On Thursday 11 December 2025, Daan Roovers, the philosopher and former Denker des Vaderlands (Philosopher Laureate), will give the 54th Huizinga Lecture at the Stadsgehoorzaal in Leiden. Under the title What’s at stake: The boundaries of politics and fair play, she will reinterpret Johan Huizinga’s…

Mirjam de Baar has been Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and portfolio holder for education of master’s and research master’s programmes since 2016. As a result of her reappointment, she will continue to fulfil this role for an additional four years. ‘Being asked by the Vice-Rector and the Dean…

Looking for a job after a financial crisis is not easy, but Ward Hoskens (28) managed to take his fate into his own hands. During an internship, he found his way to the Pieterskerk, where he now works as a junior curator. Director Frieke Hurkmans took him on.

Scientists of the faculty of Governance and Global Affairs research completely different subject, among which terrorism, cybercrime and migration. In the upcoming weeks we will give the floor to several of our very best researchers. In this episode: Constant Hijzen researches secret services.

Of the 87 Vidi research subsidies awarded by NWO, five have been awarded to Leiden researchers. This represents almost 6 per cent of the successful applications.

On 1 November 2018, Marieke Bloembergen was appointed Professor of Archival and Postcolonial Studies at the Institute for History.

The Military Information and Security Service (MIVD) prevented a Russian hacker attack on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague. Scientists Paul Abels, Willemijn Aerts, Constant Hijzen and Sergei Boeke of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs responded to…

On Tuesday 20 March, Constant Hijzen, Assistant Professor of Intelligence Studies at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), gave a lecture in the Diplomacy and Global Affairs Research Seminar series of Diplomacy and Global Affairs Research, titled ‘Of ticking bombs: Western services against…

On May 25th, Prof. Damian Pargas will hold his inaugural lecture

On 28 December 2019, Dutch newspaper Trouw published an essay by Constant Hijzen, Assistant Professor Intelligence Studies at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs and the Institute for History. In the essay, he discusses two books on a new genre of espionage: the authors provide access into…

A bloody civil war has raged for years in the Central African Republic. PhD candidate Crépin Mouguia points out a tragic pattern: young people have been recruited as fighters or soldiers for generations and thus fuel the conflicts.

How do democracies develop? The Institute for History is devoting a three-day conference to this question.

Herman Paul (professor of History of the Humanities) has been elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He will be officially installed on 30 September.

Dossier AIVD: that is the name of a new podcast launched by Assistant Professor Constant Hijzen (Intelligence Studies) together with research journalist Wil van der Schans on Tuesday 29 October. Five questions about the NPO Radio 1 podcast produced by Dutch broadcasting cooperation KRO-NCRV.

The Institute for History announces vacancies for three PhD positions on Rethinking Disability: the Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in Historical Perspective and one PhD position to conduct research on the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

Italian historiographers in the 16th and 17th centuries wrote remarkably often about the Dutch Revolt, better known as the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648). Their works influenced public opinion both in Italy and in the Netherlands. This is the conclusion reached by historian Cees Reijner in his dissertation.…

The Chinese History chair has a long, rich history within Leiden University. Since 1 February, this position has been held by Ying Zhang. ‘Leiden University brings together a legendary range of Asian knowledge.’

No fewer than three Leiden University Humanities scholars have been awarded funding from the NWO’s Free Competition in the Humanities programme: two grants of 750,000 euros and one of 705,000 euros. In total, twelve researchers have received a grant in the NWO Social Sciences and Humanities domain.

The International Workshop 'Maritime Conflicts and their Resolution in Atlantic Europe (13th-17th Centuries)' takes place at the University of La Laguna, Tenerife (Spain) from 21 to 22 April 2017.

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…

A permanent job or start your own company? After her studies in English Language and Culture and History, Anna Visser (28) was faced with this exact choice and chose the latter. She started working as a freelance translator. How did this go and how did her studies benefit her?

Historian Dario Fazzi is the new professor by special appointment at the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS), a strategic partner of the Faculty of Humanities. He starts on 1 September and will combine his new position with his current teaching duties at the Institute for History.

In September 2025 Leiden University hosted a greatly successful academic conference

The research group Intelligence and Security has been augmented with a team Policing Studies as part of the collaboration agreement with the Dutch National Police. This team is tasked with creating a more academic foundation for the current knowledge surrounding policing studies in the Netherlands,…

An overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2021, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.

