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…

What rules should regulate AI, who should make them, and how will they be enforced in the digital arena?

Three PhD candidates from the Faculty of Humanities have successfully applied for funding from NWO for new PhD candidates. The three upcoming researchers will receive funding from the PhDs in Humanities programme. With the funding, NWO wants to boost the recruitment and advancement of young talent in…

Twenty students and alumni from our faculty recently went on a working visit to NATO. Led by Leiden alumna Beaudine Verhoek (MA in International Relations), who is now Officer for Political Affairs and Security Policy at NATO, we were treated to an informative programme at the organisation’s brand-new…

As part of Leiden University’s aim to be a safe and healthy environment for all staff and students, several activities and lectures were organised in an action week around suicide prevention. Dedicated benches were also placed at several university buildings, including at the Faculty of Humanities.

Plant biologist Pingtao Ding, assistant professor at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), has received a 2.4 million European grant from the European Research Council (ERC). This ERC Starting Grant for promising young researchers allows him to unravel the molecular mechanisms by which plants resist…

Many thanks for visiting the Master’s Open Day on Friday 15 March! We hope that you enjoyed the day and that all your questions were answered.

Did you graduate at our faculty between 2016 and 2019? Please take part in the Humanities Job Market Survey!

Many thanks for visiting the Master’s Open Day on Friday 2 November! We hope that you enjoyed the day and that all your questions were answered.

We use zebrafish as a model organism to study human development and disease as well as animal welfare and environmental impact.

Last Friday the global Antibiotics Awareness Week begun: an entire week dedicated to antibiotic use. Antibiotics researchers from the LACDR therefore set out to tell primary school pupils about their research. Through role-playing, pupils were drawn into the world of antibiotics: 'Can the teacher not…

You would like to book a hotel room and browse the internet for which rooms and rates are an offer. The rates provided depend on forecasted demand and come about through the use of computer algorithms. However, the rates are often manually adjusted by hotel personnel. What are the consequences and how…

Suruchi Nepal, postdoc in the group of Coen van Hasselt at LACDR, was awarded an NWO XS project which aims to study the response to antibiotic treatment during a urinary tract infection (UTI). This knowledge will be used to determine how treatments of UTIs with antibiotics can be further improved.

On Friday 10 July the Towards Biosolar Cells research programme was granted a budget of 25 million euros by the Dutch Government. The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality recommended the programme because it will contribute to green energy, improve food supplies and a create a more sustainable…

Bacteria and fungi on organic dairy farms are significantly different from those on conventional farms. That was discovered by postdoc researcher Sofia Gomes and her supervisors Nadia Soudzilovskaia and Peter van Bodegom in collaboration with the Louis Bolk Institute and Naturalis Biodiversity Centre.…

What is it like to study at the Humanities Faculty of Leiden University? Soon-to-be students experienced a day at university during the Experience Day 2017 and found out what studying really is about.

Staff in Dutch youth care institutions use pain to control children. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture says this violates the European Convention on Human Rights. Mariëlle Bruning, Professor of Children and the Law, commented in the media.

What is it like to study at the Humanities Faculty of Leiden University? Soon-to-be students of International Studies and Urban Studies experienced a day at university during the Experience Day in The Hague and found out what their studies are really about.

Asia, Asia, Asia. That was what the working visit of VVD Member of Parliament Judith Tielen - at her request - was all about. In a two hour long programme, she and her personal assistant were immersed in education, research, social impact and they took a look at some of the masterpieces from the University…

Can humans sense where north is, using what is known as magnetoreception? This question had master’s student Björn Keyser (Media Technology) so intrigued that he started crowdfunding to be able to study this together with the California Institute of Technology.

On 1 September 2017, Aurelie van ’t Slot passed the assessor’s baton to Olivier Fajgenblat. As the new Humanities assessor, this third-year student of Film and Literary Studies will promote students’ interests in the Faculty Board. Let’s introduce this ambitious Belgian student.

