Four green research institutes in Leiden are joining forces to integrate evolution and biodiversity research, at local and at the national level. Pivot in this collaboration is Frederic Lens.

After the Second World War almost three million people emigrated from the Netherlands to countries such as Canada and Australia. The government information was anything but objective, Professor by Special Appointment of Dutch Studies/Dutch Literature Ton van Kalmthout concludes in his inaugural lect…

Music lovers are welcome at this free open-air concert celebrating 450 years of Leiden University, on Sunday 6 July. This special jubilee edition of the Rapenburg Canal Concert will feature a unique orchestra made up of our students, staff and alumni, performing on a floating stage.

De Europe Hub verbindt onderzoekers van verschillende faculteiten. Het netwerk biedt hun de kans snel vakkennis uit te wisselen en projecten gezamenlijk te beginnen. Door de hub is een nieuwe minor in ontwikkeling en hij biedt kansen voor onderzoeksfinanciering.

De onderzoeksteams zijn opgezet, samenwerkingen zijn gestart, projecten afgetrapt, de eerste startsubsidies zijn binnen en de websites zijn in de lucht. Het stimuleringsprogramma Citizenship, Migration and Global Transformations, dat bestaat uit de twee pijlers Social Citizenship and Migration en Global…

The field of artificial intelligence has developed rapidly in recent years. We spoke with Stephan Raaijmakers, professor by special appointment in Communicative AI, about the impact of artificial intelligence and why everyone should pay more attention to developments in this field.

Four projects led by the Faculty of Humanities have been awarded KIEM grants. The researchers will receive €10,000 to carry out their plans.

If you buy something online, the webshop can adjust the price based on your data. Kimia Heidary investigated the phenomenon of online price discrimination. ‘It’s not necessarily unfair. Different prices for different people has been around for years.’

Is it ethical to freely redistribute photographs taken in colonial contexts, historically and today? Christoph Rippe, PhD-candidate Cultural Anthropology, suggests that people might not have been always fully aware of what happened to their photographs after they were taken. 'But nowadays, with the…

‘We want to say something very different from the norm. We are the radicals now.’ Tahir Abbas is lyric about the DRIVE project he will be leading from Leiden University in The Hague. This is a short introduction to the research that will be carried out in the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and the United…

In the 16th and 17th centuries, many Northern-Netherlandish artists drew outdoors to train their hands and eyes, and to record landscapes and nature. In her inaugural lecture on 21 March 2022, Yvonne Bleyerveld, Professor by Special Appointment of Art on Paper and Parchment, draws our attention to a…

Over the last 5-6 years Burkina Faso has become seriously implicated in the rapid and dramatic changes in the geopolitical situation in the Sahel. The country, once reputed for its stability and safety, has come under the spotlight for the number of violent attacks and of internally displaced people.…

Organisation

‘Jelena Prokic, university lecturer and researcher at the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities, will be preparing students for the challenges and opportunities of the digital world. In September, six modules will start on subjects such as statistics and digitally searching through texts.…

On 26 November historian Jan Grabowski and sociologist Barbara Engelking will both give the Cleveringa Lecture. They wrote a book about the Holocaust in Poland and were taken to court for defamation.

The university is home to many pearls of research institutes that do not make the news every day. The Executive Board visited one such pearl, the Institute of Philosophy, on Tuesday 1 July. It resulted in an inspired conversation.

From 1967 to 1982, the United Nations undertook several peacekeeping operations in the Middle East. In his thesis from the Institute for History, Diego Salama examines how these operations were connected and their impact on the region.

Students used to live with a landlady or even with the professor whose course they were taking. Student accommodation has since become more professional, making it something the new government will have to tackle. What should the new government do?

In our rapidly evolving and interconnected world, the study of International Relations has expanded beyond conventional disciplinary boundaries. Leiden University’s MA in International Relations program (MAIR - Humanities), with its emphasis on humanities-oriented and multidisciplinary perspectives,…

On 7 July, the Mayor of Leiden, Peter Heijkoop, visited Leiden Law School. During his visit, he learned about the faculty’s commitment to advancing research and education while contributing to tackling the challenges faced by society.

Benjamín Maldonado, Orestes Kyrgiakis, Roos Capel and Iskra Cvitković are the new student members of the Programme Committee (OLC). The board advises the Executive Board and the Faculty Board about educational matters, such as the determination of the Course and Examination Regulations and the evaluation…

International prosecutors, for instance at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, investigate particularly serious crimes such as genocide. They decide, among other things, whether or not to prosecute. PhD candidate Cale Davis investigated how prosecutors come to such decisions and will defend…

University lecturer Lucien van Beek has been awarded a LUF Praesidium Libertatis Grant. He will use the sum of 75,000 euros to research the thinking of people in ancient and prehistoric times. To do that, he will look for unusual or striking metaphors in the earliest Indo-European languages.

This year, an NWO PhD in the Humanities grant went to Mink van IJzendoorn, enabling him to investigate the disappearance of amphorae. ‘We take means of packaging and shipment for granted, but they are deeply ingrained in our daily lives; they are crucial.’

For the past year, Anne Wellink represented students' interests on the Faculty Board. As of September, Nova Verkerk will take over. In this interview, the two of them look back and ahead to the future.

