Dr. Sarah Giest presented her paper on Digital Access, Data-Driven Policymaking and Public Service Delivery during a research feedback seminar.

As every academic year, the leadership team of the Young Academy Leiden (YAL) is changing. Sarah Giest, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration, will be the new Vice-Chair. Annemarie Samuels, Asssociate Professor at Social Sciences, will be the new Chair. The Young Academy Leiden…

Gianclaudio Malgieri, Associate Professor of Law & Technology at eLaw, is co-author of the article 'Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) 2.0: A Manifesto of Open Challenges and Interdisciplinary Research Directions' which has been awarded the 2025 Best Paper Award by Information Fusion.

Social media gives people a voice but also fuels online hate, especially against marginalised groups. PhD candidate Eva Nave: ‘While end-to-end encryption protects activists, it also enables criminal activity, creating a more accessible version of the Darkweb.’

On Tuesday October 11th, ACPA’s PhD-candidate Frank Blokland will publicly defend his thesis “On the origin of patterning in movable Latin type: Renaissance standardisation, systematisation, and unitisation of textura and roman type”.

Dutch municipalities are racing to digitalise, introducing virtual services, fraud-detection algorithms and more. The digital city may not always serve its residents. Professor Jiska Engelbert calls for civil servants who dare to push back.

A new discussion paper published in Policy Sciences by two Leiden researchers claims that governments are working with one hand tied when it comes to data on vulnerable groups. At the core of this paper is the idea that even though the volume of data has increased in recent years, the quality of the…

The Leiden University psychologist Carolien Rieffe will investigate how to create an social climate at high schools, to make young people with autism feel more comfortable and able to engage with their social surroundings and thus develop essential social and emotional skills. Rieffe and collaborators…

A consortium made up of Leiden University (Institute of Public Administration/Digitalisation & Public Policy, Bram Klievink, Sarah Giest, Bart Schermer), VU (Professor Fabio Massacci), TU Delft, TNO, and Thales has been awarded a NWO grant of 1.5 million euros. This research project looks into the ‘metadata…

From 1 January 2024, Bart Barendregt will be appointed as vice-dean of Research on the FSW board. This is a new role.

Each year the NSE (National Student Survey) gives students the opportunity to express their opinion on their studies. The results are important not only for improving study programmes but also for helping new students to choose the programme that’s best for them. This year the survey was completed by…

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has recently awarded a significant grant of 863,000 euros to the project proposal 'RESOCIAL' led by Dr Gianclaudio Malgieri, Associate Professor at eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies. This grant is part of the 'NWA Synergy Theme: Vulnerability and Resilience…

PhD defence

PhD defence

As of November 1st 2019, Sybille Lammes, Professor of New Media and Digital Culture, will be the new academic director of the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). She succeeds Anthonya Visser, who has been the institute's academic director since 2014. It is a three year-long appointment.…

It was more than two years in the making, but despite the delays, giving up was not an option. In May, eighteen staff members of LUCAS and the Faculty of Archaeology visited NIMAR.

What did medieval scholars think of the books they read? In her inaugural lecture, Professor Mariken Teeuwen will talk about the texts they wrote in the margin.

Minister Alexandra van Huffelen will attend the 'Leadership in the digital transition' event at Campus Wijnhaven organised by Alex Ingrams on 16 February. Five questions to Ingrams about the event.

The 'Melissa' project strengthens the Netherlands' digital resilience against ransomware through public-private collaboration. Discover the successes, such as the dismantling of the Qakbot botnet, and the insights that contribute to a more effective approach to combating ransomware crime, both nationally…

As every academic year, the leadership team of the Young Academy Leiden is changing. As of September 2022, dr. Sarah Giest (Associate Professor, Institute of Public Administration), former Vice-Chair, will be the Chair of YAL. And dr. ir. Julia Cramer (Assistant Professor, Science Communication and…

How do politics and play relate to each other? Six Leiden academics hope to find an answer to that question over the coming years. They have received an NWO grant of 750,000 euros. Professor Sybille Lammes and University Lecturer Bram tell us how they plan to spend the money.

At the end of 2018, the LUF announced a new annual grant: the Snouck Hurgronje Grant. This annual grant is awarded to innovative interfaculty research and teaching projects. Three project teams secured a place on the shortlist with their research proposals. They were invited to present their plan to…

An image has great powers of persuasion. It is said that ‘a picture is worth more than a thousand words’. But these days, images can easily be manipulated with severe consequences. ‘Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the value we attach to images’, says Elize de Mul, whose PhD thesis deals with ‘digital…

In October, LUCIS and NIMAR will host a two-day workshop in honor of the 50th anniversary of Islam Observed, Clifford Geertz' comparative study of Islam in Morocco and Indonesia. Send in your proposal and get a chance to share your work in Rabat this fall.

During the New Year’s reception of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FSW) on 12 January 2026, Sarah de Rijcke said farewell as our dean. She will become the new Rector Magnificus of Leiden University. It was not the only change of leadership announced that afternoon.

Leiden University celebrated its 444th anniversary with a historical procession on 8 February. It celebrated this year’s Dies Natalis in time-honoured fashion with a ceremony in the Pieterskerk, but broke with tradition by sending professors out to primary schools.

Below are some of the scholarly works published within the context of the Institutions for Conflict Resolution programme.

So much has happened this year! 2023 was an eventful year in which several wars raged about which our experts could offer interpretation. It was also the year in which the government made apologies for the slavery past. Leiden humanities scholars were at the forefront of this with their research on…

Bart Barendregt has been appointed professor by special appointment per January 2020. “Anthropology of Digital Diversity has the potential to show that there are always multiple directions and different solutions to the challenges the digital transition to us all is.”

Arts and culture

This section provides an overview of online tools for the study of the medieval Low Countries. The websites linked down below are often times both available in Dutch and English.

Many of our staff and students have won an award, received a grant, obtained an academic fellowship for their quality or have been socially engaged due to their specific expertise. See below for an overview per year.

The BLRN members have published extensively in recent years. In addition to the BLRN book series, dissertations of BLRN members published in the E.M. Meijers Institute Series, you will find below a selection of our publications. For a more complete overview of publications of each BLRN member, please…