Leiden University regularly confers honorary doctorates, and presents awards and prizes.

Each year, the Leiden University Student Platform (LUS) presents the Leiden Education Prize.

Which teacher knows best how to inspire their students? Carmen van den Bergh (Humanities), Egbert Koops (Law) and Arjan Louwen (Archaeology) have been nominated for the 2025 Leiden Teaching Prize.

Every year, an outstanding lecturer receives the Faculty Teaching Prize from the teaching committee. The prize is awarded during the official opening of the academic year on 7 September. This year, students nominated eight candidates.

‘Always focus on your students, and make sure that what you teach them will be relevant to them as alumni.’ In his speech of thanks, Harmen Jousma, lecturer in Science Based Business, shared what drives him: training students for the world outside the university.

Lecturer in Old and Middle English Thijs Porck was awarded the annual Leiden University Student Platform (LUS) Teaching Prize at the opening of the academic year. The jury praised his endless supply of innovative teaching ideas.

Els de Busser (Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs), Ayo Adedokun (LUC The Hague) and David Fontijn (Faculty of Archaeology) have been nominated for the LUS Teaching Prize 2020-2021.

Paul Gobée (LUMC), Kirsty Rolfe (Humanities) and Frank Takes (Science) have been nominated for the Leiden Teaching Prize 2023.

‘This lecturer’s aim is to challenge his students and to make sure that all of them understand the material,’ was the comment by Christel de Lange, chairman of the Leiden Student Council. Lecturer in Hebrew Studies, Martin Baasten, is the winner of the 2013 LSR Teaching Prize, the prize for the best…

You win the Leiden Teaching Prize and suddenly all eyes are on you. Three past recipients reflect on how this student-awarded prize has changed how they work and improved their teaching – and how they chose to spend the money.

To improve our teaching and reward excellent teaching assistants, the institute offers a Teaching Assistant Prize to the best teaching assistant of the semester.

Annually the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology awards the Speckmann prize for the best Fieldwork NL report, as well as the most accomplished master’s thesis.

The Austrian Studies Fund awards a prize and a stipend for talented students of Dutch and Flemish universities: the Hugo Weiland Prize and the Austrian Studies Fund Stipend.

Leiden University is involved with various grants and prizes stimulating initiatives in the field of diversity and inclusion.

Of the 111 Spinoza Prizes that have been awarded since 1995, 28 have gone to researchers from Leiden University.

The Leiden Jewish Studies Association awarded the inaugural “Best Thesis in Jewish Studies” in December 2023.

It's good to have high expectations of your students, says public administration lecturer Maarja Beerkens. ‘But I don't stand at the top of the mountain telling them to climb up.' This empathic and at the same time demanding lecturer has been nominated for the LUS Teaching Prize.

Max van Lent, Aris Politopoulos, Emily Strange, Claire Vergerio and Astrid Van Weyenberg have joined the Leiden University Teachers’ Academy. Lecturers at the Academy exchange experiences, develop their skills and share their knowledge and expertise with the rest of the university, for example via the…

Our teaching methods make use of technological innovations, our lecturers share their knowledge with one another and they are constantly alert to possibilities for innovation and depth in their teaching.

Leiden Teachers’ Academy is proud to welcome six new fellows. They will share their expertise with the rest of the university and launch innovative education projects.

Peter Bruin (PhD Leiden, September 2010) has been awarded the Stieltjes Prize for the best mathematics PhD thesis in the Netherlands. The Stieltjes Prize has been awarded each year since 1996.

The ‘Stans Prize 2010’ has been awarded to Leontien Cenin and Lisanne Daniëlle Korpelshoek for their research on impacts of landuse on three migrant harriers in northern Cameroon.

CML grants three Stans Awards each year, known as the best PhD paper, best student thesis and best outreach from the past year. The CML staff nominated students and colleagues and this year’s jury Helias Udo De Haes and Gjalt Huppes made the final decision.

‘One lecturer stood out in particular,’ said Dirk van Vugt, Chair of the Leiden University Student Platform (LUS), at the opening of the academic year. ‘Despite the hurdles of remote teaching, she managed to inspire her students with the aid of knowledge clips, challenges and topical lectures about…

The ‘Stans Prize 2018' (for the best thesis, report or article produced by a CML student) has been awarded to Louie Krol. Other CML prizes were awarded to Sebastiaan Deetman and Joris Timmermans.

The ‘Stans Prize 2017' (for the best thesis, report or article produced by a CML student) has been awarded to Davide De Mauro. Other CML prizes were awarded to Jeroen Guinee, Reinout Heijungs, Martina Vijver, Willie Peijnenburg en Kevin Groen

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 goes to David Thouless, Michael Kosterlitz and Duncan Haldane for theoretical discoveries in the field of topological materials. Haldane spent part of 2008 in Leiden; he is the 14th Lorentz Professor to win a Nobel Prize.

