The valedictory lecture of former rector magnificus Hester Bijl was buried on Tuesday 12 May in the garden of the Kamerlingh Onnes Building (KOG). Where did this young, and slightly eccentric, university tradition come from?

It increasingly seems that Elon Musk has taken it upon himself to decide what can and cannot be said on Twitter. He bought the platform with the message that there would be room to say whatever you desired, but he himself is casting doubts on that principle.

In 2022, Leiden will be the European City of Science. University lecturer Jaap de Jong has created special assignments for the journalism master's students to celebrate this: they will go into the city to visualise knowledge from the city.

Give Nikki IJzerman a football and she’s happy. The midfielder was named Player of the Year by ADO Den Haag last season, as well as obtaining her master’s degree in Journalism and New Media.

Extremist users of Telegram are moving en masse to other chat apps, such as the anonymous SimpleX. In this way, they hope to avoid detection, now that Telegram founder Pavel Durov is going to share personal data of criminal users with authorities.

The recent consecration of India’s Ayodhya temple by Prime Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party figurehead Narendra Modi raises important questions. Is secularism giving way to religious rule in the world’s largest democracy? How does this resonate with India’s culturally diverse population? France 24…

The future is digital. That is why the new Humanities Hub for Digital Research Skills, and Media (in short: Humanities Hub) will soon open its doors in the Johan Huizinga building. This Hub brings together a number of innovative labs that are in line with the development of the new Humanities Campus,…

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Research on flora and fauna with attention for economic interests and partnership with the local population. This is all bundled in a cooperation programme of the Anton de Kom University of Suriname and Leiden University. Working together on the basis of equality is key. ‘A thorny challenge, but one…

Does a communal garden provide cool air and warm neighbourly relations? Does an additional row of trees increase biodiversity? These kinds of questions are key in the COMBINED project, on which Leiden scientists and residents of The Hague, among others, can work for six years with 4 million euros from…

On Safer Internet Day (Tuesday 6 February), UNICEF Netherlands organised a symposium on the theme of 'Children's rights in the digital world' in collaboration with Leiden University and Kennisnet. Simone van der Hof and Ton Liefaard contributed to the symposium.

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On Tuesday 30 September 2025, PhD candidate Jonathan Collins will defend his dissertation A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of the Far-Right Alt-Tech Social Media Movement in Leiden’s Academy Building. His work examines the communication dynamics of far-right communities on alternative…

Botanisch filosoof Norbert Peeters vertelt over hoe mensen omgaan met planten in het algemeen, en met onkruid in het bijzonder.

Leiden researchers, Professor Remko Offringa and co-applicants Salma Balazadeh and Frederic Lens received an NWO-XL grant (2.5 million euros). Together with researchers in Wageningen and Groningen, they will study the genetic and environmental drivers of woodiness. From plant to molecule, the groups…

Museum De Lakenhal issued an open call for creative solutions to the problem of growth addiction. From over 500 submissions, they selected 15 artworks for the exhibition 'If things grow wrong'. These include the creations of Leiden researchers Peter van der Putten and Evert Jan van Leeuwen.

Lecture | LUCIS Keynote

An international research team is to search for invisible life in the Galápagos Islands. The diversity of bacteria and other microscopic organisms may not be evident to the naked eye, but it is essential to nature. To the islands' giant daisies, for instance: unique endemic plants that are currently…

To help you make the impact or valorisation of your scientific research more clearly apparent, we have created a Leiden Impact Matrix.

Lecture, China Seminar

Leiden and The Hague have an extra 450 trees thanks to a special campaign to mark the 450th anniversary of the Relief of Leiden and Leiden University’s foundation. Over the past few months, Stadslab Leiden has worked on an initiative to plant young trees with the residents of the two cities.

The ‘Schijf van Vijf’ is the Dutch official dietary guideline, similar to a food pyramid, that shows what a healthy daily diet looks like. The updated version places more emphasis on plant-based eating. But how big is the impact of that shift really? We asked environmental scientist Joran Lammers.

The number of insect species is plummeting, which is why the University is creating a more biodiverse environment around its buildings. Annetje Ottow, President of the Executive Board, planted the first bee-friendly plants in the front garden of Oude UB on 20 September.

Minister Dijkgraaf (Education, Culture and Science) has appointed Ionica Smeets and Alex Verkade as coordinators of a new national centre for science communication. The centre will foster a dialogue between researches and society and will gather and share expertise to make science communication more…

Salma Balazadeh, Víctor Carrión, and Jos Raaijmakers, biologists at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), have successfully applied for an NWO grant and got awarded 730.000 euros. The board of NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences awarded funding for their project within the Open Technology Programme…

What is the best way to restore dune ecosystems? The project TERRA-Dunes researches the role of soil microbes in the development of natural dune areas. Recently, the project went into a new phase: planting 412 oak seedlings grown in different type of soils.

Whether a microbe is beneficial or harmful to a plant can now be predicted with high accuracy thanks to bacLIFE. This bioinformatic tool with an intuitive interface makes it much easier to unlock the secrets of bacterial genomes. A group of Leiden biologists presented it in Nature Communications.

Leiden University and Stadslab Leiden invite you to improve the Leiden and The Hague environment with 450 extra trees – a living reminder of 450 years since the Relief of Leiden and the foundation of Leiden University.

Dr Amanda Henry has secured a prestigious Vici grant for her groundbreaking research project, Hominin FoodWays: Changing Diet and Food Processing Across Climate Frontiers. This five-year study, set to begin in September, aims to unravel the dietary adaptations of Eurasian hominins between 1.8 and 0.9…

What a result! The Higher Education BioBlitz recorded 3,155 species, smashing our target of 2,500. Thanks to your efforts, Leiden University made an impressive eight ‘very rare’ finds. A result that gives hope for our biodiversity.

Barbara Gravendeel has been appointed as the new scientific director of Hortus botanicus Leiden. Additionally, she has been named Professor of Plants and Society. Gravendeel succeeds Paul Keßler, who held the position for nineteen years. Currently, she works as a group leader at Naturalis Biodiversity…

One of the largest roofs at Leiden University, that of the Snellius building, has recently been equipped with 590 solar panels and 57,000 sedum plants, making it the largest combined roof in the Benelux. The roof was officially opened on Monday 10 October by Annetje Ottow and Martijn Ridderbos, President…

Lecture