Leiden University has published its annual report for 2019. The report is a testament to everyone’s hard work and creativity and shows just how much we have achieved together: students, lecturers, researchers, support staff, administrators and supervisors alike.

Most Leiden master’s students who graduated between October 2016 and September 2018 soon found a job that was related to their degree programme. These are the results of the 2019 Dutch National Alumni Survey (NAE: Nationale Alumni Enquête). The effects of the coronavirus crisis on the labour market…

How are you doing in these strange and unprecedented times? That is the question we are asking our colleagues in this series. Criminologist Meike de Boer, for instance, a PhD candidate in forensic speech research at Leiden University Centre for Linguistics.

How are you doing in these strange and unprecedented times? This is the question we are asking our colleagues in this series of articles. This time we asked Erick van Zuylen, the University beadle. 'This year, I haven't been leading the PhD committee into and out of the chamber, wielding my beadle's…

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…

In mid-March 2020, the global coronavirus outbreak changed everything in the Netherlands. Staying at home as much as possible and the 1.5 metre rule became the standard. One year on, we reflect on the past year with four Leiden Law School ‘insiders’. What kind of year did they have? And what are their…

A celebration was held in the Tabú restaurant: Mark Rutgers, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, was presented with the first copy of LEAP, a journal where Humanities master’s students can prepare for an academic career by publishing articles themselves.

Anna Loh is a third-year student of the BA in Arts, Media and Society. We spoke with Anna about what it’s like to write a thesis during COVID-19, Instagram selfies at the museum and growing up abroad.

Since 2015, the Betabanenmarkt Foundation (BBM) has been organising the Bio Science Park Excursion yearly to introduce students to the world of start-ups and tech companies located around the corner from the Faculty of Science. This year a visit to the Bio Science Park was not possible, so BBM brought…

Gathering and distributing patient data can make an important contribution to containing the coronavirus. But if we want to be successful, we need better data. With this objective in mind, Leiden data stewards have joined the Virus Outbreak Data Network (VODAN).

The Healthy University @Home dossier gives staff and students tips on how to work healthily at home. The dossier combines practice and science in an easily accessible way, say project coordinator Mieke Cabout and Professor of Clinical Psychology Philip Spinhoven.

Working towards resilient communities, transparency in science and connecting with the employment market – these are the three key themes being addressed by the departments of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Dutch universities. On 11 February, they presented a joint sector plan to Marcelis Boereboom,…

Starting your PhD during two major crisis in your country; it happened to Kamaran Palani, PhD student at the Dual PhD Centre and ISGA who lives in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. In spite of the difficulties in his county, Palani (34) stuck to his PhD-research about the fluidity…

The physical boundary between private life and work has disappeared. As a result, each of us has to guard that boundary individually, and that is pretty tricky, says our dean.Paul Wouters in his column.

On Thursday January 23rd during the Faculty New Year’s meeting, dean Mark Rutgers will award the first faculty impact award to an employee whose educational or research efforts have succeeded in delivering a major social impact. The award comes with a gratuity of €1000.

The new Students for Leiden party pulled off a stunning victory in the municipal elections. From nowhere, the party won two seats on Leiden Municipal Council. How are brand-new student councillors Mitchell Wiegand Bruss and Elianne Wijnands doing? ‘We’ve already asked questions about the quality of…

War and peace studies. A topic that is more relevant than ever because of the war in Ukraine. In September, the MSc Crisis and Security Management (CSM) will start a new track: War and Peace Studies. CSM’s Programme Director, Ernst Dijxhoorn, discusses the new track, how it was created and what students…

ICT, Organisation

Organisation

Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and Leiden University will start a new two-year English-taught master’s programme in Population Health Management (PHM) on 1 September 2021. The programme, which has been given the green light by the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO),…

Almost all PhD defences at Leiden University have been postponed due to the corona virus, but statistician Sanne Willems is going through with hers. In a different form than usual that is. Hardly any audience, the committee dialing in from a distance and the celebration to be held at a later moment.…

As a Leiden University’s master’s student in Political Science you conduct independent research and report your findings to fellow academics and, who knows, to a larger audience. Your thesis is a showcase of your academic skills and personal interest, and perhaps even passion. Easier said than done,…

In the current political situation of Bulgaria, it seems that a long-term caretaker government is the only viable option at the moment. Dimiter Toshkov, Antoaneta Dimitrova and Bernard Steunenberg of FGGA analyse what the Bulgarian caretaker government can learn from its Dutch counterpart.

Professor of Brain, Safety and Resilience Anne-Laura van Harmelen has been nominated for the Huibregtsen Prize. The winner of the prize will be announced on the Evening of Science & Society (4 October).