Leiden astronomer Xander Tielens has been awarded a Spinoza prize, the highest scientific prize in the Netherlands. Tielens is Professor in the Physics and Chemistry of Interstellar Space. He studies large and complex, often organic, molecules found in interstellar space. The Spinoza prize carries a…

Neurologist Professor Michel Ferrari has been awarded the Spinoza prize. 'In biomedical research you can only make breakthroughs at the borders between sciences,' according to Spinoza, doctor and scientist. 'This prize is proof that co-operation works.' Together with clinical and fundamental researchers…

Three Leiden professors have recently been awarded the most prestigious scientific accolade in the Netherlands: Maria Yazdanbakhsh and Marc Koper have been awarded a Spinoza Prize and Judi Mesman a Stevin Prize. They received their prizes on 13 October.

Of this year’s four NWO Spinoza Prizes, two have been awarded to Leiden researchers. On 12 September, Eveline Crone and Michel Orrit received their prizes, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands. The Spinoza Prize carries an award of 2.5 million euros.

The Leiden archaeologist Wil Roebroeks has been awarded the Spinoza prize for his original observations about early hominins and the development of human society, NWO (Netherlands organisation for Scientific Research) announced on Monday 4 June.

Professor Marc Koper researches how you can use electrical energy to make or break chemical bonds. He has just been awarded a Spinoza Prize, the Netherlands’ highest personal science award, for his fundamental research into how this form of electrolysis works.

The ‘Stans Prize 2016' (for the best thesis, report or article produced by a CML student) has been awarded to Carlos Felipe Blanco Rocha. Other CML prizes were awarded to Henrik Barmentlo, Arnold Tukker and Coen van der Giesen.

How can parents avoid passing on stress and mental health problems to their children? Professor of Stress-Related Psychopathology Bernet Elzinga develops simple interventions to help both parents and young people. For her research, she has been awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest academic honour…

LUCL congratulates Isabelle van de Calseyde with winning the LSr Teaching Prize!

As part of your assignment you are required to contribute to teaching in the Bachelor and the Master programs in Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences of Leiden University. You will supervise Bachelor and Master students during the research projects of the students in the laboratory.

Dana Rademaker has won the Unilever Research Prize, which she received together with 2,500 euros at the Unilever’s Foods Innovation Centre on 12 December. She received the prize for her master’s thesis, which she wrote last year for the master’s programme Chemistry.

Jaap Kautz and Johannes Jobst have won the NeVac prize for developing a completely new method for studying electrical conductivity. The article they and their team leader Sense Jan van der Molen wrote about this subject was praised by the jury for its clarity. The prize will be presented to them on…

Teaching in The Hague is firmly based on research. Alongside bachelor’s and master’s programmes, the University provides school children, professionals and others with an interest the opportunity to develop.

Members of BLRN provide a wide range of teaching on all matters of business law. The teaching ranges from courses in the Leiden Law School’s bachelor programme, including the International Business Law programme, the master programme on Company Law and the advanced master in International Civil and…

The Department of Civil Law teaches and conducts research in the field of civil law. It is responsible for the master’s degree programme Civiel Recht (Civil Law LL.M.) which attracts many students each year from Leiden and elsewhere.

Aad van der Vaart, professor of stochastics at Leiden University, has been awarded the NWO Spinoza Prize for his groundbreaking research in statistics. Van der Vaart conducts fundamental research on models that can help, for instance, to identify genes that play a role in cancer.

Boyd Leupen has won the Institute of Political Science MSc Thesis Prize 2015. With 'Refuting asymmetrical Kantianism: On the moral standing of animals', Leupen completed his Political Science master studies and contributed an excellent piece of scholarly work. According to the jury, his thesis stands…

Jan Zaanen, Professor in Theoretical Physics of condensed material, has been awarded a Spinoza prize. His pioneering ideas about the collective behaviour of quantum particles and high temperature superconductivity have often given him the reputation of being something of a rebel.

The Department of Company Law and Financial Law teaches in areas including law of legal entities and corporations, the law of financial obligations and liability, corporate governance, sustainability, national and EU financial supervision, mergers and acquisitions, insolvency law, and international…

The present investigation aims at exploring whether the instruction provided at secondary schools in the capital meets the requirements of Communicative Language Teaching and whether the aims of improving learners’ communicative proficiency are met.

Disseminating to the future generation of researchers the multidisciplinary working practices, expertise and scientific view that has been developed in research within the Plant BioDynamics Lab over the past years is an important objective in our collaborative efforts. The research papers of PBDL bring…

The Meijers prizes are awarded each year for the best published article from each faculty research programme. Reijer received the prize for his contribution to the programme ‘The Legitimacy and Effectiveness of Law & Governance’ with his article ‘Digitalisering en de (dis)balans binnen de trias politica’…