From interpreting in Arabic and a visit to the dentist to a game of hockey. The temporary reception of 123 refugees in the University Sport Centre is running smoothly thanks to the enormous support from staff and volunteers. ‘It’s the children who most need attention.’

Leiden University has a new network for female academics: Sophia. Sophia strives for equal opportunities and a better working environment for female academic staff.

Even though it is generally known that Autism and ADHD are more common in men, and depression or anxiety disorders are more common among women, it is still not well understood if, how and when sex differences impact neurodiversity and mental health. To better understand this complex issue, 25 international…

The monthly ILS Lunch Seminars bring together colleagues and students from Leiden Law School, by providing an informal setting to hear what researchers from other research programs and institutes are working on. On Thursday 19 April the next edition of the ILS Lunch Seminars takes place, featuring presentations…

Close contact between women and dogs in prehistoric times Women and dogs were in close contact in the neolithic age of hunters-fishers-gatherers. This has been suggested by Leiden osteoarchaeologist Dr Andrea Waters-Rist and fellow researchers who have studied a tiny biological fossil. The fossil was…

Woensdag 7 september bezochten de nieuwe eerstejaarsstudenten Rechtsgeleerdheid en Criminologie de Stadsgehoorzaal voor een College Tour met als thema: Strafzaken en de media. Presentatrice Annemarie Brüning, bekend van Hart van Nederland, ging hierover in gesprek met professionals uit het vakgebied…

Textbooks in the Netherlands contain significantly fewer female than male characters and relatively few characters from a non-Western background. They also contain implicit stereotyping. This is what Judi Mesman, Professor of the Interdisciplinary Study of Societal Challenges at Leiden University, has…

Psychologist Ellen de Bruijn studies the effects of hormonal fluctuations on behaviour and on the brain over a woman's life course. With an ERC Consolidator grant, she and 3 PhDs and a postdoc will further her EEG research on the different stages at which girls and women experience strong hormonal f…

In medical and psychological sciences, little research has been specifically conducted on women. Hormonal fluctuations were considered too intricate. Yes, research into sex and gender differences is complex, acknowledge neuroscientists Ellen de Bruijn and Lara Wierenga, but that’s precisely why it's…

How can we make sure that everyone feels welcome at our university? Read the highlights from the conference on The Making of an Inclusive Leiden University: The Do’s and Don’ts.

Twenty years after the passing of Resolution 1325, the participation of women as military personnel in peacekeeping operations remains limited. Women currently comprise just under five per cent of military personnel in UN peacekeeping missions, and the UN consistently calls for more.

Joni Reef was among those present at the opening of Expertise Centre KIND in 's-Hertogenbosch on Thursday 22 November 2018. She spoke to Dutch newspaper Brabants Dagblad afterwards.

Employees are laying down their work in various sectors, such as regional public transportation and Dutch postal service PostNL. Inflation appears to be increasing dissatisfaction about working conditions, thinks Barend Barentsen, Professor in Labour Law at Leiden University. ‘It's the final straw.’

Davood Ghara Gozli (Cognitive Psychology) has received a Veni grant. As such, he is officially recognised as a promising young scientist by science funding agency NWO and will receive financial support to further develop his ideas.

From a successful April Fool’s prank and alumni love stories to a fabulous float on 3 Octobe: these were the highlights of our year on our social media channels. Hope you’re following us?

On Saturday November 16 Alice Twemlow was awarded the Simon Mari Pruys prize for design criticism for her essay ‘Conflicting Definitions of Key Terms’.

The number of young Western women travelling abroad to join the

Time and again synthesised substances have been shown to pollute the environment more than lab tests predicted. In her inaugural lecture on 16 November, professor of Ecotoxicology Martina Vijver gives a warning for the risks of new, man-made chemical substances and nanomaterials. Various media payed…

Following the murder of two Dutch people - of which Iran is suspected - Trouw investigates how usual these practices are. Paul Abels, Professor of Intelligence Studies and Ben de Jong, Researcher, both working at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), will address the subject.

The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Leiden University is considering establishing a special chair for Workplace Pride. The professor appointed to this chair will study opportunities for improving the position of lesbian women, homosexual men, bisexuals and transgender people (LGBTs) in…

Health psychologist Aleksandrina Skvortsova has made clever use of the Pavlov effect to link the ‘cuddle’ hormone oxytocin with the placebo effect. This effect can alter the level of oxytocin in the body, making it possible for people to reduce the amount of medicine they need while still feeling good.…

Who assembled the collections of museums? The answer to this question seems to point to men as collectors. Apart from for rare exceptions, female collectors hardly seem to exist. Yet there were indeed women collectors. For the project Museums, Collections and Society, researcher Holly O'Farrell will…

It is one of the greatest archaeological mysteries of all times: the disappearance of a Persian army of 50,000 men in the Egyptian desert around 524 BC. Leiden Professor Olaf Kaper unearthed a cover-up affair and solved the riddle.