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…

On 11 February 2019 the Women in International Law Network, established in 2017 as an informal network for midlevel to senior female officials, experts, advisers and academics working in international law in the Netherlands, organised a panel discussion and the book launch of ‘Frontex and Human Rights’,…

Every year, an NWO PhD in the Humanities grant is awarded to a prospective PhD candidate at the Faculty of Archaeology. This year, the grant went to Maia Casna, enabling her to study respiratory disease in the past. ‘My hypothesis is that the rapid formation of cities in the medieval Netherlands, must…

Mark Rutgers has been reappointed as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. After a first term where the focus was mainly internal, it’s time to look outwards.

Discovering effective new drugs is a long, expensive and uncertain process. Laura Heitman wants to improve this by finding out more about how drugs bind to proteins that play a role in disease. She calls it ‘drug discovery 3.0’. Inaugural lecture on 9 December.

One of the most crucial aspects of our behaviour is our motivation to explore novel environments and interact with new people. This became painfully clear during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when many people suffered from lack of new experiences and real-life social interactions. The relevance of novelty…

Online, hybrid, on campus... It was an unpredictable year, also for the Faculty of Humanities. Luckily, there were also non-corona related stories. Let's review 2021 with this list of the most-read news articles per month.

The project aims to explore the history of the concept “barbarism” in Europe from the 18th century to the present. Responding to the contemporary popularity of the term “barbarism” in political rhetoric and the media, and the lack of reflection on the implications and legitimacy of its use, the project…

Manon van der Heijden and Leo Lucassen, and Maarten Mous will receive NWO Open Competition funding. This funding amounts to a maximum of 750,000 euros and is intended to carry out research into a subject of their your own choice, without thematic preconditions.

The Humanities Faculty bachelor’s degree programmes in History, and Greek and Latin language and culture were rated by students as the best. The master’s programmes in Classics and Ancient Civilisations, Dutch Studies and North American Studies also received the highest scores. These were the results…

This article presents a five-step framework for building behavioural cybersecurity strategy to reduce human-related risks affecting organisational security

This volume discusses practices of memory in early modern Europe.

Effectively treating a severe case of pneumonia is often challenging. Identifying the pathogen behind it can be difficult. PhD candidate Ilona den Hartog tried something new: ‘We searched for answers in substances our own body produces.’ PhD defence on 17 September.

Almost a century passed since the much-celebrated judgement in the case concerning the Factory of Chorzów was delivered. This 1928 judgement of the Permanent Court of International Justice affirmed the essential principle of ‘reparation’ in international law, claiming that ‘restitution’ is the preferred…

After two years of corona restrictions, it was ‘back to normal’ in 2022. Migration, elections, the history of slavery, Russia, and Ukraine were much-discussed topics. We compiled an overview of the most-read news items and other events of the past year.

Starting 2 July 2022, a new exhibition will be opened to the public at the Old Observatory: More-than-Planet. This exhibit asks the question: how do we imagine our planet?

No less than seven scholars of the Faculty of Humanities were awarded a Veni grant. Veni grants are aimed at excellent researcher who recently obtained their doctorate. With a maximum grant of 250.000 euros, the laureates can develop their research ideas in the coming three years.

Festschrift for Prof. Dr Raymond H.A. Corbey in celebration of his 70th birthday

The history of the LGTBI+ collective, deeply marked by episodes of violence, repression, and discrimination, is also the history of the struggle for social change and the conquest of civil rights, advances without which contemporary Western democracies could not be explained. More recently, the implementation…

Leiden University has a new professor. On 1 June Nadine Akkerman became Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture, a position she feels is designed to help her help others.

During the next three years, 6 promising researchers from the Faculty of Humanities who have just been awarded their PhDs will be able to further develop their research ideas funded by a Veni grant from the NWO. A total of 147 Veni grants were awarded of which 14 went to researchers at Leiden Univer…

On Friday 15 March, more than 750 students from the Netherlands and abroad visited the Master’s Open Day at the Faculty of Humanities to explore their options.

On 28 February, Marieke Liem, Associate Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, appeared as a guest on the Dutch NPO Radio 1 Brainwash Podcast to discuss the 'big homicide questions' she is trying to find the answers to.