Guest lecture

On Friday 29 August 2025, 370 students received their Bachelor's degree in International Studies. The diplomas were awarded in the historic setting of the Pieterskerk in Leiden. Family members, friends, and staff gathered to celebrate this joyous occasion with the graduates in a packed Pieterskerk.

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer delivered the Huizinga lecture on Friday 8 December in a packed Pieterskerk. The writer seized the opportunity of the 52nd edition to point out the importance of creativity, both for artists and scientists.

Professor of Modern China Florian Schneider researches what people do with technology and what technology does with people. Social media, for example. And then mainly in China.

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…

A day at the beach, games, a visit to an embassy and a pub crawl. The activities at HOPweek help new students get to know not just The Hague but each other too.

‘Wonder is the beginning of insight. Don’t let that academic curiosity erode.’ This was Jan Anthonie Bruijn’s call to administrators and funding bodies in his valedictory lecture.

An event where students came together to discuss the impact of AI on healthcare. Jurren de Groot and Yuxuan Zhu, master's students in Artificial Intelligence, took up the debate. They participated in SimuVaction, an event that brings students worldwide together in Atlanta to simulate an initiative of…

In an article for The Conversation, University Lecturer Andrew Gawthorpe comments on the recent elections in the United States and what they mean for President Donald Trump’s position.

The White House has recently released its national security strategy. University Lecturer Andrew Gawthorpe explains in The Conversation what we can learn from the document.

In an article for East Asia Forum, University Lecturer Vincent Chang sheds light on China’s ambition to globalise its pantheon of national heroes.

Postdoc Intigam Mamedov comments in The Conversation on the recent peace talks between Russia and the USA regarding the war in Ukraine.

University Lecturer Andrew Gawthorpe explains on France 24 how alleged fraud in Minnesota is being used by Trump as an argument to target Somalis.

University Lecturer Andrew Gawthorpe commented on the BBC regarding Donald Trump’s plans to exclude South Africa from the G20.

Workshop

Thijs Porck, teacher at English Language and Culture, has won the faculty teaching prize. He was lauded for his enthousiasm, his creative ways of teaching, and his commitment to his students.

An international team of astronomers, led by Will Rocha of Leiden Observatory, using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have discovered that the key ingredients for making potentially habitable worlds are present in early-stage protostars, where planets have not yet formed.

Sky-high energy prices and a climate that keeps getting warmer: it’s clear that we have to turn down the heat. Sustainability Day on 10 October will mark the start of our five-month Energy Campaign and we’ll be making the switch. Sustainability Coordinators Aranka Virágh (Real Estate) and Marlies Nijemeisland…

Lecture

Lecture

The LDE Centre for Global Heritage and Development has interviewed Dr Maaike de Waal about the new publication of which she is one of the editors. 'Living (World) Heritage Cities explores how World Heritage Cities are dealing with the preservation of their living heritage, with all the challenges and…

'When taking into account all finds in the Islamic world of this enigmatic vessel, it would perhaps be wise not to restrict this container to merely one function.'

PhD candidate Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart has received the Stichting Elise Mathilde Fonds grant from the Leids Universiteits Fonds (LUF) to work on a research project focusing on the landscapes of the Second World War. ‘We will combine citizen science with deep learning to uncover traces of the c…

The largest international conference on English historical linguistics is coming to Leiden. From 7 June to 11 June 2021, the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) organises the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL-21). Due to Covid measures, the conference takes…

The FIFA World Cup will get underway in Qatar this November – an event that has attracted much discussion in recent years. This discussion is not only centred on sport. Human rights are in the spotlights in Qatar. On Friday 30 September, Leiden University organised a debate in which experts from various…

Now that it is becoming increasingly easy to digitise texts, it seems almost obvious to do that with everything that has ever been written. University lecturer Verena Meyer thinks that is too simplistic. ‘We need to look more closely at the political and cultural effects of digitisation.’

At Leiden University College, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer urged Europe to show unity and strength in a world defined by fear, power politics, and uncertainty.

Lecture, Research Seminar Medieval and Early Modern History

To truly understand Dutch literature, we have to look beyond borders. At least, that is the view of Sander Bax. From 1 August, he will be Professor of Contemporary Dutch Literature and Culture in a Transnational Dynamic.

Where to study ’politics’? According to the QS World University Rankings, Leiden University is a good choice. In the 2021 edition, Leiden and The Hague retain their position in the top 25 of the most esteemed institutes worldwide. Within the Netherlands, we again claim the first position.

UNESCO has recognized an international set of fifteen manuscripts about Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe and the three Hikayat Aceh manuscripts as World Heritage. The manuscripts are inscribed in the global UNESCO Memory of the World Register. This list contains documentary heritage…

How do digital technologies affect adolescent mental health and resilience? How do we foster a secure online environment? How should we deal with increasing rates of online crimes among adolescents? During the mini-symposium ‘The effect of the online world on adolescents’, presented by the interdisciplinary…