Our Winter School alumna Ginevra Montefusco defended her Master thesis this March with the title Food in the Margin: a feminist analysis of sense of place in Barriera di Milano, Turin (supervisors: Alessia Toldo and Egidio Dansero).

On 30 June, the Center for Law and Digital Technologies of Leiden University (eLaw) will hold the annual Hans Franken Lecture. This year, the lecture will be held by Jan Kleijssen, the recently retired human rights director at the Council of Europe. The title of the lecture is: 'AI and Human Rights'…

On Thursday 21 September the first monthly ILS lunch of the academic year took place. Prof. Jannemieke Ouwerkerk, from the Department for Criminal Law and Criminology, presented her research on “The Exercise of EU Criminalisation Powers after Lisbon”, showing an insight in the motives behind the harmonization…

After seven years, the Faculty of Science said goodbye to Geert de Snoo as dean During on 29 August. This happened with a pub quiz, a special edition of Our Talents & Discoveries and no less than two decorations. Take a look at the pictures for an impression!

There are numerous ways in which Asia and the West influence one another. Having a good understanding of the countries of Asia and their inhabitants improves the contacts between these two world regions. Leiden experts have studied Asia for decades from the perspective of different disciplines. Read…

Franc Weerwind studied Public Administration at Leiden University from 1986 to 1992. Right now, mr. Weerwind is the mayor of the municipality of Almere. The editors of Leidraad, the alumni magazine of the university, had a talk with him in context of the recurring ‘workplace’ section in the magazine…

Fatemeh (Simin) Tabassi Mofrad has recently received a project grant (€ 25,000) from LUF/Gratama Foundation for her ideas in investigating sex-by-genotype interactions in brain functions. She has a multidisciplinary research perspective which enables her to look at research issues from different angles.…

Between November 2022 and December 2023, 45 one-off and 14 structural security measures were taken for academics or university staff. This is what it says in the External Intimidation, Hatred and Threats against Academics Monitor published by the Universities of the Netherlands (UNL), the Dutch Research…

Anke Ramakers, Assistant Professor in criminology at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology at Leiden Law School, together with Finnish researchers Mikko Aaltonen and Pekka Martikainen, has published an article in the Elsevier journal 'Advances in Life Course Research', on the role of labour…

Carlotta Rigotti, post-doc researcher at eLaw – Center for Law and Digital Technologies, and Professor Clare McGlynn , Durham University, have co-authored a new article in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, introducing the concept of meta-rape and exploring its potential treatment under criminal l…

European countries struggling how to deal with the issue of returning foreign fighters, women and children from the Caliphate

Several cases inspired by the Urgenda case have now been filed. For example, by the Portuguese, concerning widespread forest fires, Swiss women of a somewhat respectable age (known as the ‘KlimaSeniorrinnen’) who suffer from the heat, and the mayor of a French city situated by the sea who fears the…

Carlotta Rigotti co-authors a new publication on EU law and image-based sexual abuse in the German Law Journal.

After a succesful first lecture, the Leiden physics institute LION is launching an online series of (Dutch language) lectures about physics, intended for a broad audience, named the Tatiana Afanassjewa lectures. Upcoming speakers are science historian Dirk van Delft, neutrino physicist Dorothea Samtleben…

From a successful April Fool’s prank and alumni love stories to a fabulous float on 3 Octobe: these were the highlights of our year on our social media channels. Hope you’re following us?

Christa Tobler, Professor of European law, attended and spoke on the implications of the UK Supreme Court’s ruling for EU non-discrimination law in the case For Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent) in London.

This summer, the Universe is closer than ever. With the online astronomy summer programme Space in Your Living Room!, the Leiden Observatory brings astronauts and Leiden astronomers to the homes of children all across Europe.

Researchers Bibi van den Berg and Ionica Smeets are featured in the Opzij Top 100, the yearly list of most influential woman in the Netherlands.

On 20 June 2024, Jamal El Ouahi successfully defended his PhD thesis at Leiden University.

Professor Roberta D'Alessandro, from the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, has been appointed a member of the Global Young Academy (GYA) from 20 January 2014. The GYA, consisting of 155 members, provides a rallying point for outstanding young scientists from around the world.

