Former President Kgalema Motlanthe of South Africa gave a public lecture on Campus The Hague on 7 July. His story was about the economic transformation of Africa.

Leiden scientists and companies receive 1.37 million euros to develop technology for the Einstein Telescope. This underground telescope will measure gravitational waves and must therefore be extremely sensitive. To that end, the consortium conducts research on the damping of vibrations at temperatures…

Ships are still emitting too much nitrogen oxide. Till now it has been impossible to measure this at sea, but that is set to change. Solomiia Kurchaba combined satellite data and developed algorithms to identify which ships are emitting too much. Kurchaba received her PhD on 11 June.

Han Meyer, Carola Hein, Paul van de Laar and Sabine Luning, argue that in the current moment of major crises these ship channels necessitate radical reconsideration.

How is Young Star Renske Donkers doing now? Early this year she was the second person ever to win the Young Star Award for the best bachelor student. After her bachelor Molecular Science & Technology, Renske is now busy with her master Chemical Process Engineering in Delft. ‘This award was a great boost…

The Dutch Development Bank's new SDG loan fund for green energy in the global south may not be as positive as it seems. Anthropology professor Marja Spierenburg raises concerns about its potential impact on local communities.

Many students dream of running their own business. But where to start? The Master Honours Challenge ‘Entrepreneurship’ helps students figure things out. ‘Now I can actually go for it.’

Eva Loeve (22), a fourth-year student of Cultural Anthropology, worked for five months at Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO). At the end of May 2021, the report "Spinning Around Workers' Rights" about working conditions in spinning mills in South India was published, on which Eva…

Marlou Schrover played an important role in the study of migration history for many years. Now she is bidding farewell.

Leiden University has recently received various petitions from students and staff concerning our ties with Israeli universities. We have also held extensive discussions with the University Council in response to questions raised on the subject. We think it important that our partners and research projects…

Professor Ariadne Schmidt and Associate Professor Arie van Steensel (University of Groningen) have produced A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Leiden, the first English-language history of Leiden. Mayor Peter Heijkoop received the first copy.

For her internship at the Textile Museum, master's student Evi van Stiphout researched the Surinamese cloths of the Leiden Cotton Company. Leiden and Suriname have a closer relationship than many people think. ‘Not much is written about Suriname’.

What makes a good leader, and is there such a thing as a born leader? These are questions that the master's students of the Leiden Leadership Programme (LLP) will explore this year. During the opening seminar, the new participants learn about the programme and share their expectations. 'I want to bring…

In the Spanish town of Guadalajara, there is a street named ‘Burgemeester Fluiterstraat’, named after a descendant of Leiden migrants who had done well in the South. He was not the only Guadalajara resident with Leiden roots: at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a stream of Dutch textile workers…

Leiden Mayor Peter Heijkoop visited the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences and the Faculty of Science on Monday,

Nitrogen professor Jan Willem Erisman and Ton Brouwer have released a new report presenting scenarios to actually meet the agricultural nitrogen targets for 2030. Their message to politicians in The Hague: ‘Look at this approach — it is possible.’

A CT scanner to treat eye cancer, energy-efficient software for the future and a test to identify male chick eggs. Three projects by researchers from Leiden University are to receive funding from research funder NWO’s Open Technology programme, to which the business sector also contributes.

The Washington Post reviews Nationalism by university lecturer Eric Storm. In this book, Storm explores how nation-states became the dominant political organizational form.

Atte Ahola, who graduated last year from the bachelor’s programme in Urban Studies, has won the award for Best Undergraduate Thesis in Europe in the category of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the Global Undergraduate Awards 2025.

On 17 October, a representative from the ERC Safe & Sound project attended the first edition of WE ROBOT Europe in Berlin. At the conference, speakers and participants from the academic world, policy bodies and industry shared and discussed their thoughts on robotics regulation in the EU and the US.…

Professor Philip Spinhoven has been appointed acting Scientific Director of the Institute of Psychology until 1 September 2021. He succeeds Michiel Westenberg who resigned from the position 1 January 2021, because he could no longer combine the responsibilities of Scientific Director with his academic…

Professor Marc Koper researches how you can use electrical energy to make or break chemical bonds. He has just been awarded a Spinoza Prize, the Netherlands’ highest personal science award, for his fundamental research into how this form of electrolysis works.

