What rules should regulate AI, who should make them, and how will they be enforced in the digital arena?

The Faculty of Humanities' Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Fund provides small grants to initiatives in support of diversity and inclusion, with specific emphasis on creating an inclusive learning environment.

Research

What do you build with when trees are scarce and winters are brutal? For hunter-gatherers living in current-day Ukraine some 18,000 years ago, the answer was simple: mammoth bones.

Five master's programmes from the Faculty of Humanities scored highly in Keuzegids 2026.

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.

Yuchen Lian defended her thesis on AI and language evolution at Leiden University.

On February 29 2024, the Humanities Career Service of Leiden University organised a career day to the European Union institutions in Brussels. Natalia Papageorgiou, student of the MA History (Politics, Culture and National Identities), talks about how the day went.

Can humans sense where north is, using what is known as magnetoreception? This question had master’s student Björn Keyser (Media Technology) so intrigued that he started crowdfunding to be able to study this together with the California Institute of Technology.

As part of Leiden University’s aim to be a safe and healthy environment for all staff and students, several activities and lectures were organised in an action week around suicide prevention. Dedicated benches were also placed at several university buildings, including at the Faculty of Humanities.

In the academic year 2018 - 2019, the Faculty of Humanities established the Educational Innovation Programme. In this way, the faculty wants to realise the ambitions from the educational vision of Leiden University in education. How is the programme currently doing? We talked to project manager Sanne…

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.’

LUNHA strives to redefine global health by prioritizing justice, fairness, and inclusion in Africa. Through collaboration with diverse stakeholders, LUNHA aims to reshape global health research and foster a broader engagement with social sciences and humanities.

Optimised antibiotic combinations can combat bacteria more effectively while also slowing the development of resistance. Scientists from five European countries are joining forces to identify such combinations and provide tools for others to do the same. The project is led by Professor Coen van Hasselt…

Antibiotic resistance is an economic problem. Pharmaceutical companies cannot earn much from antibiotic research, so they do not invest in it. This makes it important that universities do so, says Ned Buijs.

The history of the LGTBI+ collective, deeply marked by episodes of violence, repression, and discrimination, is also the history of the struggle for social change and the conquest of civil rights, advances without which contemporary Western democracies could not be explained. More recently, the implementation…

So much has happened this year! 2023 was an eventful year in which several wars raged about which our experts could offer interpretation. It was also the year in which the government made apologies for the slavery past. Leiden humanities scholars were at the forefront of this with their research on…

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.

An international team of researchers, including emeritus professor Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University's Faculty of Archaeology, has uncovered evidence that modern fallow deer have lost much of the genetic diversity once present in their Ice Age ancestors. The findings have been published in iScience…

With the search for new antibiotics becoming increasingly urgent, artificial intelligence offers valuable help. Smart software developed by Leiden PhD candidate Alexander Kloosterman searched genomes of bacteria and found clusters of DNA that code for proteins that have an antibiotic effect. ‘This new…

Even when a border has officially disappeared, it is still people who decide whether others may cross freely. This was also true for the Polish-German border, where PhD candidate Maryla Klajn spend six months conducting fieldwork.

Leiden University has a new professor. On 1 June Nadine Akkerman became Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture, a position she feels is designed to help her help others.

After two years of corona restrictions, it was ‘back to normal’ in 2022. Migration, elections, the history of slavery, Russia, and Ukraine were much-discussed topics. We compiled an overview of the most-read news items and other events of the past year.

On Thursday 22 January, the Honours College Law New Year's event addressed the urgent issue of femicide. Experience-based expert Anne-Marije van den Bersselaar and assistant professors Mojan Samadi and Ellen Gijselaar explored the topic from personal and legal perspectives.

On 3 July, students of the Leiden Leadership Programme received their certificates in the Marekerk church in Leiden. During the festive closing ceremony, it became clear that humanity and leadership go hand in hand. ‘As a leader, you have to listen, observe and acknowledge problems.’

In the short term, no reorganisation is foreseen within the Faculty of Humanities, nor are any compulsory redundancies expected. Nonetheless, structural changes remain necessary. This is evident from the faculty’s draft budget for 2026 and the accompanying financial multi-year outlook.

By means of a presentation, a panel discussion, and activities in the fresh air, the event themed ‘Environmental Humanities’, organised by the Honours College Humanities, managed to unite both people and disciplines. ‘There is a gap between humanities and sciences, but they are more alike than you might…

Humans and bonobos show striking similarities as well as differences when they see pictures of conspecifics. Both are more interested in photos of conspecifics that show emotion. But while our human attention is more easily drawn to photos of family members and friends that express certain emotions,…

How does digitalisation affect the humanities? The introductory course for the Honours College Humanities Lab challenges students to reflect on this through the production of their very own short film.

Did you know that during your studies you develop skills that are useful in working life too? On top of that, many of these transferable skills are listed as “future-oriented” skills and are in demand in the labour market.

Economic law, environmental law and human rights are important fields of law for sustainable development. But they do not interact sufficiently, which makes it difficult to implement sustainable development.

Organisation

Last week, Humanities Lab honours students presented their research through creative posters and pitches at the Capstone Conference in PLNT Leiden. It was a special edition, where alumni and teachers reminisced over the programme’s 10-year history.