrial life. He doesn’t so much look at stars as at the ‘exoplanets’ alongside them.

ESA’s Gaia mission has produced the richest star catalogue to date, including high-precision measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars and revealing previously unseen details of our home Galaxy.

Until the 18th century, Latin annotations of well-known classical texts were an important source of scientific knowledge, but over the course of time the texts lost their authority. Classical scholar Maarten Jansen re-examines the annotations of Virgil's Aeneid. PhD defence 20 September.

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…

From a billionaires’ space race to the launch of tens of thousands of minisatellites: space is becoming busier than ever. This means more than enough work for Tanja Masson-Swaan, an assistant professor at the Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University. Because who makes the rules and makes…

The president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has personally invited Jan Slikkeveer, professor of Ethnobotanical Knowledge Systems in Developing Countries, to give a lecture during the World Culture Forum. The Forum will be hosted in Indonesia from 24 to 27 November.

Leiden is proud to announce that the city has been selected to host the 33rd Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA), scheduled for 25-28 August 2027.

A research team from Leiden University, in cooperation with Bureau Boekhoorn Sociaal-Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek en Advies (BBSO), is to evaluate Dutch counterterrorism legislation.

On Monday 9 May, IIASL alumnus Adrian Young gave a very satisfying cross-disciplinary session between law and the arts, on the preservation of heritage in space.

Tanja Masson-Zwaan, an assistant professor at the Institute of Air and Space Law, spoke on Friday 14 April about space mining on BBC Radio.

The article deals with an issue that will be at the heart of the World Health Assembly to be held in May, namely the concept of ‘deep prevention’ and the importance of its integration in the Global Pandemic Treaty - which has been recently proposed by the European Council and currently endorsed by more…

NASA is offering to buy lunar samples collected by companies for a token sum primarily to set a precedent for space resource rights on the moon. However, there is not international consensus on the U.S. position on the rights to extracted resources.

The Social and Cultural Plan Bureau (SCP) published the report “The social state of the Netherlands”. In this research is it stated that there is no such thing as a political shift to the right. In view of the fact that the right wing is better represented in the House of Commons, this is a remarkable…

The International Astronautical Congress (IAC) that took place last week in Paris was extremely successful for IIASL.

In early January, Joanne van der Leun (Dean of the Leiden Law School), Ton Liefaard (Program Director of the Advanced Studies in International Children’s Rights, LL.M), and Anette van Sandwijk (Head Bureau International Education) visited China.

How anonymous is an individual in a social network? And is it possible for hackers to extract sensitive information from data? These were the main topics of the hackathon organized by POPNET and the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) on May 3 at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science.

On 19 November 2018, the American Bar Association (ABA), Section of Antitrust Law organized a teleconference “Sports and Antitrust: Breaking the Ice”.

At a recent meeting, the leaders of the European Union formally approved Ukraine and Moldova’s candidate status to join the bloc. The message is: you are welcome to join our European family in due course.

It has been crackling within the European People's Party (EPP) for months, but is it also going to explode? Michiel Luining, lecturer at the Institute of Public Administration at Leiden University, gives an explanation of the suspension of Fidesz, the party of the Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán,…

In Indonesië zijn studenten massaal in opstand gekomen tegen de regering, die vlak voordat er straks een nieuw parlement aantreedt, nog snel een aantal nieuwe wetten wil doorvoeren.

De coalitie houdt woensdag en donderdag topoverleg over de koopkrachtdaling van 6,8%. Het kabinet wil deze ongekende koopkrachtval compenseren, maar hoe kan dat effectief en enigszins betaalbaar?

2025 was a year to remember at our faculty. We celebrated our 450th anniversary, launched new degree programmes and welcomed many inspiring speakers, yet we also felt the weight of budget constraints. Our year in a nutshell:

The Faculty of Humanities has two advisory groups for Diversty & Inclusion: one for staff members and one for students.

Staff exchanges are an extremely enjoyable way to discover other education systems, gain international and intercultural experience, develop new professional skills and network with foreign colleagues.

What is the Fine Mechanical Department?

PhD Research Projects at LUCDH and Affiliated Faculties

On 11 November, Leiden University and the '3 October Vereeniging' confirmed their special relationship and collaboration in a covenant. This document lays down the way in which the two partners will be involved in the future celebration and commemoration of the Relief of Leiden.

A recent publication in Oryx, The International Journal of Conservation by Tumenta et al., 2013 (Leiden University) on human-lion conflict over livestock depredation in Waza National Park, Cameroon has demonstrated that the human-lion conflict remains an important factor in the depletion of lion pop…

In Germany, the United States and even in Vietnam: all over the world, the Leiden discovery of the birth of two planets was shared. Astronomer Sebastiaan Haffert and his team were able to record multiple planets in the making for the first time and published their findings in Nature Astronomy. A unique…

From 21 August to 24 August, a Chinese delegation together with the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (RWI) conducted a study visit to Leiden Law School at Leiden University. Leiden Law School’s Child Law Department organized the study trip.

On 21 March 2018, the Dutch people will vote for local their municipality board. In preparation for these elections, the local lobbying groups are more than ever present to voice their own local interests. Arco Timmermans, Endowed Professor Public Affairs at Leiden University, discusses these groups…

You can follow the construction of the Wijnhaven quarter in The Hague, where the Faculties of Governance and Global Affairs and Humanities will hire the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floor, live via webcam.

De maatschappelijke coalitie ‘Over Informatie Gesproken’ heeft recent acht aanvragen geselecteerd om de informatierelatie tussen overheid en burger te verbeteren. De aanvraag ‘Van een reactieve naar een proactieve overheid: ruimte voor proactieve dienstverlening in de AVG en de Awb’ van dr. Fatma Çapkurt,…

Dr Antonio Missiroli has been appointed as Associate Senior Policy Fellow for Emerging Security Threats at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA).

Moldavia is going through a governmental crisis. Antoaneta Dimitrova was asked to clarify the events on the Dutch radio programme ‘Bureau Buitenland’. She commented on the current political relations but also issued a warning: ‘Panic is rising, there is a real danger of conflict in the country.’

The ‘international classroom’ is important for our faculty. Students have the opportunity to expand their awareness and understanding of other cultures and it helps to advance critical thinking and develop an appreciation of different perspectives. For these reasons, we also go abroad to recruit students…