Exchange: What and why?

Karwan Fatah-Black and Lauren Lauret are co-authors of Geketend voor Hollands Glorie (The Chains of Holland’s Glory) that studies the political and economic connections between South Holland and slavery. The findings of this research will be presented with Dr. Joris van den Tol (Radboud University)…

Countries that import plastic waste recycle an average of at least 63 percent of it. This is surprising, as we previously believed that the vast majority was incinerated or ended up as litter. This was discovered by PhD candidate Kai Li and his colleagues from the Institute of Environmental Sciences in…

Laurens Hessels was appointed Professor by Special Appointment, lecturing in the Social Value of Science at Leiden University, effective 1 September 2021. His research will focus how best science and industry can work together. Alongside his new position he will continue his work at the Rathenau Institute…

On June 2nd Roy de Winter has won the G. Rosenberg Research Award from the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS). De Winter was presented with the award during the celebration of the LIACS' 25th anniversary. The new award is intended for promising PhD students at LIACS.

Cosine Marco Beijersbergen has been appointed as one of the distinguished 62 fellows of the Netherlands Academy of Engineering (NAE). With these fellows, the NAE emphasises the importance of technological innovation for sustainable social change. The inauguration is on 13 November.

Hanan Hammad and Eftychia Mylona give a master class focusing on conceptual and methodological challenges in writing histories of marginalized social groups.

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga and Hadassah Drukarch from eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies, recently published the book ‘AI for Healthcare Robotics’, published by CRC Press from Taylor and Francis Group in their AI for Everything Series.

In 2024, Professor Joanita Vroom received a substantial grant from the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) in support for her Hinterlands of Medieval Chalcis Project (HMC Project) in Greece. PHI, a California-based non-profit organization, is dedicated to archaeological research as well as to the preservation…

The Rob Schilperoort Memorial will be unveiled at the Leiden Bio Science Park on Saturday 16 September. This gigantic gate stands at the entrance to the park, which is also named after Schilperoort, its founder.

The Netherlands has DigiD, Portugal ‘de Cartão de Cidadão’, and Ireland MyGovID. Europe now wants one uniform digital identity card - the same for all Member States. For the Dutch government, the European successor to DigiD is a prestige project. State Secretary Van Huffelen wants to roll out an app…

The Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) has received a €750,000 grant from ZonMw for QPharmNL. This is a continuing education programme that trains professionals in computational techniques in pharmacology for innovative drug development.

The relationship between academia and democracy is a complicated one. Should policy makers listen to scientists or to citizens? That is the dilemma Valérie Pattyn and Johan Christensen will discuss with a panel of experts during the academic conference EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF).

Tuesday 27 January - A crisp winter morning and a busy Tuesday. Board matters, research safety, leadership and faculty profiling alternate throughout the day, with a focus on collaboration both inside and outside the faculty. A full day that ends with a game of darts.

Arbeidsuitbuiting van migranten wordt als een vorm van het strafrechtelijke delict mensenhandel beschouwd. De rechtspositie van de slachtoffers is mede daardoor ondergeschikt aan de strafrechtelijke procedure. Dat kan en moet anders, stelt Gerrie Lodder in haar proefschrift. Promotie op 21 april 202…

Jasper Knoester is the dean of the Faculty of Science. How is he doing, what exactly does he do and what does his day look like? In each newsletter, Jasper gives an insight into his life.

Better pay and new agreements with streaming platforms: the actors’ strike that brought Hollywood to a standstill a few days ago is mainly about money. But there is something else that film actors are worried about: the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence. Is this fear justified?

Its idyllic setting and white sandy beaches have made the Maldives a hotspot for tourists. This provides an income but is a problem for the fragile natural environment. Students from various universities worked with the local people to make the soil more fertile. How did they go about it?

At one time, the railway from Kimberley to Kambove in Southern Africa symbolised prosperity and progress. Today, the exhausted mining towns along its route are marked by decay and pollution. Professor Jan-Bart Gewald has been awarded an NWO L grant to investigate the long-term global consequences.

Turning beer waste into a useful, sustainable product. That was the mission of students from Leiden at the international BISC-E event. The biology students challenged themselves and won third place in the Dutch finals of this competition. For this, they used the simple formula: Grain + fungus = coas…