If the recent bushfire crisis and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic have taught us anything, it’s that Australia has an opportunity to evaluate its coordination on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR).

Aileen Schuurmans finished her MA International Relations this summer. She wrote an article titled 'How to Change the Story of the Pandemic with Daoist IR', which got published on E-International Relations, the world’s leading open access website for students and scholars of international politics.

The National Bee Count initiative of Professor Koos Biesmeijer (Naturalis/Leiden) and Vincent Kalkman (Naturalis) has received the NWO Communication Initiative Award. The jury praises the initiative, which manages to reach a very wide and diverse audience, while at the same time contributing to the…

Without a doubt, you've noted the appathon organized by the Dutch Ministry of Health (VWS) (Appathon coronavirusapp day 1 and Appathon coronavirusapp day 2). It is fair to say that the enthusiasm of the organizers and the scale of participation were second to none. However, the feeling of excitement…

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant that many researchers and PhD candidates with a fixed-term contract have fallen behind in their research. The faculties and research institutes have received funds to compensate for this.

The Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport is to appeal against a recent court ruling on the Public Access to Government Information Act (Wet openbaarheid van bestuur, WOB). The court ruled that the way in which the Ministry handles WOB requests was not in accordance with the law.

On Thursday 3 March , Prof. Margaret Moore will give the annual Centre for Political Philosophy lecture.

Facility, Organisation

'Don’t Let the sunny weather fool you' a film made by Visual Ethnography alumna Guusje Meeuwissen has been selected for the RAI film festival in London this year. It's a short film about the everyday lives of a farmer and a fisherman in the Philippines, and their capacity to adapt to a changing natural…

A Dutch-language video shows children their new life during the corona crisis and gives them some guidelines to help them feel less worried. The short animated video was made by two German researchers with whom child psychologists Anke Klein and Annelieke Hagen are working. ‘With our translation, this…

Facility

Evaluations of a most challenging year to both staff and students in terms of teaching and education support have turned out remarkably well. Although we had to switch to online education almost overnight, we pulled it off!

Molecular Science & Technology student Renske Donkers has won the second edition of the Young Star Award. During the ceremony on Wednesday 17 February, no less than three teachers were awarded the title 'Teacher of the Year'. Finally, students had a surprise in store for all teachers: with a video they…

Leiden astronomers published two articles on more sustainable astronomy in a special section of the journal Nature Astronomy. Among other things, they calculate that their online conference EAS 2020 consumed three thousand times less carbon dioxide than the face-to-face edition a year earlier. They…

We are confronted on a daily basis with news about the Corona virus and its consequences. We read alarming headlines like 'Dutch becoming increasingly anxious about Corona virus' or 'Huge fears and stress about Corona crisis'.

With over 200 participants, the first day of the Multidisciplinary International Symposium on Disinformation in Open Online Media (MISDOOM) was a great success. With researchers and practitioners from communication science, media studies, computer science, data science, and journalists and online media…

A team led by Dr. Yannick Veilleux-Lepage (Institute of Security and Global Affairs) and Joris Larik (Leiden University College The Hague) have secured research funding from the Canadian Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces funded RWE-CAF Research Network.

On Thursday 11 November, Women in International Security Netherlands (WIIS-NL) held its inaugural webinar event on 11 November with four speakers in conjunction with the International Centre for Terrorism (ICCT) and the Chair UN Studies in Peace and Justice at Leiden University.

A flood of news reports, push notifications and even extra news broadcasts: on Wednesday, the world was shocked by the storming of the Capitol in Washington. Americanist Sara Polak discusses the events.

As a consequence of the corona crisis, many staff members have now moved their desks home. But there are still some staff members at work inside the faculty buildings. What is this like for them?

Education

Research

As a Leiden University’s master’s student in Political Science you conduct independent research and report your findings to fellow academics and, who knows, to a larger audience. Your thesis is a showcase of your academic skills and personal interest, and perhaps even passion. Easier said than done,…

On January 28 and 29, 2021 the conference ‘Imperial Artefacts: History, Law and the Looting of Cultural Property’ took place online. This first of its kind event at Leiden University was an interdisciplinary online conference and brought together (post-)colonial historians, legal historians, curators,…

After ISGA and LUC had been at the forefront with the first live webinars, the Institute of Public Administration followed last Friday with the first live webinar for the Bachelor in Public Administration. While LUC and Security Studies provided an English webinar for both national and international…

What factors play a role in determining inclusive leadership in public organisations? On Friday June 4, dr. Tanachia Ashikali answered this question as she shared the findings from her recent research on inclusive leadership with various academics and professionals.