The Leiden Leadership Centre (Leiden University), the Centre for Leadership Ethics and Organisation (Queen's University Belfast) and the Journal of Change Management will be organising a symposium and a special issue on multi-level leadership for the collective good. The complexity and dynamics of societal…

Designing innovative algorithms, thinking outside the box, and brainstorming over coffee with his colleagues — this is what physicist Stefano Polla enjoys most. His success shines through in his nomination for the C.J. Kok Jury Award 2024 for PhD thesis of the Year.

Much of the work of Serge Fehr, Professor of Quantum Information Theory, is abstract and theoretical and comprehensible to very few people. But his work helps make the digital world safer so that in future our internet banking will still be problem free, for instance. He will explain more in his inaugural…

Matthias Flór receives the KHMW Graduation Prize in Theoretical Physics for his master's thesis. His research on exotic superconductors at Leiden University and TU Delft struck a chord with the jury. The jury unanimously chose to award Flór noting that ‘he demonstrated impressive technical abilities…

Leiden researchers have discovered an enzyme that helps bacteria feed on everyday plastics. This common enzyme could play a crucial role in future research and eventually in addressing the global plastic crisis. The study was published in Nature Communications.

Why use Google Maps when you can also calculate your bike route based on your own data. Statistician and cyclist Alexander Dürre sees statistics in everything around him. He analyses data of soccer games and calculates the possible winners of cycling races. ‘When I have too much time, I apply statistics…

Microorganisms that temporarily ‘go to sleep’ play an important role in the evolution and survival of a population. Mathematician Shubhamoy Nandan conducted research on the effect of this characteristic called ‘dormancy’ in a novel mathematical model.

Thijs Bosker and Paul Behrens, Professors in Environmental Sciences at Leiden University College in The Hague, have received funding from the Leiden University Fund and the Gratama Foundation to work on developing a set of Local Actions: tangible and practical exercises that students can engage in…

In the academic year 2022-2023 the Social Resilience and Security interdisciplinary programme will offer a new minor for students who are interested in studying interpersonal violence and who are entering the third year of their Bachelor's degree. The announcement went down well with students: the available…

For years, the late professor Marten Durieux personally mentored and funded students from Sudan to study physics in the Netherlands. Colleague Sense Jan van der Molen calls his endeavour remarkable: ‘Marten Durieux has done a great job with these students, at a time when diversity was not yet a big…

He makes music, goes to the athletics track twice a week and, according to his supervisor, has done his research so well that it would not be out of place in a PhD research. Physics and astronomy student Hidde Stoffels' undergraduate research on the properties of dark matter is of such high quality…

On 20 March, the final of the Legal Tech Challenge 2025 took place at Leiden University. After weeks of collaboration, brainstorming sessions and workshops on legal accessibility, five student teams presented their innovative legal apps to a jury.

Dorota Mokrosinska has been Professor of Practical Philosophy since September. High time for a brief introduction about her field and academic interests.

As of April 2022, Mark de Rooij has been appointed SAILS Professor AI and Data Theory at the Institute of Psychology. This position will enable him to contribute to the goal of the interdisciplinary programme: to build on and expand the current expertise on AI within Leiden University, working from…

On 6 February 2021, Ilya Kokorin presented his research at the annual symposium organised by the Texas International Law Journal (TILJ).

This initiative is supported by the Leiden University Global Seed Fund (LUGF) 2025, awarded to Santy Kouwagam (VVI) and Irene Hadiprayitno (LIAS) together with Universitas Indonesia.

In the first episode of the podcast series, Andrei Marin, Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, interviews Marja Spierenburg, Professor of Anthropology of Sustainability and Livelihoods and Scientific Director at Leiden University, along with Diana Vela Almeida, Assistant…

Social Psychologist Angelo Romano have been awarded the Association for Psychological Science (ASP) Rising Star designation. This award is presented to outstanding APS members in the earliest stages of their research career post-PhD.

Research

Television presenter and journalist Twan Huys will be a lecturer in Journalism and New Media at Leiden University from 1 September 2024.

Leiden physicist Anne Meeussen has been nominated for the title of New Scientist Science Talent. She will be up against 14 young scientists from other Dutch and Belgian universities. The polls are already open!

How to negotiate effectively to achieve a win-win deal for your client? What is the preferred communication style?

The project 'Crossing Boundaries: Ethnographic Approaches in Research on Migration and Diversity' has been awarded funding through the LDE Governance of Migration and Diversity (GMD) Seed Fund 2025–2026.

