In the coming years, Hilde De Weerdt gets to spend over three million euros. She received grants from both the European Research Council (ERC) and the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for research on Chinese infrastructure. ‘It is great that it is also possible to develop large projects in the social sciences…

Promotores: R. Cramer, A.K. Lenstra, Co-Promotor: B.M.M. de Weger

It is often claimed that social media can contribute to democratic decision-making by bringing politicians and citizens into dialogue with one another. But is this potential always realised, and how? Most researchers look at politicians and their online communication strategies. In this New Media &…

Conference

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…

Developing a digital guest lecture for high school students. Jan Sleutels was immediately enthusiastic when he got asked to do this. The end result? Together with his colleague Maarten Lamers, he created the guest lecture 'Thinking about Artificial Intelligence'.

An interdisciplinary consortium consisting of Leiden University, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and Statistics Netherlands (CBS), receives €1 million to build an open digital infrastructure for network analysis of the entire Dutch population. This will allow scholars and policymakers to gain crucial…

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In November 2019, Morshed Mannan participated at a conference entitled Who Owns the World? The State of Platform Cooperativism, that was hosted by The New School in New York City.

Developing a digital guest lecture for high school students. Jan Sleutels was immediately enthusiastic when he got asked to do this. The end result? Together with his colleague Maarten Lamers, he created the guest lecture 'Thinking about Artificial Intelligence'.

Professor Mirjam de Bruijn will research digital warfare in the North African Sahel with an NWO Open Competition grant. The focus of the research will be on Fulani social networks in war and cultural violence.

Combining cutting-edge quantitative approaches with more traditional book history approaches, this new book offers the first history of medieval manuscript destruction in England from the medieval period to the present.

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Researcher at eLaw- Center for Law and Digital Technologies, just published a book on Robots, Healthcare, and the Law. Regulating Automation in Personal Care.

Archives were a common target during the Second World War, and hundreds suffered damages. Among these archival losses, the losses to medieval manuscript collections stand out.

Lecture

No less than 33 project received a Leiden Kiem grant in 2023. How did they fare? Olga Bogolyubova shares experiences from her project ‘Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Safety and Danger in the Digital World’.

It is the end of your archaeological research project, and you may be wondering where to deposit your data. After the excavation, all of the finds are drawn, scanned, digitised, and the database is completed. Perhaps you have also accumulated a lot of data through further scientific analysis of the…

Can a robot perform a religious ritual just like a monk? And what exactly is a religious ritual? Robots and religion seem to be two different subjects, but according to university lecturer Elpine de Boer, both can make us think about what it means to be human and what we consider to be of value. Together…

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…

Workshops

In April 2025, Ms. Esther Rachow from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem presenting her ongoing doctoral research at an Austria Centre Leiden lunch-time talk. She answered a few questions about her visit below.

The war between Russia and Ukraine plays out not only physically but also digitally. Van Den Berg, Professor of Cybersecurity Governance at the FGGA, talked about it at several news outlets.

Sweetie 2.0 is a research project commissioned by Terre des Hommes on online child sex tourism and criminal law.

Based on interviews with feminist Instagram users, this article studies emergent feminist visibilities on Instagram through the concept of filtering.

Conference

At the transition of the Neolithic to Bronze Age, a societal clash took place between a male dominated oligarchy (also known as the patriarchy) and the matriarchy. The latter managed to exploit vulnerabilities in the 'bro-code' to reboot society's operating system.

Simona Demková, Assistant professor at the Europa Institute of Leiden University, publishes her book ‘Automated Decision-Making and Effective Remedies: The New Dynamics in the Protection of EU Fundamental Rights in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’.

The Heritage Quest project is a citizen science project in which volunteers participate in archaeological research.

How do you make lobbying and rhetoric both challenging and understandable for high school students? Professor Jaap de Jong found the answer in climate activist Greta Thunberg. Together with his colleague Arco Timmermans, he developed a digital guest lecture on how to present a convincing story.

An international consortium of research institutes, universities and non-academic partners in six European countries has been awarded with a research grant from the Department for Research and Innovation of the European Commission in June 2018. MIDA is coordinated by the ‘Centre National de la Recherche…

The modification of risk factors and related health behaviors lies at the very core of adequate cardiovascular risk management, yet evidence shows that the majority of people with cardiovascular disease (CVD) fail to achieve a healthy lifestyle in the long term. The main objective of this project is…

In several Mediterranean regions archaeological sites have been mapped by fieldwalking surveys, producing large amounts of data. These legacy site-based survey data represent an important resource to study ancient settlement organization. Methodological procedures are necessary to cope with the limits…

An in-depth history of Large Language Models—and what their ubiquity, disruption, and creativity mean from a wider sociopolitical perspective.

What does digitalisation mean for the labour market, the business sector and society in general? Reijer Passchier, Assistant Professor Leiden Law School and Professor of Digitalisation and the Democratic Constitutional State at the Open University, spoke at a meeting of the Social and Economic Council…

Lecture

Lecture, Seminar

RESOCIAL ('User vulnerabilities and Resilience on SOCIAL media platforms and the metaverse: a sociolegal and design perspective', an NWO-NWA Synergy Grant Project) seeks to identify, measure, and thereby mitigate human vulnerabilities on social media platforms (including the metaverse and immersive…

Lecture

Karsten Lambers was interviewed by the Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz, where he was a post-doctoral research fellow from 2008 to 2010. Read about his career, his fascinations, and his experience with combining fieldwork with digital applications.

The goal of the MODOMA-project is to create a computer model of language acquisition.