Undesirable associations with sex can be unlearned, but return if the circumstances change. They must therefore be unlearned in different situations. The drug D-cycloserine may help here. These are the findings of psychologist Mirte Brom.

Marion Pluskota is the new post-doc on Manon van der Heijden's 'Crime and Gender' project.

More than a thousand 17th- and 18th-century Dutch letters from seized ships are now available online. The letters are a gold mine for researchers wanting to study the everyday language used by men and women during this period.

A record number of 417 PhD candidates defended their theses in 2016. How many of these were cum laude? What were their propositions? The advantage of dirty nappies, for example. Read about the facts and figures on PhD defences in 2016.

The decolonisation war in Indonesia was violent partly because the Dutch military operated on the conviction that ‘an uprising had to be forcibly suppressed.’ This what historian Christiaan Harinck from the KITLV discovered in his PhD research.

Physicist Jelmer Renema will spend two years conducting research at Oxford University in Great Britain funded by a Rubicon grant from NWO.

New archaeological research into grave goods and skeletal material from the oldest grave field in the Netherlands shows that male-female roles 7,000 words ago were less traditional than was thought. The research was conducted by a multidisciplinary team of researchers led by Archol, the National Museum…

Synchronised heart rates and skin conductance tell us that people are attracted to each other. This explains why we feel a romantic ‘click’ with some people and not with others. This is the result of research by psychologist Eliska Prochazkova from the Leiden Institute for Brain and Recognition, which…

It was a huge task, but it was worth it: Marieke Liem and her research group have completed a database of all murders committed in the Netherlands over the past 25 years. She will share their initial findings in a three-part lecture series organized by Studium Generale. ‘Beggars kill other beggars;…

Mum works in healthcare, dad in engineering and everyone is straight: many textbooks still show men and women in stereotypical roles, PhD candidate Tessa van de Rozenberg has discovered. She also found that children’s views on these topics often closely resemble those of their parents.

Women’s football is steadily gaining attention. It’s as though the sport is becoming emancipated. And yet in conversations with professional female footballers philosopher Nathanja van den Heuvel discovered that a male culture still prevails. Female footballers often feel like second-class athletes,…

A team of Dutch scientists has built a supercomputer the size of four pizza boxes. The Little Green Machine II has the computing power of 10,000 PCs and will be used by researchers in oceanography, computer science, artificial intelligence, financial modeling and astronomy. The computer is based at…

Prof. dr. Marieke Liem, Professor Social Resilience and Safety at ISGA, discussed the facts and fiction surrounding serial killers on Dutch NPO Radio 1.

Conference, Symposium

Rietje Knaap’s (83) PhD was a real feat of endurance, but she persisted. ‘You’re married so you don’t need a pension, do you?’ What are the experiences of Knaap and women who followed in her footsteps? In the run-up to International Women’s Day on 8 March, three generations of female doctors look back…

PhD defence

Daniela Kraft speaks to Academic Stories about self-assembling soft matter, nanorobots, the importance of female rodels in science, and the unique freedom and support that Leiden University provides.

Nikki Sterkenburg, external PhD candidate at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs in The Hague, was interviewed by the NOS programme Nieuws & Co about the meeting of Thierry Baudet with Alt-Right movement Jared Taylor. 'If Baudet would have wished to stay aloof of this movement, he shouldn’t…

Edited by Michael Kowalski

Anke Ramakers, Assistant Professor in criminology at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology at Leiden Law School, together with Finnish researchers Mikko Aaltonen and Pekka Martikainen, has published an article in the Elsevier journal 'Advances in Life Course Research', on the role of labour…

Three researchers of Humanities have been awarded with a VIDI research grant. With a VIDI they can spend five years researching the topic they submitte. The grant amounts to a maxium of eight hundred thousand euros.

On Tuesday 23 May 2017, Jasmina Mackic will defend her doctoral thesis ‘Proving discriminatory violence at the European Court of Human Rights’. The defence will start at 15.00 hrs, at the Academy Building of Leiden University, Rapenburg 73. The supervisor of the research is Vice Dean and Professor of…

On the 1st of November 2017, Ingrid Leijten hosted an expert-seminar titled ‘Tailored Provisions, Social Rights Compliance?’ (‘Maatwerk als Mensenrecht?’).

The percentage of female professors at Leiden University has risen to 30.2%. These are the results of the Women Professors Monitor 2021, which was published by the Dutch Network of Women Professors (LNVH). This shows that Leiden University is well above the national average of 25.7%.

Fatemeh (Simin) Tabassi Mofrad has recently received a project grant (€ 25,000) from LUF/Gratama Foundation for her ideas in investigating sex-by-genotype interactions in brain functions. She has a multidisciplinary research perspective which enables her to look at research issues from different angles.…

On September 12th, the faculty of Governance and Global Affairs organized a lecture and debate together with the organization Prinsjesfestival. The event was about 100 years of universal rights to vote, specifically women’s rights to vote.