At the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS) conference 2022 in Porto, psychologists Tom Wilderjans, Jeffrey Durieux and Julian Rossbroich won the IFCS Cluster Benchmarking Challenge. They wrote the best paper on benchmarking and were awarded with an official plaque and book voucher…

Since 1 January Leiden has a new graduate school. The Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA), previously based at the University of Amsterdam, has moved to the Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS).

Jasmijn Rana has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska Curie Global Fellowship for her research project “The Embodiment of Racialization: Running Muslim Women and the Sense of Non-Belonging”.

Conference

How do, or don’t, multinationals pay their taxes? Learn all about this in the new online course given by Leiden University’s Department of Tax Law: 'Taxation of Multinationals for Everyone'. This free course builds on the success of the award-winning 'Rethinking International Tax Law' course.

On June 2nd Roy de Winter has won the G. Rosenberg Research Award from the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS). De Winter was presented with the award during the celebration of the LIACS' 25th anniversary. The new award is intended for promising PhD students at LIACS.

On the 6th and 7th of September 2023, the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) organized the Leiden Bio-AFM workshop in cooperation with Bruker Nano GmbH (Germany) and Bruker Nederland BV. The organization of this event was led by the Medical Systems Biophysics and Bioengineering group (Alireza…

Matthew Canfield (LAW/VVI), Nadia Sonneveld (Law/VVI), Benjamin Fogarty-Valenzuela (CADS) and Elisa Da Vià (HUM) have received a KIEM grant of € 10.000 for their project 'Picturing Scholasticide'. The grant will be utilised to create a multimodal exhibition of the scholasticide in Gaza. Through photography,…

Elizabeth Hicks won first runner-up in the Netherlands Institute of the Near East (NINO) MA thesis 2021 competition at the end of January.

Salvador Santino Regilme, Jr. Associate Professor of International Relations and Program Chair of MA in International Relations, has been honored with the Cecil B. Currey Book Award for 2023. The accolade, presented by the Association for Global South Studies (AGSS), recognizes Regilme’s exceptional…

The Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations CIAT and the GLOBTAXGOV project have published the 'Toolkit for the Design and Effective Implementation of Domestic and International General Anti-Avoidance Rules'.

The Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies is delighted to announce that Dr Farouk El-Hosseny will join the teaching staff as Visiting Assistant Professor of International Law.

On 7 and 8 October, a two-day workshop will be hosted by the Van Vollenhoven Institute in collaboration with the University of Oxford’s Border Criminologies network and the Social Citizenship & Migration assisted area. The theme of the workshop will be ‘Border policing, boundary creation and emotion…

Peter Pels, affiliated with the Institute of Cultural Anthropology of Leiden University, is one of the researchers. Together with Birgit Meyer (UU), he will lead the work package 'Heritage and the Question of Conversion'.

Marian Klamer is Director PhD programs and Professor of Austronesian and Papuan Linguistics at the Centre for Linguistics. She works on the description and comparison of smaller, under-described Austronesian and Papuan languages in Indonesia, and she studies the history and culture of the populations…

We are living through an age in which social media platforms have given way to entirely new forms of politics and politicking. It is no exaggeration to say: there is a before and after social media.

From 16 to 20 June 2025, the Institute of Security and Global Affairs of Leiden University hosted the annual Summer School The European Union, the United Nations and Global Governance in The Hague. The programme brought together recent graduates, PhD students, and young professionals from a variety…

In May 2022 Lennart Kruijer succesfully defended his PhD, which he wrote as a member of the VICI Project ‘Innovating Objects’, led by prof. Miguel John Versluys. So succesfully, in fact, that he was awarded the Cum Laude honors. Just a short time later he was awarded a grant and a fellowship to further…

During the annual graduation ceremony, not only were the Bachelor's students in Political Science honoured, but also those students who had written exceptional theses. The thesis prizes reward work that excels in originality, social relevance and academic quality. This year's winners are Ronny Wijling…

On January 1st Jasper Knoester started as our new dean. How is he finding it? What kinds of things is he doing and what does his day look like? In each newsletter, Jasper gives a peek into his life as dean.

Imagine no one in the Netherlands would eat animal products anymore, what would happen? And would it contribute to more climate justice? That is the theoretical exercise that environmental scientist Jan Willem Erisman and landscape architect Berno Strootman are taking up. 'Sometimes you have to think…

Exploring the largest structures in the universe by looking at the tiniest particles? Lydia Stofanova, PhD candidate at Leiden Observatory and SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, dives into this intricate connection. In her PhD research, she explored how elements like oxygen influence the…

Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing, what exactly does he do and what does his day look like? In each newsletter, Jasper gives an insight into his life.