Playing with nitrogen and fire to show school pupils how exciting science can be – that’s what the student volunteers of Stichting Rino do alongside their studies. ‘If there’s even one child who gets interested in science, that’s what it’s all for.’

On 17 June, primary school pupils in Leiden will get the chance to explore science in an interactive and engaging way. The exciting new show ‘Wetenschapswonders’ is the initiative of master’s students Boele Visser and Ilse Hordijk, from the Rino Foundation. ‘I’m happy to help build a bridge between…

Prof. Sarah de Rijcke will succeed Paul Wouters as dean of Leiden University's Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FSW) from 1 January 2024. Paul Wouters will retire at the beginning of January.

From global warming to the decolonisation of knowledge. At the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) in Leiden over 500 speakers from 60 countries have come together to discuss the big themes of our times. Why have the delegates come?

Are you curious about how the human skeleton works? Discover this and more on 3 October in Leiden and on 4 October in The Hague.

Social

Global science research serves the needs of the Global North, and is driven by the values and interests of a small number of companies, governments and funding bodies, finds a major new international study published today. As such, the authors find, science, technology and innovation research is not…

From 11 to 17 September, Leiden will be all about art and science. What can the combination of these two domains do for us? And how can cooperation between them be strengthened? Several public events and a brand new symposium for specialists should answer these questions.

Lecture

Education, Social

A true shower of awards for students from the Faculty of Science during the annual KHMW Young Talent Awards ceremony. On Monday, 25 November, no less than nine first-year students received a prize for the best academic results in their first year. In addition, there were graduation prizes for master’s…

How can I align science, society and myself to address today’s major challenges? That’s what students of the Honours College track ‘Science, Society and Self’ aim to find out. How do their classes at honours differ from their regular education?

At the start of the year a lot of journals publish lists of their most cited papers of the previous year. Three papers published by Leiden archaeologists were ranked in the top 10 of the Journal of Archaeological Science: reports.

A team of Leiden researchers has won the Ammodo Science Award for innovative humanities research on perceptions of cultural heritage.

Lecture

2025 was a year to remember at our faculty. We celebrated our 450th anniversary, launched new degree programmes and welcomed many inspiring speakers, yet we also felt the weight of budget constraints. Our year in a nutshell:

Lecture

Sustainability researchers can play an important role in the energy transition. But what if their partners are not (yet) sustainable and science itself has adverse effects? This is the subject of an online talk by researcher Thomas Franssen on 16 December with a discussion afterwards. ‘Clean energy…

There was a lot of interest. In front of nearly a hundred researchers, supporting colleagues and Martijn Ridderbos, the Vice-Chairman of the Executive Board, Lotte van Dillen, Research Director of Psychology and Saskia Goedhard, Director of Humanities Operations jointly opened the new lab with a classic…

Lecture

Once a year, former employee and avid runner Dennis Hoencamp returns to his old workplace. That’s when he competes in the Leiden Science Run. As an event coordinator, he once devised the relay race as an anniversary activity. It grew into an annual event for the entire University and the Bio Science…

How can social scientists contribute to a healthier society? That question was central to the Healthy Society Event on 9 June 2022, which successfully marked the start of a more conscious and intensive collaboration between the five Institutes of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences on education…

Sunshine, ice cream, coffee, and plenty of good vibes. Once again, students and staff made the most of the We are Science Week. Relive some of the highlights with our photo report!

Conference

Glorious sunshine, dozens of enthusiastic academics and huge numbers of Leiden residents ensured that this year’s special jubilee version of 3 October University was a great success.

In zoos, at festivals and in a mobile lab at the market: everywhere, Mariska Kret tries to understand human and animal emotions with her distinctive behavioural research. Now she has received the Mercator Sapiens Stimulus of €1 million for her efforts.

Fantastic plants, dizzying patterns and pulsating sounds: researchers from Leiden are going to study the effects of a simulated psychedelic trip on the mind and body at Lowlands Festival. Why might this be interesting for therapies?

Sustainable biotechnology, new insights into genome evolution and combining forces in mathematics. The NWO has awarded grants to these three innovative Leiden research projects in the ENW-M Open Competition.

Education

In the 2020 presidential elections, voters in several, mostly southern, electoral districts of the United States saw ‘their’ polling stations closed by the local authorities. In order to cast their vote, they had to travel further or use the mail ballot. Media reports and civil rights activitsts often…

Two Leiden University science communication projects have been awarded a WECOM grant through the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA). One project is a study of the history of the deaf community in the Netherlands and the other is of a condition that causes people to lose their way.

Lecture

A newly opened museum in China appears to be devoted to the origins of the Austronesian-speaking peoples, who some 5000 years ago spread from East Asia across the Pacific, seeding it with a distinctive culture and some 1200 languages. But those displays are also a statement in the long-running dispute…

Have you ever seen your friend smiling, and suddenly you started grinning too? PhD student Chris Riddell is researching how and why we copy body language. As a new Face of Science, he will take us along on his research journey for the coming year.

How do you explain loss, social inequality or mental health to children without losing sight of the gravity of the subject? The new Honours course From Research to Children’s Book, taught by Annelies van Bentum, challenges students to make complex academic themes accessible through the medium of children’s…

Lecture

Amid the many traditions of Leiden’s 3 October Festival, a relative newcomer is beginning to take hold: the Science Market. At market stalls, the people of Leiden could explore or even participate in Leiden’s research – performing an ‘operation’ in the street, for example.