Professor Dr. Carsten Stahn LLM., Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice at the University of Leiden, completed his habilitation in July 2020 at the Humboldt-University zu Berlin and acquired the Venia for Constitutional Law, International Law and International Criminal Law. The…

Nico Verloop, Professor Emeritus of Educational Studies at Leiden University, passed away on 5 June 2025. Nico was the founder and first professor-director (from 1995-2010) of ICLON (Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching) at Leiden University.

Work might not always be enjoyable, but what if just a glance at the to-do list brings on a sense of dread? To initiate the conversation about this, the sixth Psychology Connected focused on work pressure and workplace enjoyment, offering tips rooted in positive psychology.

Older people are often approached from the perspective of their limitations when there is often much they still can and want to do. According to Professor Tineke Abma, art is a good way to continue to participate.

The outline agreement proposed by the new cabinet will have serious consequences for higher education and research. If the plans go through, there will be significant cutbacks in our sector. We will keep you up to date with developments on this page.

Conference

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

PhD defence

Members of the End Fossil climate action group, including students from Leiden University, have occupied two rooms in the Lipsius building at the Faculty of Humanities today (23 November 2023).

Whom do you ask for permission to conduct research at a primary school? And how do you collect data in countries where freedom of expression is under threat? This is what staff directly involved in the – often complex – process of research ethics recently discussed at a meeting, with the aid of some…

Second-year MIRD students showcase their thesis research on global issues during the 2025 Thesis Symposium, bridging theory and diplomatic practice.

Tackling radicalisation among young people is a complex issue in which government authorities may choose to apply legal measures. PhD student Nina van Capelleveen examined the risks such legal instruments can pose to the fundamental rights of minors.

Recently, in the midst of coronavirus situation, Professor Corinne Hofman and her team became part of the NWO project Island(er)s at the Helm. Both the application process as well as the start of the project were challenged by the limitations set by Covid-19. ‘As a preparation we travelled through the…

‘If we all possessed just an ounce of Cleveringa, then all would be well in the world,’ said Professor Leo Lucassen. In the Cleveringa debate on the line between free speech and threatening speech he called for ‘more guts’. He is not the only one who thinks this is badly needed if the debate at the…

International collaboration is essential to research and teaching but it also brings risks. Such as sharing sensitive knowledge and technology or foreign interference in research. Rector Hester Bijl explains what staff can do to prevent this.

Teaching people to recognize subtle, real-world expressions will help them understand and trust others better. The aim of Mariska Kret is to develop an interactive virtual-reality training tool (E-VIRT) for a broad group of users, including patients. Kret provides a brief description of her idea for…

In this episode, we talk with Mariska Kret about the expressions of emotions in humans and animals. Mariska explores the similarities and differences in emotion expression in humans and primates. Want to learn more about Mariska's research and discover why it's important that we learn more about animal…

Conference

What can opera tell us about societies in the past and present? Leiden honours students went looking for an answer, together with students from the Dutch National Opera Academy. A final concert was, of course, part of the repertoire.

Too expensive groceries, diseases suddenly breaking out: from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, hundreds of people documented the world around them in chronicles. A significant number of these texts have been digitised in recent years. Professor of Early Modern Dutch History and project leader…

Academics increasingly face threats, intimidation and abuse. The WetenschapVeilig platform has been launched to address this. Academics who are being threatened or intimidated can seek help from the platform 24 hours a day. It’s good that we now have this platform. But at the same time, it’s awful that…

Cornald Maas was able to ‘pioneer’ in Leiden. This Dutch Studies graduate, presenter, programme maker and publicist combined an active student life with studying hard.

A suitcase as a messenger of quantum science. That is the idea behind QuanTour, a project connecting researchers from 12 European universities. In December, the suitcase landed in Leiden. A month later, it is time to pass the baton to Copenhagen. But what happened to it in Leiden?

Leiden Mayor Peter Heijkoop visited the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences and the Faculty of Science on Monday,

Recently, ICLON welcomed some 75 colleagues from 15 European countries for a meeting on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in research and practice. During this week, the focus was on learning, exchanging ideas and developing new tools.

Rector Magnificus Hester Bijl can see dilemmas but above all opportunities in the search to increase the societal value of research in Leiden.

The layout of a dissertation must meet certain requirements. Special rules also apply if the dissertation was written with others or if a commercial edition will be published.

Good teaching is a skill in itself. In order to guarantee the quality of education in the Netherlands, the University Teaching Qualification (Basis Kwalificatie Onderwijs, BKO) is now compulsory for all lecturers, university lecturers (UD), senior university lecturers (UHD) and professors. What does…

Examiners are responsible for formulating grading criteria and for ensuring that assessments are graded fairly and consistently. This page presents the guidelines for using grading models, dealing with fraud and plagiarism, recording grades, and the grading time limits you need to observe.

If a researcher has appeared on the TV or radio or in a newspaper, for example, you can create an ‘In the media’ page referring to this. How do you write a good ‘In the media’ page? Below are some guidelines.

Symposium

How do people vote? How rational are voting choices? How much do external factor weigh in? In this article social scientis provide some background.

The SAILS conference The Future of AI is Here (and Guess What … it’s Human) brought together researchers and policy makers to discuss the important issues in the area of artificial intelligence (AI). Where are the opportunities and what are the dangers?

Human resources

Synchronised heart rates and skin conductance tell us that people are attracted to each other. This explains why we feel a romantic ‘click’ with some people and not with others. This is the result of research by psychologist Eliska Prochazkova from the Leiden Institute for Brain and Recognition, which…

Lecture

Education, Finance, Research

A smile, tears in your eyes or a blush on your cheeks: we understand one another better by mirroring one another’s emotions. In her PhD dissertation, Julia Folz concludes that people with autism or social anxiety can be helped by interventions focused on the body.

In a sailboat, a canoe or stowed away on a ship: during the Second World War, many Leiden students tried to cross the sea to join the Allies in Britain. ‘Soldier of Orange’ is the most famous, but who were the other ‘England voyagers’ or Engelandvaarders as they are known?

Associate Professor Lettie Dorst has received a Vidi grant to research how machine translation programmes such as Google Translate and ChatGPT translate words and expressions used metaphorically. This still regularly goes wrong, resulting in far too literal, incorrect and sometimes incomprehensible…

Professor Jenny Doetjes has received an NWO grant to research the cross-linguistic properties of quantity expressions and our brain's influence on language.

Professor of Cognitive Psychology Mariska Kret studies how humans and animals express emotions. Comparisons between humans and great apes offer important evolutionary insights, Kret will say in her inaugural lecture on Friday 9 September.

Can we truly assess whether someone finds us attractive? Cognitive psychologist Iliana Samara conducted her PhD project on romantic attraction and discovered that men, in particular, tend to overestimate the interest of their date. She explains why this may be.

This year's London Hellenic Prize is awarded to Caroline Vout for her excellent study of representations of the human body in sculpture, Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body.

During the 2024 Frontiers in CardioVascular Biomedicine (FCVB) conference, which was held from April 12-14 in Amsterdam, Esmeralda Hemme from the BioTherapeutics division received the award for best moderated poster.

Lecture, LIAS After-Lunch Talk Series