Overview of the main research projects at the Leiden Papyrological Institute.

On this page you will find an overview of awards and prizes granted to our staff and students in 2025, as well as special appointments at Leiden University and other institutions.

Conferences, Workshops and Lectures showcasing research and tools in Digital Humanities.

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.

Leiden University is investing 4 million euros in a new Data Science research programme. This is a joint initiative of all the faculties, headed by Dean Geert de Snoo at the Faculty of Science. The programme will focus on Leiden scientific data.

The world is full of wars, and no war is without its dead. What happens to the bodies of fatal casualties of armed conflict? The winner of the faculty Jongbloed Thesis Prize 2015 is Welmoet Wels (Public International Law). Her thesis Dead body management in armed conflict: paradoxes in trying to do…

Twenty years onwards, in a review of an Escher exhibition in Italy, Nature Physics writes about it again: Leiden mathematicians helping Escher out. A reconstruction of how emeritus professor Hendrik Lenstra tracked down a 44-year-old problem.

An impressive speech by Dean Jasper Knoester, a lecture by top researcher Mario van der Stelt about brain messengers, and the presentation of the faculty awards. 2025 begins on a hopeful and festive note, with a toast to a year of fruitful collaboration within and beyond the faculty.

How can you ensure that more experimental drugs reach the finish line? At the moment, only one in twenty cancer drugs that are tested on humans makes it to the market. This is an enormous loss for patients and society. With a grant from the National Growth Fund, Oncode-PACT aims to efficiently select…

Students gain practical experience while clients receive a solution to their software needs: the student software company LUdev hits two birds with one stone. ‘Through LUdev, students learn what else is involved in software development besides programming.’ Interested? You can now submit new projects…

This was the programme for The Knowledge Orchard 2025:

On this page you can find information about previous CCLS events.

Persian stories with beautiful miniatures, letters on papyrus from Egyptian traders and medicinal manuscripts translated from Greek and edited in Arabic. Studium Generale organizes a lecture series on the world-famous manuscripts from the Middle East collection of Leiden University Libraries (UBL).…

Five research projects of the Institute for History have been selected for the Research Traineeship Programme 2016-2017. The programme was initiated by The Faculty of Humanities to offer motivated students the opportunity to develop themselves in academic research. In December the research trainees,…

On the initiative of Leiden Law School’s Art Committee, the festive opening of the photo exhibition of the Leiden Amateur Photographic Society (LAFV) took place on Friday 20 May 2022 in the C corridor of the Kamerlingh Onnes Building.

Professor Ignas Snellen has developed an online platform where exoplanet researchers can post videos about their work: exoplanet-talks.org. ‘For young researchers in particular it’s a way to bring their research to people’s attention.’

Physical chemist Rik Mom developed a revolutionary way to investigate catalysts in action in detail. For this work he received the distinction cum laude during his PhD defence on 29 June.

To develop good cancer treatments, we need to know much more about how malignant tumour cells develop. Professor Ewa Snaar-Jagalska looks at not just the effect of medication on isolated cells but also the behaviour of cancer cells in their tissue environment. Inaugural lecture on 11 December.

Reinforcement learning, agents and classification: these are just some of the topics researchers on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning discussed at the BNAIC/BeneLearn conference 2020. It was the first time Leiden University hosted the annually held Belgium Netherlands Artificial Intelligence…

Can we improve the living environment of people with dementia with software and smartwatches? Daniela Gawehns did research in a care facility for people with dementia as part of the project 'Dementia back in the heart of society'. This way, she tried to find out whether an open living environment leads…

Researchers and policymakers are welcome to attend the AI & Society Conference in The Hague on Friday 23 June. The SAILS interdisciplinary research programme will be taking a nuanced look at the state of the art of AI technology. And offering fresh perspectives.

The ROBUST consortium, which is the initiative of the Innovation Center for Artificial intelligence (ICAI), has received 25 million euros from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to strengthen fundamental AI research. The Leiden interdisciplinary research programme SAILS is part of ROBUST.

Free playtime and physical play are of great importance to children's social development. That is the main conclusion of innovative research by developmental psychologists and computer scientists from Leiden University.

For first-year bachelor’s students, it is a well-known phenomenon: student mentors. These older students help newcomers on their way in small groups. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this year the choice was made to set up a mentor programme for new master's students as well. We talked to three student…