North Korea is generally thought to be an isolated country. But, according to PhD candidate Tycho van der Hoog from Leiden’s African Studies Centre, the opposite is in fact the case. North Korea actually has strong alliances with countries in southern Africa. Van der Hoog is trying to shed more light…

An article in Leiden University’s Mare newspaper on 24 September states that the University Council advised against reappointing President of the Executive Board Annetje Ottow. The Board of Governors, deans and Annetje Ottow respond below.

Astronomers have captured a new deep field of Pandora's Cluster (Abell 2744) with the James Webb Space Telescope. The images show never-before-seen details. The results are described in four scientific papers. Leiden astronomers Marijn Franx and Mariska Kriek collaborated on the study. 'This opens a…

Alumnus Rennie Roos lives and works in Indonesia. What took him there, what does he do there and what inspires him?

Welcome to the 2024-2025 academic year! I hope this finds you feeling refreshed following an enjoyable and restful summer holiday season. As we start the autumn semester, I want to look back briefly by highlighting 10 significant milestones at LUCSoR from this past year (some of which I referenced in…

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.

Lara Ummels came from Maastricht to study law in Leiden, and never left. She recently joined the board of the 3 October Association.

The importance of science communication and cross-boundary collaboration, and the ‘mantra’ of diminishing social cohesion in society: these all came up at Leiden University’s 448th Dies Natalis. A panel discussion including Leiden’s mayor Lenferink, music and two honorary doctorates completed the special…

What with coronavirus, the American elections and the Brexit botheration, we had almost forgotten that something miraculous happened in 2020: the repressed people of Belarus rallied against dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for 26 years. Months later, what remains of the protest?…

From games to scavenger hunts: museums already do all sorts of things for children. But how do children really look at art? Do paintings affect them more if they receive information that is specially tailored to young visitors? Join psychologist Francesco Walker at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and see…

Are all murderers calculating psychopaths with an obscene predilection for bloody chainsaws? Yes, if Hollywood is to be believed, but in the real world they are generally everyday people with problematic backgrounds. Professor of Violence and Interventions Marieke Liem therefore calls for the demythologisation…

In the upcoming months, PhD candidates Neske Baerwaldt (FdR / VVI) and Wiebe Ruijtenberg (FSW / CAOS) will produce the ethnographic podcast series ‘Grensverhalen’. The series will be published online in September, and will be used as teaching material in various courses.

The organ in the Academy Building is 25 years old. University organist Jan Verschuren and tuner Bert Crama talk about the long history of university organs, improvising with short cortèges and their love for this organ.

A pill can make you better, but how exactly does it work? Primary school children from The Hague found out during a visit to the Centre for Human Drug Research (CHDR) as part of a new teaching module ‘The journey of a pill’.

For the third year in a row, the bonfires in the Duindorp and Scheveningen neighbourhoods in The Hague during New Year's Eve have been cancelled. According to Professor Henk te Velde, the fight for the bonfires represents something bigger: angry citizens.

Over 30 ambassadors strengthened their ties with researchers and university leaders in a recent visit to Leiden University. Cross-border collaboration (both literal and figurative) was the theme of presentations and a tour of the Hortus botanicus.

The new Students for Leiden party pulled off a stunning victory in the municipal elections. From nowhere, the party won two seats on Leiden Municipal Council. How are brand-new student councillors Mitchell Wiegand Bruss and Elianne Wijnands doing? ‘We’ve already asked questions about the quality of…

Canal Watch (De Grachtwacht), which has been cleaning canals since 2018, has received the Dutch Research Council (NWO) Communication Initiative Award.

Do you know what to do if a rubbish bin catches fire, a student takes ill or a colleague falls off their bike? Our emergency responders do. They are ready to evacuate buildings, fight fires and offer first aid. Why not join the team?

During pre-Columbian times, the Central American isthmus was marked by dynamic exchange and human mobility. Despite this, indigenous communities were archaeologically stable between AD 300 and the 16th-century Spanish colonisation, contrasting with the cycles of florescence and decline of neighbouring…

Is there a place for machine translation engines like Google Translate within the Faculty of Humanities? Associate professor Lettie Dorst’s new educational website aims to help students and teachers find an answer to this question. ‘The use of AI tools, such as Bing and ChatGPT, shouldn’t be seen as…

In the documentary ‘Pretend Student’, former students talk about why they let everyone believe they were still studying. How can you make sure you don’t end up in such an impossible situation? Four questions for Leiden Student Dean, Romke Biagioni, who worked on the documentary.

In July, Leiden will be hosting the EuroScience Open Forum conference. Humanities scholars from Leiden will make use of the opportunity to stress the importance of art in science. ‘Artists have the ability to show the consequences of science.’

He did an English-taught degree, completed a master’s abroad and now teaches on an English-taught programme at Leiden University College The Hague. Jan Meijer is the definition of an international researcher and he’s proud of it.

Since graduating from Leiden Law School with master’s degrees in Jurisprudence & Philosophy of Law and Criminal Law, alumnus Allard Altena now works as a Public Prosecutor at the Dutch Public Prosecution Service. He says, ‘I leave work at the end of each day knowing I’ve done something useful.’