The South African poet and author Antjie Krog gave the 37th Albert Verwey Lecture in the Great Auditorium in the Academy Building on 18 November. Inspired by Verwey’s poem ‘De zegger van verzen’, Krog’s lecture was a polyphonic and multilingual love letter to poetry.

The effects of sustainability projects on poorer, marginalised people should be considered at a much earlier stage. This is the opinion of Marja Spierenburg, Professor of Anthropology of Sustainable Development and Livelihood, who will give her inaugural lecture on 25 February.

In academia, the mention of Wikipedia might be met with suspicion. However, for Tsolin Nalbantian, university lecturer Modern Middle Eastern Studies, the encyclopedia is an opportunity to broaden the skills of her students and to increase public knowledge. She received a Teaching Comenius Fellowship…

The plane trees from the forecourt of Cluster North have been moved to the Herta Mohr building (Cluster South). The trees could not remain in their original location because of the forthcoming renovation of Cluster North. They have been moved already in advance of the flowering season. In June, the…

Light, open and green: a description that fits the new, renovated location of the Faculty of Humanities. The official opening of the Herta Mohr Building took place on 8 October, and it has many remarkable features: for example, recycled ‘mushroom columns’, a pedestrian bridge to the University Library…

The Schoof cabinet has presented its budget. As expected, higher education is facing severe cuts. In the coming period, the Executive Board will regularly look at the consequences of what it deems an irresponsible policy.

While studying Indonesian languages and cultures, Rennie Roos started a company. Today he has been working in Indonesia for more than eight years. Where does his love for this country come from? And how does he look back on his studies? ‘I actually wanted to become a pilot.’

Mayor Peter Heijkoop is busy getting to know his city better. On Monday 7 July, he visited the Faculty of Humanities. ‘A few hours and you can see how important this is.’

Debate

Andrea Cortellari, a 2020 graduate of the MA program in Middle Eastern Studies at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies, wins the best MA thesis prize by the Society for Turkic, Ottoman, and Turkish Studies.

Four lecturers from Leiden University will receive a 50,000-euro Comenius Teaching Fellow grant. This will enable them and their team to realise an educational innovation within their own teaching.

Wearing All Stars and ‘just’ a pair of jeans, with a backpack slung over his shoulder. It was an informal Friday afternoon with Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General, at Wijnhaven. Perched on a desk, he took questions from students in the audience.

With its FestivOWL theme, Orientation Week Leiden (OWL) promises to be one big festival for new international students in Leiden.

Three lecturers from Leiden University have been awarded a 100,000-euro Comenius Teaching Fellowship within the scope of the Senior Fellows programme. The grant will enable them and their project teams to carry out their own teaching innovation project.

Words originally intended to indicate space, such as ‘out’, are also regularly used to indicate cause and effect. Why does this happen? And how does it work in other languages? PhD candidate Camil Staps decided to find out.

Following the success of the Dutch version, the podcast 'Scandal and Controversy in Russian Literature' is now also available in English. Senior University Lecturer Otto Boele guides listeners through eight infamous texts in this version.

Leiden University opened the doors of its new Living Room on Thursday 16 February. The Living Room is a home from home where Dutch and international students can relax and meet others and is a strictly no-study zone.

When professors become emeriti, it usually does not mean they stop working. The Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) will therefore soon have a first: a symposium is going to be organised where all the speakers are emeriti professors. 'Science will always be part of you are.'

The Choose a Language Day was created to make high school students enthusiastic about choosing a linguistic profile and further education. Third-years were able to learn about different language studies at the Faculty of Humanities.

University lecturer Astrid Van Weyenberg has won the Faculty of Humanities Teaching Prize. ‘Astrid is a lovely person who can teach well.'

A group of Leiden students launched the Van Leiden tot Later (From Leiden to Later) media platform on 27 March. In podcasts and videos, they talk with high-profile alumni about the big issues of today. ‘We want to build a bridge between generations.’

Online, hybrid, on campus... It was an unpredictable year, also for the Faculty of Humanities. Luckily, there were also non-corona related stories. Let's review 2021 with this list of the most-read news articles per month.

While the United States continues to carry out drone strikes, and China conducts large-scale cyber and information operations, Ukrainian and Russian soldiers live in trenches, and NATO sends tanks to the Donbas front to force a breakthrough. Has war changed dramatically in recent decades as a result…

Sustainability, health and wellbeing are key factors during the coming renovation of the iconic South Cluster of the Humanities Campus. The conversion of the original seven ‘houses’ to create a single spacious, light and attractive environment under a glass roof will earn an Excellent Level qualification…

A collaboration between linguists, geographers and anthropologists aims to uncover how languages spread across South America over thousands of years. Associate Professor Rik van Gijn is responsible for the linguistic side of this NWO project.

Since April 2023 the current war in Sudan has brought larger death, destruction, and displacement than any other ongoing armed conflict on earth. And yet, international media coverage of the conflict remains limited.

Are you looking for some listening material for the upcoming long weekend? Staff members and alumni of the Faculty of Humanities have been creating various podcasts over the last few months. A selection is shown here:

Today, Leiden University announces who the new Cluster Zuid on the Witte Singel will be named after. Summer 2023, a ballot determined the name of the complex on the former Van Wijkplaats/Van Eyckhof, which is expected to be completed in March. It was already established that the complex would be named…

Climate and human rights will again become major issues on the world stage by the end of 2023. The new series of lunch seminars by the interdisciplinary research programme Global Transformations and Governance Challenges (GTGC) seamlessly tie into these events. All Leiden researchers and students are…

Five thousand years before the common era (BCE), Proto-Indo-European, the mother of many languages that are spoken today in Europe, Central Asia and South Asia, originated in eastern Europe. PhD candidate Axel Palmér has combined a 175-year-old hypothesis with new techniques to demonstrate how descendants…

As from Wednesday 13 May, the Faculty Office has moved to the Herta Mohr Building.

Leiden University has an active open science community. Open science means transparency in all phases of research by precisely documenting every step of the way and making this publicly available. ‘It’s time to be open,’ say psychologists Anna van ’t Veer and Zsuzsika Sjoerds. There is increasing awareness…

Debate

“Europe must look […] southward, where the global majority resides. The BRICS countries alone represent almost 50% of the world economy and a quarter of the world trade, it is where the youngest populations lives, with an enormous amount of creative energy, something that is often lacking in the northern…

In September 2025 Leiden University hosted a greatly successful academic conference "Care and the Jewish Experience" organized by the Leiden Jewish Studies Network. Among our guests and presenters were academics from many universities, many disciplines and at different stages of their academic caree…

According to Nivja de Jong, second language acquisition is 'the most fascinating subject in linguistics'. As a recently appointed professor of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy, she studies the question of how best to teach people a new language.

How did Scottish speakers sound hundreds of years ago? University lecturer Mo Gordon thinks the answer to that question can be found in church archives. 'It can be a boost to your identity to know the history of your language.'

The author Manon Uphoff from Utrecht will be Leiden University’s new ‘writer in residence’ from autumn 2025. As the writer in residence, Uphoff will contribute to several courses on writing offered by the BA Dutch Language and Culture programme.

Michaël Peyrot has been appointed professor of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics with retroactive effect from 1 January. He is looking forward to passing on his love for the subject to a new generation of students.

The end of the semester is approaching again. That means a lot of deadlines and the end of a lot of subjects. Have you prepared well for this period?