Edited by Michael Kowalski

Researchers from Leiden University will develop a new approach to study the biomarkers of Alzeimer’s disease. This approach focusses on the molecular messengers of the cells. The project, led by Thomas Hankemeier and coordinated by Yuliya Shakalisava (Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research, LACDR),…

Lecture

Schrödinger's cat is famously dead and alive, hidden in its closed box. As soon as one opens the box up to peek inside, the cat suddenly turns dead or alive. This is the 'measurement problem', that has stumped physicists for almost a century now. PhD student Tom van der Reep dared to look for a way…

Social relationships of students are important. Especially for students with problem behavior. How can a teacher support students in their social relationships via their own interactions with students? A lot, as is shown by a meta-analyses of Hinke Endedijk. She assessed almost 300 studies about teacher-student…

Life returned to something resembling normal after Covid but other crises soon took its place. These great challenges are also being felt at the University and our researchers are working on solutions. The nitrogen crisis, problems with young people’s services and an increasingly urgent climate crisis:…

From virtual education to a friendly meeting place where refugees and Dutch students can get to know one another. Investing in refugees is in the interest of the whole of our society. This was the message of the students who opened the Academic Year of Leiden University on 5 September.

The Grotius Centre, in collaboration with Duke Law School, will be hosting the Duke-Leiden Institute in Global and Transnational Law from 16 June to 17 July 2019 in The Hague, the International City of Peace and Justice. Applications for the second edition are now open!

Geopolitical events affect Europe un a myriad of ways far beyond trade and defence. They also impact areas such as the environment, migration, technology, EU enlargement, multilateralism, and the rules-based international order more generally. Three GTGC researchers participated in a panel discussion…

On Friday 12 September 2025, the Opening Ceremony of the European Law LL.M. programme took place in the Lorentz lecture hall at Leiden Law School. Following Dr Barbora Budinska’s and Professor Armin Cuyvers’s warm words of welcome for the incoming students, Dr Darinka Piqani presented two student pr…

For a long time, in the United States ‘Schmoozes’ have been organized. These small-scale meetings offer the opportunity to informally discuss important themes. On 12 and 13 October, the first European Schmooze took place in Milan. The topic was ‘Economic Inequality as a Global Constitutional Challenge’.…

A delegation from Leiden University recently embarked on a knowledge mission to various NGOs, universities and government organisations in Indonesia. New partnerships were formed and important knowledge exchanged, and researchers from Leiden gave guest lectures.

Optimization tasks in practice have multifaceted challenges as they are often black box, subject to multiple equality and inequality constraints and expensive to evaluate.

While phenomenology and Yogacara Buddhism are both known for their investigations of consciousness, there exists a core tension between them: phenomenology affirms the existence of essence, whereas Yogacara Buddhism argues that everything is empty of essence (svabhava). How is constructive cultural…

What types of construction materials are used in the Global South, where are they, and what levels of societal services do they support? How will material use evolve under different development pathways and paradigms? What are these materials' environmental and societal impacts now and in the future,…

Innovation plays an essential role in firms' competitiveness and long-term success. It varies from different types, ranging from run-of-the-mill innovation that brings incremental changes to existing technologies to radical innovation that breaks from existing trajectories.

Early Childhood Community Practitioners’ analyses of new mother’s challenges in Alexandra Township South Africa: a collaboration between academics and practitioners

When we are in a conversation, how do we know exactly when to respond, and how do we manage to respond so swiftly, yet without interrupting our interlocutors? Can speech melody – in particular utterance final “boundary tones” – help us determine who will speak next, or are these cues too late in the…

Psychologist Bernadet Klaassens initiated a large fMRI study on the effect of drugs on brain networks in aging and Alzheimer's disease. It generated a unique data set and insight into a new method to develop drugs for patients with Alzheimer's.

The research addresses the question of “what is the impact of geopolitical changes to the pivot states in the Middle East? With special focus on Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia.”

The smallness of Suriname, according to political scientist Wouter Veenendaal (Leiden University), strongly affects and shapes the nature of democracy in the country. On the one hand, clientelism ensures that members of each ethnic group included in power-sharing arrangements have access to state resources…

Despite an increased EU role in the preparedness, monitoring and coordination of health emergencies over the past two decades, Member States’ responses to the first wave of COVID-19 were surprisingly uncoordinated. In light of calls to improve cooperation regarding future health emergencies, this article…

Early time-resolved experiments by Frauenfelder on the ensemble of the kinetic rebinding of CO to myoglobin molecules resulted in a stretched exponential relaxa-tion due to a very large spread of the reaction rates of individual molecules.