Berthe Jansen is Assistant Professor of Tibetan Studies at Leiden University. She has a PhD in Buddhist Studies from the same university. Jansen has wide academic interests but most have to do with the confluence of religion and society. Her monograph The Monastery Rules: Tibetan Monastic Organization…

Krista A. Milne researches book history and medieval English and French literature at Leiden University.

How do colonialism and historical slavery continue to impact the university today? And what should happen next? Students and staff discussed these questions on 11 March.

175 years ago, the Netherlands took great strides towards parliamentary democracy with a revamped Constitution. Where does the Constitution stand today?

Debate

Emma ter Mors is an associate professor at the unit of Social, Economic and Organisational Psychology. She is also Head of Advice at the Knowledge Centre Psychology and Economic Behaviour (KCPEG).

Edmund Hayes gained his doctorate with honors from the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He works on early Islamic history, in particular Shiʿi history, focusing on the intersection of intellectual developments and social and political dynamics. He…

Dorine Schellens is a cultural historian with expertise on contemporary Russian and German literature and culture. In addition, since Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine, she has been actively advocating for students and scholars who are at risk or have fled as a result of Russia's war or political…

Julia Cramer is a quantum physicist and science communication researcher, interested in the boundary between fundamental science and society. She is fascinated about communicating science to the (non-obvious) publics. Her research focus is on Quantum and Society.

Soils house an overwhelming abundance and diversity of living (micro)organisms. In our research we examine how plants influence the soil they grow in, and how these changes influence other plants that grow later in the soil, and the insects on those plants. We study the mechanisms of these aboveground-belowground…

Rutger Hoekstra is an associate professor at CML who is an expert on environmental input-output modelling and beyond-growth debates. He leads the WISE Horizons project which works on metrics and models for sustainable and inclusive wellbeing (brede welvaart in Dutch). In 2019, he published his latest…

Debate

Arjen Boin is Professor of Public Institutions and Governance at the Institute of Political Science, Leiden University.

Amy Eaglestone is a lecturer at the Institute of Political Science.

Niels van Willigen is Professor by Special Appointment in Strategic Studies at the Institute of Political Science.

Debate

Those who apply for asylum at the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) are often asked about their main reason for migration. This process puts asylum seekers in a specific category, while their experiences are often much more complex and multifaceted. With his research on queer migration, PhD…

How do you recount historic events if you are not allowed to talk about them? For his dissertation, Taufiq Hanafi tried to find out how a period of mass murder – despite heavy censorship – found a place in Indonesian literature. PhD defence 31 March.

Marion Anker is a junior curator at the Rijksmuseum, the National Museum of the Netherlands. She studied History in Leiden and Amsterdam. Together with her team, she organised the controversial exhibition ‘Revolusi! Indonesië onafhankelijk!’ What did studying History teach her?

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…

Students from Leiden University have launched The Nuance Project, a platform for respectful, open-minded dialogue on divisive issues. The aim is to foster connection and understanding among people even if their viewpoints differ.

Ward Hoskens started ten years ago as an intern at one of Leiden's most iconic buildings: the Pieterskerk. Now he is doing his PhD on the question of how the function of this 'church that is no longer a church' changed over recent centuries.

The university bid farewell to its Rector Magnificus, Hester Bijl, on 13 January during the ‘Hester’s Highlights’ symposium.

A cannon, a sabre, guns: these Sri Lankan objects had been in the Rijksmuseum for centuries. In early December, they were returned to Sri Lanka. Associate Professor of Colonial History Alicia Schrikker led the research that formed the basis for the restitution and published a volume on the findings…

Mirjam de Bruijn is an anthropologist whose work has a clearly interdisciplinary character with a preference for contemporary history and cultural studies.

Connecting scientific fields, enhancing research and teaching, and providing innovative solutions to complex social issues: that is the idea behind interdisciplinary research. What did the university achieve in 2024? A small sample.

Gilles van Wezel is a molecular biologist by training, with strong affinity for global regulatory processes that control the major processes in the bacterial cell. This led him via the control of protein synthesis (PhD thesis), via carbon catabolite repression (postdoc), to the two current main subjects:…

An impressive 22 research projects by Leiden researchers have been awarded Veni funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).