It’s not easy to choose the right course of study for you. Leiden University is a strong believer in offering comprehensive orientation, so we organise information activities all year round.

Would you like to explore the next step in your career, or find out what your future options are? Do you have specific qualities that you’d like to develop further in your work? Or are you wondering whether you’re still in the right place or might like something different, but don’t know what or where…

Smiling faces, a mass dance and a bit of awkwardness: after two ‘corona editions’ of EL CID, the Leiden introduction week is back with a vengeance this year. A total of 3,412 first-year students from Leiden University and University of Applied Sciences Leiden, accompanied by 486 mentors, started EL…

Working as a diplomat for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: for many students it would be their dream. Alumnus Tom Groot Haar is busy making it a reality. 'My career seems like a preconceived plan, but it wasn't.'

Event

Symposium and Workshops

Course

We want to facilitate teacher development in the area of diversity and inclusion by offering specialized training opportunities.

At the Humanities, students are central. They are trained to be critical thinkers, academic professionals and concerned citizens. Our lecturers and researchers stimulate students to develop the knowledge with which they can understand and interpret big questions in our society. Because everything around…

The Events Office is happy to help organise an online event, but you can also do it yourself. You will find resources and support for this on this page.

How do you put students at the centre of education? And how do you make your research action-oriented? A new podcast by the Centre for Innovation answers these question. In Design Thinking in Education, four lecturers and two students talk about educational innovation.

On 15-16 June, Jos Gommans, Marieke Bloembergen, and Carolien Stolte will organize an international conference entitled “India in the Making of the Global Esoteric: 1200-2000”. The conference asks: why is it always India that has been imagined as a wonder, and what did that wonder mean, intellectually…

Ingrid van Engelshoven, outgoing Minister of Education, Culture and Science (OCW), has appointed Robine de Lange-Tegelaar to the Board of Governors of Leiden University.

When you think of migration, you probably won’t immediately think of dating apps. Yet such apps are important to many migrants, such as those who identify as lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer or questioning (LGBT+). Researcher Andrew DJ Shield studied the role that dating apps play in the migration process,…

A fresh semester means a fresh faculty calendar. There is plenty to do at the faculty again in the coming months. Five interesting activities are listed below.

Leiden University is awarding an honorary doctorate to virologist Marc van Ranst. Van Ranst has been one of the main advisers of the Belgian government during the Covid pandemic. German Arabist Beatrice Gründler will also receive an honorary doctorate for her work in the field of Oriental Manuscript…

How do the residents of the Kooi neighbourhood in Leiden find living there? What can we do about loneliness? In this extraordinary academic year, students have been conducting all sorts of research, in Leiden. They presented their initial findings and recommendations at a Learning with the City meeting…

If you work at the university and are in scale 11 or above, you have the option of concluding a function-based contract.

Strong leadership is essential for building an open and learning organisation.

PhD

Have you experienced or witnessed unacceptable or transgressive behaviour? This page gives information about what you can do yourself and which ‘helplines’ can assist you in this situation.

Are you a senior lecturer and do you play an active role in the university’s educational development and innovation? If so, you are eligible for the Senior Teaching Qualification (SKO). This qualification shows that you possess strong didactic and educational skills and that you contribute to the development…

Due to its success, the Leiden2022 Q&A has been extended and is looking for even more thought-provoking, interesting or unusual questions.

With the long lockdown, it’s been a hard year for Leiden businesses. How can the local economy bounce back and how can the University help? Two talk shows discussing this were recently recorded in the Academy Building. They will be aired on Unity TV on 28 September and 12 October.

This week, Leiden University bade farewell to Henri Lenferink, who is retiring after 20 years as mayor of Leiden.

In 2018, the undergraduate programme Dutch Language and Culture embarked on sweeping programme innovations to educate its students ‘in a way that focusses more on the challenges of Dutch Studies in a 21st century society’. What does this entail and what was the approach? Esther Op de Beek, university…

On the brand-new Leiden Teachers Blog, Leiden teachers share their experiences with educational innovation. They show colleagues, students, and everyone else who is interested the different facets of creating university education.

