The 2025 Grassfields grant has been awarded to Skill’Ed, an interfaculty initiative aimed at supporting students in developing transferable skills and preparing for the job market. Skill’Ed was selected by the review committee for its strong alignment with our educational vision and strategic plan,…

Rector Magnificus Hester Bijl received an honorary degree from the University of Birmingham on Friday 12 December for her contribution to educational innovation, student well-being and culture change within academia.

Leiden University has secured fifth place in SustainaBul, the sustainability ranking for universities and universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands.

Facility

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.

Use this step-by-step guide when you want to (re)design your course, lecture or assignment. SEEDS is here to help you every step of the way.

If you’re experiencing too much work pressure, talk about it to your colleagues and your manager. This is the only way we can jointly work towards a solution. How do you raise the issue of work pressure? And what can you do to prevent work pressure from getting out of hand?

The Rectors of the eight European EUniWell universities met in July in Leiden. During the meeting they discussed the future of this alliance that focuses on joint research and education in the area of health.

The Russian military assault on Ukraine has profoundly shocked knowledge institutions in the Netherlands, as represented by Universities of the Netherlands, the Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Dutch Research Council,…

Research

Eight Leiden University research teams recently received €15,000 each to take their research to the next level through Una Europa. Dario Fazzi, one of the selected researchers and professor of Transatlantic Environmental History, shares how Una Europa helps him expand a Leiden-based project into a international…

Over 40 hard-working programme directors and chairs met for the first time in the Academy Building on 27 October to exchange knowledge and experience and gain new inspiration. Rector Magnificus Hester Bijl opened the meeting with an update on strategic developments in higher education.

Five lecturers from Leiden University have received a Comenius teaching award. With the grants they can carry out an innovation project.

At the annual reversed constitution reception (omgekeerde constitutieborrel), the Executive Board presents an award to a student organization that has made an inspiring and impactful contribution to the well-being and social safety of its members. This year, ESN Leiden won for its program ‘Together…

Innovative, future-proof teaching methods were the theme of the tenth Leiden Teachers’ Academy Education Conference that took place on 5 June.

The bodies representing student and staff interests met at the start of the academic year for a day of training. New and familiar faces had come together to learn more about their role as council members and meet the Executive Board − and each other.

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?

Last year, Maaike Swart moved from coordinating the Strategic Plan implementation agenda to joining the Organisational Development team. As Programme Manager, she has been asked by the Executive Board to help shape Leiden University’s strategic development.

Good education starts with good educators. The university has taken various steps in recent years to help our teaching staff develop. But new teaching staff require particular attention, say staff who work on teacher professionalisation.

Prof. dr. Pancras Hogendoorn is stepping down as dean of the Faculty of Medicine and vice-chair of the Executive Board of Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC). He is also resigning from all associated secondary posts. Hogendoorn has taken his decision in anticipation of the findings of an inquiry…

Health Day has won the LUF Relationship-Promoting Activities Prize (LUF RAP). This 5,000-euro prize is awarded to an initiative by Leiden University students that brings the academic community together.

Leiden University continued to reduce its carbon footprint in 2021 by being more careful with natural resources and making structural reductions to its energy consumption. This is what it says in the Sustainability Report 2021.

Organisation, Security

Leiden University’s Rector Magnificus, Professor Hester Bijl, has been reappointed for a second term by the Board of Governors.

Organisation, Social

Leiden University has received a €50,000 grant from Open Science NL to develop a roadmap for integrating open science into the strategic priorities of various institutes and translating this into human resource (HR) policies.

Dutch municipalities are racing to digitalise, introducing virtual services, fraud-detection algorithms and more. The digital city may not always serve its residents. Professor Jiska Engelbert calls for civil servants who dare to push back.

The Executive Board of Leiden University has asked the University Council to advise on its proposed decision to reactivate the person counters/sensors in due course. The Council will now look at this carefully before the Board makes a final decision. The advice of the University’s participation body…

The coronavirus pandemic has had us working and studying at home, and this has had a positive effect on Leiden University’s sustainability results. This is apparent from the university’s new Sustainability Report 2020. The report also shows that nearly all the targets from the Environmental Policy Plan…

Two Leiden projects have been awarded Open Science NL funding to make science more accessible to academia and the world outside. The projects will strengthen the open science infrastructure.

Organisation

A culture change is needed within the University in the area of Recognition and Rewards, and a start can now be made on bringing about that change. The Recognition and Rewards steering group has published a change vision and recommendations people can start to work with. Their advice has been welcomed…

Theo van den Doel received his PhD in January for his research on veteran support. This showed that for long the government learned little from past missions. He has since presented his dissertation to the Lower House of Representatives, and the Minister for Defence, Kajsa Ollongren, has responded to…

Speaking for the Executive Board, Timo Kos reflects on the university’s security policy and what lies ahead. ‘We want to keep our buildings open, but we also need to be able to guarantee the safety of everyone there. It’s a real balancing act.’

Eleven lecturers from Leiden University have been awarded Comenius grants that will allow them to work with their teams on an innovation project within their own teaching. They have been awarded three grants of 100,000 euros within the Senior Fellows programme and four grants of 50,000 euros within…

Organisations like the UN and the EU should be given more powers to combat transboundary problems. This is the message of a report published by the Swedish SNS Democracy Council, whose authors include Prof. Jan Aart Scholte of Leiden University. The researchers also wrote the following article.

How do you set up a successful collaboration between science and practice? That was the main theme of the final meeting of a triptych of symposia on how Leiden University can improve inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration.

On the brand-new Leiden Teachers Blog, Leiden teachers share their experiences with educational innovation. They show colleagues, students, and everyone else who is interested the different facets of creating university education.

The university was a gift from William of Orange to the people of Leiden for their courageous resistance to the Spanish. We’ve all heard the story of the university’s foundation. But its foundation was also a success story for two friends.

The Citizen Science Netherlands (CS-NL) network was officially launched this month with the aid of an Open Science NL grant. The new vision for this network was presented on 28 May.

To what extent can global issues be solved by multistakeholder collaboration, a relatively new type of organisation? Jan Aart Scholte, the coordinator of the Global Transformations and Governance Challenges (GTGC) interdisciplinary research programme, has received a Dutch Research Council (NWO) grant…

Kim Duistermaat will become the Campus The Hague Director on 1 April. In this new role, she will monitor Campus The Hague projects and drive them forward. ‘I think it will be great to contribute to the successful realisation of the concept of “one university in two cities”.’

How can Europe lead the way in vaccine development that is fast and for all? To answer this pressing question, Professor of Vaccinology Meta Roestenberg is holding a panel session on 14 July at the EuroScience Open Forum in Leiden.

The Sustainability Monitor 2024 reveals that Leiden University has again taken significant steps to become a more sustainable and future-proof university. Since 1990, its carbon emissions have decreased by 50 per cent and, compared with 2019, its natural gas consumption has dropped by 32 per cent. Its…

When a challenge or question presents itself, our first reaction is often: ‘Let’s organise training’. But is that always the best solution? The working day often offers plenty of informal learning and development opportunities

An endless stream of publications, data and software accessible to all? Professor of Science Studies Thed van Leeuwen calls for a more human-centred approach and an overhaul of the PhD system.

Ten years ago, a new reward system was introduced in Dutch prisons: the only way prisoners could earn extra ‘freedoms’ was through good behaviour. Jan Maarten Elbers concludes that this system does little to encourage behavioural change and can even be counterproductive.