‘What if we switch off all the lights one evening? That idea crossed my mind from time to time. And when I mentioned it to a taxi driver one day, he said: “Oh, you mean: lights out, stars on!” That’s not completely true, of course, because the stars are always on, but his phrase summed up the idea n…

In our rapidly evolving and interconnected world, the study of International Relations has expanded beyond conventional disciplinary boundaries. Leiden University’s MAIR program, with its emphasis on humanities-oriented and multidisciplinary perspectives, contends that understanding the complexities…

Yes, the new Humanities Campus is going to be smaller in size. But no, that doesn’t mean there’ll be any shortage of space. The available area and a creative design will give us all the room we need. So what will such a design look like? Take a look for yourself in the Arsenaal, the Pieter de la Court…

Ornately decorated head pieces and jewellery, images of imposing mosques and photos of local people. The 'Splendours of the Silk Roads' exhibition depicts life and different cultures along this important trade route.

Salvador Santino Regilme received Honorable Mention for the 2022 Best Scholarly Article Award from the Sociology of Human Rights Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA). He won for his paper “Visions of Peace Amidst a Human Rights Crisis: War on Drugs in Colombia and the Philippines,”…

Organisation

Apart from the PhD regulations, Leiden University also employs the PhD guidelines that lay down the minimal requirements for the supervision, training and available facilities for PhD candidates.

Personal development

Would you like to organise a session during the biggest multidisciplinary event in Europe - the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) conference - to be held in Leiden from 13 to 16 July 2022? If so, send us your proposal! Archaeologist Corinne Hofman is one of the driving forces behind the conference and…

On 1 August, Jelly Reinders was appointed head of the Education and Student Affairs (OSZ) department at the Faculty of Humanities. ‘It's a wonderful continuation of my career after some fantastic and interesting years at VU University Amsterdam.'

‘Islam and Muslims are not something that happened to Europe; they are part of Europe. In fact, Islam is one the biggest constants in European history,’ argues Professor Maurits Berger in the new eight-part History of Islam in Europe podcast series of the Leiden University Faculty of Humanities.

The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (AIBL), one of the five academies that make up the Institut de France, has elected professor Petra Sijpesteijn as foreign corresponding member (correspondant étranger), to fill the seat of the renowned Egyptologist Edda Bresciani.

The city of Leiden has a unique combination of knowledge institutions. To ensure this knowledge flourishes and the city gains the maximum benefit from it, the Leiden City of Knowledge partnership was launched five years ago. A new partnership agreement will be signed on 11 November.

In 2022, Leiden will be the European City of Science. During this year, Leiden will be the European stage for knowledge, with a programme filled with science, art and culture. Of course, the humanities also take part. Get to know the core team of our faculty.

What will happen if the lights in a large part of the city are switched off? How many stars can you see without all that light pollution? This is what researchers, artists and the residents of Leiden are going to investigate during Seeing Stars Leiden on 25 September. ‘Leiden is the ideal place for…

The League of European Research Universities (LERU) was launched in Leiden 20 years ago. LERU is a partnership of 23 leading research universities, including the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Leiden, Leuven and Heidelberg. It celebrated this anniversary last week with a multi-day conference in…

From memorials to the armed forces to memory stones for individual victims. It was only later that the Holocaust took a central role in Western remembrance culture, Cleveringa Professor Frank van Vree notes. ‘Nationalists and human rights activists both invoke the experience of the Holocaust.’

Within the scope of Leiden European City of Science, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) presented the quadrennial Lorentz Medal to Daan Frenkel in the Academy Building yesterday. The ceremony was in collaboration with the Lorentz Center and was attended by Robbert Dijkgraaf, Minister…

On Friday 11 March (16.00 hrs.) Minister Dijkgraaf (Education, Culture and Science) will give a speech at Leiden University entitled ‘When knowledge becomes critical’. In the speech, he will address several critical challenges in science and society. The livestream will be open to all.

The Leiden Ranking – Open Edition is completely transparent. The ranking compiled by the CWTS uses open data and publishes the algorithms that are used.

With support of several publishers and private foundations, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Scaliger Institute welcome around 15 to 20 Fellows and guests per year to consult and research materials from our Special Collections. The Scaliger Institute received many applications this year from…

The Institute for Philosophy has a new Academic Director: on 1 February, James McAllister was succeeded by Douglas Berger. We asked him about his plans.

As of 19 April 2022, professor Jacobijn Gussekloo has been appointed Dean of the Honours Academy at Leiden University. Gussekloo is professor of Primary Care and director of the master’s programme Vitality and Ageing. Gussekloo succeeds professor Jos Schaeken, who has been Dean since March 2020.